Presidential Trivia

When TigerBlog wrote yesterday about George Parros yesterday, he completely forgot that Parros had brought the Stanley Cup to Baker Rink in the summer of 2007.

In fact, TB forgot that he had a picture of his then-young kids with Parros with the Cup on the Baker ice. He's dusting it off for you here:

 

Parros, by the way, is 6-5, so neither one of TB's kids ever caught up to him in height, though they did close the gap quite a bit.

That was more than 13 years ago? Time really does sail by.

Shifting to today's subject, as you may have noticed, TigerBlog does not write about politics. 

It's a good policy. If you're looking for political debate, TigerBlog is not your place for it. There appear to be some other place you can go to find it if you like.

Today, of course, is the inauguration of Joe Biden as the new President of the United States and Kamala Harris as the new Vice President.

In honor of the occasion, TB offers the following quiz. The way it works is simple.

TB will give you an event in Princeton Athletic history. You need to answer with who the President of the United States was when it happened.

He'll give the questions first and then at the end he'll provide the answers.

With no further delay, here is the Princeton Athletics Who Was The President Trivia Game:

Who was the President of the United States when ...

1) Princeton reached the NCAA men's basketball Final Four?

2) Dick Kazmaier won the Heisman Trophy?

3) The first women's athletic event was held?

4) The first men's athletic event was held?

5) Princeton played in the first football game? 

6) Princeton became the first school to sweep the NCAA lacrosse championships in the same season?

7) Hobey Baker first played varsity football and hockey for Princeton?

8) Princeton won its first Olympic gold medals?

9) Princeton had its first woman win an Olympic medal?

10) Princeton added men's soccer, men's cross country, wrestling and men's swimming and diving?

11) The first time Princeton women's teams combined to win at least eight Ivy League championships in one academic year?

12) The women's soccer team reached the NCAA Final Four? 

13) Princeton had the first person who held the title of Director of Athletics?

14) Princeton won four straight men's golf NCAA championships?

And now the answers:

1) The first Princeton men's basketball team defeated Penn State, North Carolina State and Providence to reach the NCAA Final Four in 1965. The POTUS at the time? Lyndon Johnson

2) Dick Kazmaier won the 1951 Heisman Trophy. Harry S Truman was your POTUS at the time. 

3) The first time women competed for Princeton was in the fall of 1970, when Richard Nixon sat in the Oval Office.

4) Princeton's first athletic event was a baseball game against Williams on Nov. 22, 1864. Abraham Lincoln was the President, and that same day the Battle of Griswoldville was fought in Georgia as part of Sherman's March to the Sea. 

5) The first football game was played on Nov. 6, 1869. Ulysses S. Grant was the POTUS.

6) The Princeton men and women both won the NCAA title in 1994, when Bill Clinton was in his first term. 

7) Hobey Baker was in the Class of 1914. His first varsity seasons were in 1911 (football) and 1911-12 (hockey). Who was the President? One of the biggest (literally and figuratively) sports fans ever to be POTUS was in office - William Howard Taft.

8) The first Princeton Olympic gold medals came at the first modern Olympic Games in 1896 in Athens. In fact Princeton won seven medals in those Games, with two golds and two silvers from Robert Garrett. The POTUS then was Grover Cleveland, who, as a bonus trivia fact, is actually buried in Princeton, in the cemetery on Witherspoon Street near the library. 

9) Carol Brown won bronze at the 1976 Olympic Games as a rower. Gerald Ford was the President at the time. You get a bonus fact about Ford also - he competed against Princeton in football while at Michigan at the early 1930s.

10) Princeton added men's swimming and diving, wrestling, men's soccer and men's cross country in a 12-month period from 1905-06. Theodore Roosevelt, one of the driving forces in the founding of the NCAA, was the POTUS.

11) Princeton won eight Ivy League women's championships in the 1981-82 academic year and then did it again the next year. In other words, the Tigers won eight for the Gipper, as Ronald Reagan was in the White House. By the way, TB in his upcoming book on women's athletics considers those years as sort of the birth of the modern era of women's athletics.

12) Princeton knocked off Central Connecticut, Villanova, Boston College and Washington to reach the 2004 NCAA Final Four. George W. Bush was in the White House. 

13) Ken Fairman in 1941 became the first Director of Athletics, when Franklin Roosevelt was the Commander-in-Chief. Fairman would actually take a leave from Princeton to work for Roosevelt when Fairman became a World War II tank commander.

14) This is a bit of a trick question. Princeton won four straight national titles in men's golf from 1927-30. Calvin Coolidge was the POTUS for the first two; Herbert Hoover was the POTUS for the last two.