Founders Park will soon be buzzing with excitement as the ballpark hosts South Carolina Gamecocks vs. Princeton Tigers showdown. Princeton-Tigers 2018 season looks promising as the team has returned with the right talent to turn things around in the win-loss column. Princeton-Tigers biggest weapon are their pitchers who are eager to lock down the opposition’s hitters. Athletic outfielders, fresh talent with power and impact and impressive arms, the 2018 Tigers will surely enjoy a stellar season. The team has called their 2018 run as the “Revenge Tour” of the Ivy League.

The team will be playing the first game against the San Diego Toreros at the Princeton Stadium - this game, along with those that will follow, are expected to be highly intense and entertaining. So don’t miss out!

History of the Princeton Tigers

The first football game saw the team from Princeton travel from The College of New Jersey to New Brunswick to face off with the team from the then Rutgers College. This game was won by Rutgers and the following game, a week later, was won by Princeton. This is where football at Princeton started.

The Tigers are partly credited with having invented the game of football as a variant of rugby in the earlier years. Due to this, they managed to remain a dominant force in the earliest days of intercollegiate football – they won 22 of the first 40 national titles ever. As the game developed further, more and more teams started becoming strong contenders in the race for the title. Princeton, along with the rest of the Ivy League eventually lost their stronghold in the contention for the national championship. The last championship that was won by the team was in 1950.

The Ivy League

Universities such as Brown, Cornell, Columbia, Yale and Harvard along with the University of Pennsylvania and Dartmouth College joined together to hold the Ivy League athletic conference in 1955. The policies created here managed to isolate the teams from this group from national attention.

Following this, the NCAA Division I was split to cater to the larger schools (I-A) and the smaller schools (I-AA). Due to this, Princeton was not able to play games against their long time rivals, Rutgers and stopped referring to them as football rivals after the 1980 season. Due to further changes in the rules, members of the Ivy League chose to switch to I-AA in the 1982 season. Following this change, Princeton cannot compete in the NCAA Division I Football Championship, according to the rules of the Ivy League.

The Recent Years

In the recent years, the Princeton football team has managed to gain some success, with a total of eleven Ivy League championships, eight shared and three outright, along with 10 Big Three Championships since the 1955 season. The team’s conference championships have been in the years 1957, 1963, 1964, 1966, 1969, 1989, 1992, 1995, 2006, 2013 and 2016.

Home Ground of the Princeton Tigers Football Team

The first ever home ground for the team was the Palmer Stadium, which was built in 1914. It was the third ever college football stadium to be built and was the oldest one, till its demolition, which happened in 1996. The stadium had a huge capacity of 45,750 persons. It was decided in the 1990s, that the university would construct a brand new stadium, rather than investing in an expensive renovation process.

The Princeton University Stadium was the new home ground. During the construction process of this stadium, the team played nine away games. The new stadium was formally opened on 19th September, 1998 and had the capacity to seat 27,773 persons. The stadium had natural grass for eight years, after which an artificial turf was installed in 2006. The field was renamed to “Powers Field” in honor of a $10 million donor for the team, William C. Powers.

The 2017 Games

This year, the Princeton University team is in good shape and is showing stronger form than the past few seasons. The upcoming games against teams such as the Lafayette Leopards, the Columbia Lions, the Georgetown Hoyas, the Harvard Crimson, the Cornell Big Red, the Union College Dutchman and the Dartmouth Big Greens, all promise to be stellar matches that are not to be missed! So grab these Princeton Tigers tickets as soon as you can!