Is It Fall Yet?

If you want to upload a schedule onto goprincetontigers.com, there's a form on the content management system that you need to follow.

As you enter each game, it appears on the schedule page on the website, unless you click a button on the back end that keeps the schedule hidden. TigerBlog prefers to enter a game and have it be live, and he's waiting for the time that someone emails him to say that they were on the webpage, clicked on the schedule and can't understand why Princeton is only playing three games the coming year.

TB entered the 2020 football schedule yesterday. If you went to the schedule on the website around 3 or so, you might have noticed that the schedule only listed one game, or two, or however many were there when you checked.

Not to worry. Princeton will be playing the full 10 games in 2020.

The football schedule was formally announced this week, and season tickets for the five home games are now on sale. You can see the first HERE and buy the second HERE.

It's a really intriguing and interesting schedule, with five home games and non-league road trips to different places than Princeton fans are used to heading.

The season starts on Sept. 19 at Virginia Military Institute, which is in Lexington, Va. The Keydets went 5-7 last year, including 4-4 in the very competitive Southern Conference.

Beyond that, there is the gameday experience at Foster Stadium, which the VMI website describes this way:
Very few football experiences in the country can rival that of a fall Saturday at Alumni Memorial Field at Foster Stadium, the home of Keydets. It is a day filled with the pageantry and tradition of the nation's oldest state military school. The VMI Corps of Cadets marches from barracks onto the field as The Regimental Band plays “Shenandoah”. The Corps welcomes the team onto the field, as "Little John," a ceremonial cannon, joins the cheers with a thundering boom. The Rats come out of the stands with every Keydet score, and do a pushup for every point on the VMI side of the scoreboard. The familiar strain of "The Spirit" plays to stir the hearts of the Keydet faithful. 
How much fun does that sound like?

And for Princeton, it's one of two trips to military institutions. The other is an Oct. 10 trip to Army West Point and venerable Michie Stadium.

TB has been to Army to see Princeton play basketball (and to cover Rider basketball there once a long time ago as well). He's never seen a football game there.

Don't know much about Michie Stadium? Well, check out the main photo HERE.

That's quite a picture, no?

And that's what Princeton will be walking into come October. Do you want to guess who the team who plays at Michie directly before Princeton is?

Army plays at Miami, the one in Ohio, the Saturday before Princeton is there. The week before that, on Sept. 26, who is at Michie?

Oklahoma. Yes, that Oklahoma.

For that matter, VMI will come into the game in September one week after playing at Virginia.

As for the other non-league game, it's a Week 2 home game (the week after VMI) against Bucknell.

There are four home Ivy games, against Brown, Cornell, Dartmouth and Penn. Remember - the game at Yankee Stadium last year was supposed to be a Dartmouth home game, so Princeton will be home with the Big Green this year.

The Ivy road trips are to Columbia, Harvard and Yale.

How good will Princeton be?

The Tigers have nine All-Ivy selections returning, including the Bushnell Cup finalist Jeremiah Tyler and fellow first-team pick Delan Stallworth on defense and leading rusher and Ivy rushing touchdown leader Collin Eaddy on offense, not to mention a ton of other experience basically everywhere on the field. 

There are of course losses to graduation, including first-team All-Ivy League center Alex Deters and pro-prospect quarterback Kevin Davidson.

Princeton is 18-2 in the last two years. Its 18 wins are the most by the program in two years since 1950-51, which says something about the level the Tigers have been playing at of late.

And that's a quick look ahead to the fall of 2020.

Tomorrow TB will get back to the winter and the weekend to come, which includes some huge events with Ivy titles on the line.