The Champs

The game was over. The championship was won. The celebration was just starting.

TigerBlog thought about the history of the moment, and there certainly was a lot of it. He thought about what went into building this Princeton football team, and that's another long subject. 

As he stood on the turf at Franklin Field, moments after Princeton defeated Penn 34-14 to win its share of the 2021 Ivy League title, he blocked all of that out and just took it all in.

It wasn't a moment to be doing anything else.

There is so much that goes into preparing to play every football game, and all of that mental and physical effort has to be repeated each week during the year. It's a cliche to talk about taking them one game at a time, not to look ahead, but in football you really have no choice.

A football season is a grind, no doubt, and yet interestingly, a football season always seems to fly by. It's another cliche, but it's also true. Blink and it's gone.

It seems like yesterday that Princeton opened this season at Lehigh. TB knows, he says that every season. This time, it seems even truer than normal.

His point is that the combination of having to be so focused on every individual moment of a season as Week 1 quickly turns into Week 10 means that there is very little time to stop and dwell on what happens along the way. 

Maybe that's the reason Princeton head coach Bob Surace never wants to talk about the bonfire that his team earns by beating Harvard and Yale until the last game is over. It's because there's always more to do.

His team salted away that bonfire with its win in Week 9 over the Bulldogs, and that celebration was held last night. The bonfire, which does so much to bring together the entire campus community like few things can, was held last night, on a perfect night for such an event. It was as it always is, a big Princeton party.

That bonfire would have been held regardless of what happened Saturday in Philadelphia. It just wouldn't have been nearly as much fun had Princeton lost to the Quakers.

A 28-point second quarter made sure that wouldn't be the case. The big play came with Princeton up 10-7, when Matthew Winston intercepted a pass and ran it back 34 yards for a touchdown. It was 31-7 at halftime, and the game was never in doubt in the second half. 

When it ended, it was time to celebrate. Maybe the best way to describe it is the way James Johnson did his traditional victory celebration. It's Johnson who is held up on his teammates shoulders after wins and leads them in song and counting of the day's points. In every one of the other celebrations this year, as soon as he is back on the ground, his team had to look ahead to the next opponent. This time?

🏆 Victory Count x9 #NA22AUBound 🍊🥤 pic.twitter.com/rV9aWSgEtY

— Princeton Football (@PrincetonFTBL) November 20, 2021

It takes a bit to sink in, that the goal has been achieved. When it does, it leads to an extraordinary – and well-earned – feeling of satisfaction.

Everywhere on the field, there were Princeton players who were basking in the moment. For many of them, the idea of competing for a 2021 Ivy League title and then ultimately attaining it meant making the tough decision to take off from school last year and come back for one more run at it. Those choices weren't easy in the moment for anyone who had to make them.

There were also three players involved in the celebration who were heading to first-team All-Ivy League selections before injuries derailed their seasons, running back Collin Eaddy, defensive back Delan Stallworth and defensive end Uche Ndukwe. For Eaddy and Stallworth, the injuries ended their careers. As for Ndukwe, you can make a case that he was Princeton's best player when he got hurt, and that's saying something on a defense that featured Johnson, Jeremiah Tyler, Samuel Wright (the Ivy leader in sacks, by the way) and Trevor Forbes, among others. 

What did the three injured players do? They celebrated also. They pulled as hard as they could for their teammates. They didn't sulk at all. They were a presence even in their absences. It speaks volumes about them.

And then there was the history. The Tigers are now 27-3 in their last three seasons. The last time Princeton won 27 games in three years? It was 1902-04. Okay, so for most of that time Princeton played nine-game seasons, but it's still been 41 years since the league went to 10-game schedules. 

The last time Princeton had a three-season stretch with three losses? Is that a better indicator? That would be 1963-65. No matter how you look at it, what Princeton has done in the last three seasons is extraordinary. 

And it's been done with three different starting quarterbacks (John Lovett, Kevin Davidson, Cole Smith) and three different offensive coordinators (Sean Gleeson, Andy Aurich, Mike Willis).

There are constants of course. The main one is Surace, who went from back-to-back 1-9 seasons to start his tenure to where he stands now, which is to say that he is now tied with Dick Colman for the most Ivy League championships by a Princeton coach with four. 

Surace has shaken off a 2-20 start and now stands at 65-45, which means he's closing in on catching the seemingly uncatchable career win totals of Charlie Caldwell (70 wins), Colman (75), Steve Tosches (78) and maybe even Bill Roper (89). For the record, Roper's 89th win as Tiger coach came in the 1930 season. 

His winning percentage is just short of 60 percent. If you started counting after his first 22 games, his record is 63-25, a winning percentage of 74 percent.

Surace has a Bill Tierney-like quality about him, which is to say that he can be the most intense coach you've ever seen during the game and then immediately turn that off and go back to his quiet, caring, engaging, warm self right after the final gun. That was the case again Saturday. 

Also after Saturday's game, he was soaked, from the water that was dumped over him. It's what happens when your team is celebrating a championship. 

In football, you never look ahead. You just worry about what the next immediate task is, what the next drill is, what the next scouting report is, what the next possession is. When the last game ends, you look up and see where you are.

When Princeton looked up late afternoon Saturday, it was the champion. 

Only then did the celebrating begin.