Princeton’s 1883 squad, left, notched the Tigers’ 10th straight win over Rutgers in a 61-0 blowout. The Scarlet Knights would gain the upper hand in the 1970s. At right, a statue in New Brunswick commemorates the first game. (Photos: Athletics at Princeton: A History; courtesy Flickr.com)

College football was born in New Jersey, 140 years ago today, when a team from Princeton traveled to New Brunswick to challenge Rutgers. The rules from that first contest differ greatly from those used today. Each team fielded 25 players who advanced the ball by kicking it or batting it with their hands (catching the ball was permitted, but running with it was not). The home team won, 6-4. Princeton topped Rutgers in a rematch one week later, the season’s only other game.

In a span of 111 years, the Tigers and Scarlet Knights played 71 times. While Princeton had a 53-17-1 record in the series, Rutgers dominated the later years, winning nine of the last 13 games. In 1980, PAW covered the final installment in football’s oldest rivalry. See story below.

From PAW, Oct. 20, 1980

Going Separate Ways

Rutgers 44, Princeton 13

By Martin E. Robins ’64

If the Brown game was a fork in the road, then the last game in the Rutgers series was a freeway interchange where the Scarlet Knights were jockeying for a spot in the fast lane, while the Tigers were exiting to the slower pace of secondary highways. Outdistancing Princeton 44-13, Rutgers ran up the highest point total and widest victory margin it has ever enjoyed in the 111-year history of college football’s oldest rivalry. In so doing, it vindicated Nassau Hall’s decision to let the two teams go their separate ways.

Continue reading "Where it all began: Princeton vs. Rutgers" »

(Photo courtesy Wikipedia)

Princeton (2-5, 1-3 Ivy) at Penn (5-2, 4-0 Ivy) Nov. 7, 3:30 p.m. Franklin Field Philadelphia, Pa.

Princeton’s 17-13 win over Cornell Oct. 31 came with a pair of important firsts: the Tigers’ first Ivy League victory and their first come-from-behind win. The fourth quarter was particularly rewarding, head coach Roger Hughes said: “We had a big fourth-down stop to get the ball back. We were able to run most of the time off the clock in our four-minute offense, and our quarterback [Tommy Wornham ’12] and our wide receiver Trey Peacock ’11 were able to make some explosive plays, which we hadn’t been able to do so far.”

Peacock caught three passes, two of them on touchdown plays. His 78-yard game-winning catch and run was the longest passing play in five years for the Princeton offense.

This week, the Tigers face a hot Penn team that has won five consecutive games and looks poised to challenge Harvard for the Ivy championship. A Princeton win could cripple the Quakers’ Ivy ambitions, but according to Hughes, the Tigers are not motivated by a chance to play the spoiler role.

“The Penn-Princeton rivalry has always been a big game … so I don’t know if the spoiler role has anything to do with it,” he said. “Our kids like to play each other, and our kids know that it’s a high-energy, very physical and emotional game when we get together.”

Continue reading "Princeton vs. Penn football preview" »

Tom Meeker ’56 leads a locomotive cheer in 2006, with student conductor Charles Pence ’07 and drum major Charlie Bergen ’07 looking on. (Courtesy Tom Meeker ’56)

Careful readers of PAW’s Nov. 4 cover story might notice that one Princeton University Band percussionist plays a pair of plastic pumpkins that bear the number “56.” Those homemade bongos are part of a unique link between the band and the Class of 1956.

For more than two decades, Tom Meeker ’56 and his wife, Joanne, have hosted a Class of ’56 tailgate before home football games, and for most of that time, the band has stopped by to play a few songs before entering the stadium.

The tradition began innocently, Meeker says. Joanne was looking for a way to liven up the tailgate, and when she saw the band marching down Roper Lane, she ushered them into the party.

Continue reading "Band, '56 bridge generations" »

Pianist Robert Taub ’77 has a deep knowledge of Beethoven’s piano sonatas, both as a musician and a music scholar. In the mid-1990s, he performed all 32 sonatas in a three-year span. Earlier this year, he authored a book called Playing the Beethoven Piano Sonatas, which Library Journal called “a close, careful reading of every aspect of performance from fingering to tempo.”

Taub majored in music at Princeton, earned a doctorate from Julliard, and has returned to teach courses on campus in recent years. His latest project is a comprehensive collection of the 32 Beethoven piano sonatas — the first in more than 100 years from the venerable publisher G. Schirmer — that will encapsulate the works in two volumes of annotated sheet music and 10 CDs that feature Taub playing the sonatas. He told James Barron ’77, the secretary for his class, that the new collection sums up many years of playing and studying the sonatas. By citing Beethoven’s own fingerings and markings, Taub said he is attempting “to portray an artistic vision that transcends the little black dots on the page.”

Do you have a nominee for Tiger of the Week? Let us know. All alumni qualify. PAW’s Tiger of the Week is selected by our staff, with help from readers like you.

New book: Maestro: A Surprising Story About Leading By Listening, by Roger Nierenberg ’69 (Portfolio)

The author: A veteran conductor, Roger Nierenberg has served as music director for the Jacksonville Symphony Orchestra and the Stamford Symphony Orchestra and traveled the world as a guest conductor. In the last 10 years he’s created The Music Paradigm, a program for corporations that uses the dynamics of a symphony orchestra as a model for business organizations. The training sessions embed corporate professionals inside a symphony orchestra to inspire leadership and teamwork by learning from the way musicians and a conductor interact. (For more about Nierenberg, read PAW’s 2002 profile of the author and conductor.)

The book: Written as a parable instead of a standard book of business lessons, Maestro draws on Nierenberg’s real-life experiences working with clients of The Music Paradigm. It tells the story of a struggling manager who finds an unlikely source of wisdom — the interplay between a symphony orchestra and its conductor — and begins to think about leadership and communication in a new way.

Continue reading "Nierenberg '69 on 'leading by listening'" »

Three of Princeton’s most successful teams have a chance to become Ivy League champions on Friday, Oct. 30.

WOMEN’S CROSS COUNTRY kicks off the day’s action at the Ivy League Heptagonal Championships, held annually at Van Cortlandt Park in the Bronx, N.Y. The Princeton women have won three straight Heps titles and will be the favorite again this year. Liz Costello ’10 has a chance to be just the second woman to win three individual Ivy titles in cross country. She ran the 5-kilometer course in 16:59.9 last year, a Heps record. In addition to Costello, five returning Tigers placed in the top 10 at Heps last year: Reilly Kiernan ’10, Alexa Glencer ’10, Sarah Cummings ’11, Ashley Higginson ’11, and Liz Deir ’11.

Continue reading "Sports Shorts: Ivy contenders" »