The 2020 Princeton football team would have taken a bus to Yale tomorrow in advance of Saturday's scheduled game between the two.
Well, a few buses, actually.
It was a bit of a contrast to the way the 1873 Princeton football team made the trip to New Haven for the first game ever between the schools.
Those Tigers took a boat. According to the book "Athletics At Princeton – A History," the definitive history of 19th century Princeton Athletics, the football team "took the night boat and almost froze, but at 2 p.m. they were on the field, ready to begin the first football game ever between Princeton and Yale."
The game this year would have been the 143rd meeting in the series.
That first game in 1873 finished 3-0 Princeton, back when teams scored by kicking or batting the ball into the goal. H.C. Beach of the Class of 1874 had two of the three goals, and G.R. Elder of the Class of 1875 had the other.
H.C. lived most of his post-Princeton life in the New York Metropolitan area, practicing law, after a short stop in Iowa for a year as a businessman. Speaking of short stops, he was also the shortstop for the baseball team, when he wasn't pitching or playing third.
He did bat leadoff regardless of what position he was playing. In his last collegiate start on the mound, he was touched for 13 runs in five innings in a 16-1 loss to Yale.
Some other little H.C. Beach facts: 1) he thought the University did not do a good enough job in communicating with its alums (he'd be in heaven now with the way information flows these days) and 2) he worked on James Garfield's successful 1880 Presidential campaign.
Princeton and Yale played in 1873 and again in 1876. The first game between the two in Princeton was in 1886, as the teams played in New Haven, New York City (at the Polo Grounds) and Hoboken in those years.
The teams have played ever year since 1876, with the exception of 1917 and 1918 due to World War I and 1944 due to World War II. Despite the war, the teams played in 1942, 1943 and 1945.
This year, of course, there will be no Princeton-Yale game, due to the COVID pandemic. The game would have been Saturday at Yale Bowl.
Princeton and Yale rank second in college football in terms of most games played in a rivalry. The leader? Lehigh-Lafayette.
Harvard-Yale is third, as the two have played 136 times. TB has never looked all that closely at the list of the most played games, and he was a little surprised to see who was fourth, in that he never realized it was a big game.
That one? TB will give you a second.
It's not Penn-Cornell, which is sixth and the next most-played Ivy game. Princeton's next highest total is against Harvard, with 112 games, which ranks 38th.
Wisconsin-Minnesota is fifth at 129 games, making it the most-played between two current Power Five schools. There are two others in the top 10, and it's not Oregon-Oregon State, which TigerBlog might have thought would have been up there but is actually tied with Harvard-Dartmouth for 11th.
The other two Power Five ones are Virginia-North Carolina and the most-played game between current SEC teams. Those two rivalries are tied for the seventh with 125 games between them.
Any guesses on the SEC game? Hint - it's not the one TB would have guessed.
The rest of the Top 10 is Yale-Brown and Cincinnati-Miami (Ohio), which are tied for ninth.
Trivia answers? The No. 4 most played game is William & Mary and Richmond. TB never would have guessed that. Nor would he have gotten right the most played SEC game, which is Georgia and Auburn.
One more thing for today:
The game Saturday in New Haven almost surely would have started out with a moment of silence in honor of Yale's longtime administrator Wayne Dean, who passed away earlier this week at the age of 65. Dean had retired just a year ago after a long tenure at Yale, and Dean was mostly recognized for his work with the Bulldogs' men's hockey team and with the sport of college hockey in general. In fact, Dean served at one point as the chair of the NCAA Division I men's hockey committee.
TigerBlog had met Wayne Dean but didn't know him well. He does know a lot of people who knew him and spoke very highly of him as a hard-working, dedicated, loyal, affable man.
TB's colleague Steve Conn tweeted this about Dean:
It is with a very heavy heart that I post this message having just learned of the passing of Wayne Dean. We spent a lot of time together at the Whale and Bowl, and he made it fun. He was a great man with many talents and wonderful sense of humor. We will miss you Deaner!! pic.twitter.com/58R7xzHTgK
— Steve Conn (@YaleSID) November 9, 2020
TigerBlog sends his condolences to the Dean family and to Yale Athletics.
Posts
1 comment:
The Lehigh-Lafayette rivalry, called simply "The Rivalry" by its protagonists, is well known as the "longest" series in college football, that is, the competition with the most total games played.
Less widely known is how that series racked up so many games. From inception in 1884 until 1901, the teams played twice per season (except for 1891, when they met three times, and 1896, when they did not play at all). Further, they met twice in each of the war years 1943 and 1944.
So this leaves the Princeton-Yale rivalry, started in 1873, as the leader in the more awkwardly titled category of "Most Years Played." Princeton and Yale have played in 142 years; Lehigh and Lafayette have met in 135 years, just behind Yale and Harvard at 136.
P-Y and L-L share another commonality as well. Princeton was founded by a group of Yale graduates (and one Harvard guy helping out), all Presbyterians who wanted to create a new institution differentiated from Congregationalist Harvard and Yale.
Lehigh was founded by wealthy businessman Asa Packer, who wanted to build a rival to Presbyterian Lafayette. Packer established Lehigh in collaboration with the local Episcopal/Congregationalist church.
In both the P-Y and L-L rivalries, the younger institution is the more highly ranked academically. Have you ever noticed how often you see, in an athletic family, it's the youngest sibling which achieves the greatest highs?
Post a Comment