Kicking It Off On Powers Field

Happy birthday to FatherBlog. 

Well, one day early anyway. Yes, the old man turns 91 tomorrow. According to ChatGPT, approximately 18 percent of people born in 1935 are still alive today.

As TigerBlog has shared before, his father's secrets to longevity include eating a lot of bad food and never exercising. Oh, and never skip dessert — even if your dessert that day is a pizza. 

Whatever his methods, he's made it this far. He lives alone, has all his hair, is still mentally sharp — and recently went on a two-week cruise of the Mediterranean. That's not bad for 91. 

He needs a walker and hearing aids, and his eyesight is pretty poor. Hey, for 91, he's doing just fine. 

So what do you get for a 91 year old for his birthday? You get him the jersey of his favorite quarterback. 

A man who spent most of those 91 years as a fan of the New York Jets and a huge Joe Namath guy has come around to adopt the Kansas City Chiefs and Pat Mahomes these days. He never misses a game. 

Again, happy birthday to FB.

And with that, TB shifts from FB to QB. 

Albany comes to Princeton with a record of 2-2, with wins over New Hampshire and LIU and losses to Buffalo and Monmouth. Princeton and Albany have never met before. 

So there probably isn't much commonality between them right? Well, does the name Kai Colon ring a bell? 

As you recall, Colon was Princeton's starting quarterback a year ago. This year, he's a graduate student at Albany, where he has also been the Great Danes starter. 

In other words, he'll be starting as a quarterback in two straight games on Powers Field, one for Princeton and one for the visitor. Is that unprecedented? At Princeton it is. Has it ever happened anywhere before? 

Even with the changing landscape in college athletics, that takes a lot. You have to go from one school to another and then immediately become the starter, all while having your new team play its first home game with your old team. 

To date Colon is 51 for 97 for 617 yards, with six TDs and four interceptions. A year ago, he completed nearly 60 percent of his passes for 1,711 yards, with nine TDs and six picks. 

Albany is Princeton's second opponent and second opponent who plays football in the CAA and everything else in the America East, along with Bryant, and Albany is already 2-0 in its league. There are 13 teams in the CAA football standings, so not every school plays each other; this year Bryant and Albany will not meet. 

As is always said, football teams make their biggest improvement of the season from Week 1 to Week 2. At least for this season, for Princeton it's more about being ready to go in Week 3, which is the Ivy League opener at Columbia. 

Checking out the stats at this point is a bit meaningless, even for Albany, because of the small sample size to date. So far for both teams it's more about an eye test and a look at improvement as the year goes along. 

That applies to coaches and players. Tomorrow it'll apply to the Princeton Stadium fans as well. 

So come to the game and see these Tigers.