Football Links

TigerBlog saw a story yesterday on CBSsports.com that listed the top college football program in each state. 

It's a website that likes to stuff like that. It's always listing the top this or that or the best NFL team you could make if you took one player from each team but had to fill out all positions. It's fun and innocuous, even if it ultimately means very little.

The one TB saw yesterday, of course, means a lot more, since it included Princeton as the top college football program in the state of New Jersey. Even beyond that, you know who was the choice in Connecticut? Sacred Heart.

Clearly whoever chose this list knows what he or she is talking about obviously.

Here's what it said about the Garden State:

New Jersey was a low-key difficult choice. Princeton won 18 games between 2018 and 2019 and has a pair of Ivy League titles in 2016 and 2018. Monmouth has three FCS playoff appearances in the last four years. Even Rutgers is better under coach Greg Schiano. But Princeton has the last head-to-head over Monmouth and has been a pretty consistent winner lately.

In all seriousness, Princeton football has been in a very good place the last few years. Head football coach Bob Surace has built an outstanding program and has done so in the best way possible – by bringing in the right fits athletically and as people. 

It's a program that routinely produces championship-level teams and does so with a lockerroom of guys who are easy to root for if you're a Princeton fan. You can't really ask for much more.

Surace, as you might recall, started with back-to-back 1-9 seasons in 2010 and 2011. His overall record is now 56-44, which means he is 54-26 since. You can add to those numbers Ivy League championships in 2013, 2016 and 2018 (a perfect season to boot). Princeton has won at least eight games in four of its last seven seasons.

You don't put up numbers like that accidentally. The CBS Sports piece is a recognition of that.

Princeton will begin practice for the 2021 season in a few weeks. When it does so, none of the preseason honors or accolades will matter. For now, they're fun, to wit:

* the CBS Sports piece, which you can read HERE

* the preseason honors that linebacker Jeremiah Tyler has earned, which you can read about HERE

* Princeton's selection as the Ivy League preseason favorite, which you can read HERE

And while this isn't really a story about a preseason honor, you can click HERE to listen to Surace and TB's colleague Cody Chrusciel talk about the program prior to the start of training camp.

The Ivy League poll was released yesterday. The Tigers were named the preseason league favorite in a vote of Ivy media members, receiving eight of 16 first-place votes and 113 total points. Yale, with six first-place votes and 104 points, was second, followed by Dartmouth with 88 points and one first-place vote.

With no games last year, there are two classes of players who have yet to see action. There are also a slew of players who took last year off and are back, as well as others who didn't and who have graduated. There is probably more uncertainty going into this season than in pretty much any other for awhile, which possibly explains Columbia, who was voted seventh but also got a first place vote. 

The preseason FCS Top 25 was released this week, and no Ivy League school received even a single vote. One team that received a lot of votes was Monmouth, who started off the season ranked 13th. 

Princeton is at Monmouth on Oct. 9, which makes for a pretty intriguing in-state matchup. Will the Hawks be motivated by the CBS Sports story? 

Like most other things in the preseason, that won't matter at all once the ball is on the tee. But again, like most things preseason, it was fun to check out.  

Of course, they're not as much fun to check out as the games themselves, and those will be here in the not too distant future.