How to Go to a Princeton Football Game

My father went to the Newark College of Engineering, which didn't have a football team, and has since been absorbed into the New Jersey Institute of Technology. Eventually, some of his friends talked him into going to Rutgers games.

He said the result didn't matter to him. Good attitude for a Rutgers fan, since they usually lose. He said he went because he loved the atmosphere.

I told him, if he went to a football game just for the atmosphere, he should go to Princeton games instead.

Tomorrow, at noon, Princeton University will open its 149th season of football, hosting the University of San Diego.

Before You Go. The weather should be pretty much the same as it is in New York City, whenever you go. On Saturday afternoon, the temperature should be in the low 80s.

Princeton, of course, is in the Eastern time zone, so you won't have to change your clocks, watches or other timepieces.

Tickets. Only once in their 5 home games last season did Princeton top 10,000 in attendance. For most games, the stadium was 1/4 full, or even less. Getting tickets will not be a problem: You can show up at the window 5 minutes before kick-off, and get a ticket to sit anywhere you like. All seats are $11.

Getting There. It's 52 miles from Midtown Manhattan to the Princeton campus. Too close to fly. To drive, you would go the same way you would get to Rutgers, taking the New Jersey Turnpike South to Exit 9, to N.J. Route 18 North. However, instead of passing U.S. Route 1 and continuing on to New Brunswick, you would rate Route 1 South.

Route 1 is not fun. But it's the simplest route. Take it down through New Brunswick, North Brunswick (yes, it's south of New Brunswick), South Brunswick and Plainsboro, into West Windsor, and then turn right on Washington Road, a.k.a. Mercer County Route 571. You'll cross Carnegie Lake, part of the Millstone River, and the Princeton athletic complex will be right ahead, with the stadium and the gym on the right. If you do it right, it should take 1 hour and 35 minutes before traffic becomes an issue.

Coach USA offers bus service to and from Princeton. Buses leave Port Authority Bus Terminal at Gate 417, on every hour and on every half-hour, dropping off in front of the Palmer Square Kiosk. The return trip leaves from across Nassau Street, at Witherspoon Street, across from Nassau Hall, again on every hour and every half hour.

The trip, each way, takes about an hour and a half. So, if you were leaving to catch a 12:00 noon kickoff, you would have to get the bus out of Port Authority no later than 10:00 AM. The round-trip fare is $29.75.

This is easier than taking the train down: New Jersey Transit offers Northeast Corridor rail service to Princeton Junction, but that is in West Windsor. You then have to switch to the Princeton Shuttle, a 2-car train nicknamed the Dinky, and make the 3-mile trip into Princeton proper.
To make a noon kickoff (barely), you'd have to leave Penn station at 10:14 AM, arriving at Princeton Junction at 11:26, and then you'd have a 5-minute window to get over to the adjacent Dinky, which leaves at 11:31, and arrives in Princeton at 11:36. Round-trip fare is $35.50.

You'd have much more margin for error if you caught the 9:14 train. There are also taxis at the Junction, so you could have one of them take you to the stadium, if you don't mind the additional expense.

Once In the City. First settled by Europeans in 1683, what was originally "Princetown" is considered to be named after King William III of England, Prince of Orange of the House of Nassau. Hence, Princeton University is nicknamed Old Nassau, the main drag is Nassau Street, and the school colors are orange and black.

Previously, there were 2 separate towns: The Borough of Princeton, home to 12,000 permanent residents (in other words, not counting students); and the surrounding Township of Princeton, with about 16,000. In 2013, the towns were merged into the single Borough of Princeton with 28,000 people, though it seems like a lot more during the schoolyear, and especially on football Saturdays.

Street addresses increase the further east you get from the intersection of New Jersey Route 27 and U.S. Route 206. West of this, 206 is Stockton Street, named for Richard Stockton, signer of the Declaration of Independence (and for whom a University outside Atlantic City is named), and whose home, Morven, is at the intersection. East of it, Route 27 and Nassau Street begin, with 27 continuing northeast toward New Brunswick and Newark. Streets extending from Nassau have their address numbers increase the further they get. The street extending north of it is Bayard Lane, and here, 206 continues north toward Somerville and North Jersey.

Palmer Square is the cultural, if not geographical or street-address, center of town. It forms a U, with the ends at Hulfish Street, with little streets, with a tiger statue in the middle, extending from the bottom of the U to Nassau Street. The Square contains little shops, and eateries large and small, luxury and pedestrian.
The Square was designed by, and named for, zinc fortune holder Edgar Palmer III, who also donated the money for Princeton's former stadium, which he named for his father, Stephen S. Palmer.

The Princeton Packet is a weekly newspaper, with the Trenton papers, The Times and The Trentonian, serving as local daily papers. The sales tax in New Jersey is 7 percent. The Area Code in Princeton is 609, and the ZIP Codes are 08540, 08541 and 08542. Like Rutgers, Princeton has a free campus bus system.

The College of New Jersey was founded by the Presbyterian Church in 1746 in Elizabeth, and was moved to Newark the following year and to Princeton in 1756, at which point Nassau Hall (shown in the photo at the top of this post) was built.

From July to October 1783, Nassau Hall was the U.S. capital building. The Congress of the Confederation met in the 2nd floor library. It was there that Congress received news of the Treaty of Paris, effectively insuring that America knew that Britain had accepted its independence; so that the process that began at Lexington Green outside Boston, and was pushed forward at Independence Hall in Philadelphia, reached its conclusion in Princeton. This was poetic justice, as, in late 1776 until the Battle of Princeton on January 3, 1777, British troops occupied the building.

In 1896, the school was renamed Princeton University. (In 1996, Trenton State College in nearby Ewing was renamed "The College of New Jersey," taking Princeton's former name.) Women were first admitted in 1969. The school's architectural style suggests medieval Europe.

Going In. If you took the bus in, to get to the stadium from Palmer Square, you walk up 3 blocks up Nassau Street (New Jersey Route 27), turn right on Washington Road (County Route 571), walk 3 blocks, then turn left on Ivy Lane, and the stadium will be on your right. This should take about 15 minutes.

If you took the train in, it's a bit more complicated. Turn left on Alexander Road, then left on Faculty Road, a left on Washington Road, and a right on Ivy Lane. This should take about 20 minutes.

The stadium is at Ivy Lane and Roper Way. There are parking lots to the north, across Ivy Lane, and to the southeast, to the east of Jadwin Gym, at Faculty Road and Fitzrandolph Road. Parking costs $10, and, as tailgate parties were allegedly invented in the Ivy League (at Yale in the early days of mass automobile sales, about 100 years ago), Princeton encourages it, so long as everyone shows some Ivy League civility.

Originally built on the site was Palmer Stadium, in 1914. It was a concrete horseshoe that seated 45,750, and by the time I saw my 1st live college football game there, in 1987, it was already falling apart, and I wondered why all those rich Princeton alumni hadn't donated toward a new stadium.

Finally, in 1996, they could wait no longer. Palmer Stadium was closed, demolished, and a new stadium was built on the site. After playing all away games in 1997 -- only a game against Yale at Giants Stadium was even in New Jersey -- the Princeton University Stadium opened in 1998.

Like its predecessor, the stadium is a horseshoe, open at the south. The field runs, more or less, north-to-south, and was real grass upon its opening. In 2006, it was replaced with FieldTurf. It is named Powers Field, after William C. Powers, Class of '79, an All-Ivy League punter who donated $10 million, the largest donation in the athletic department's history, to redo the field.

The stadium is considerably smaller, 27,773 seats, but that's okay, because Ivy League teams rarely sell out these days. Plus, the seats are closer, since there's no track around the field, as there was at Palmer. Rather, a new track facility, Weaver Stadium, was jammed in between the new stadium and Jadwin Gym, at the stadium's open southern end.

Food. You won't get anything more than standard concession stands. Have brunch at a nice little place near Palmer Square. Have a postgame dinner at a nicer place. And then have ice cream at Thomas Sweet.

Team History Displays. It's well-known that Rutgers and Princeton played "the first college football game" on the Rutgers campus in New Brunswick on November 6, 1869, with Rutgers winning 6 goals to 4. What's not as well-known is that they played each other again the next week, with Princeton winning 8-0, and that Rutgers didn't beat Princeton in football again for 69 years, until the dedication game of Rutgers Stadium in 1938.

Various agencies have awarded Princeton National Championships, and have retroactively done so for the game's early days, in 1869, 1870, 1872, 1973, 1874, 1875, 1877, 1878, 1879, 1880, 1881, 1884, 1885, 1886, 1889, 1893, 1894, 1896, 1898, 1899, 1903, 1906, 1911, 1920, 1922, 1933, 1935 and 1950. That's 28 -- but only 1 since the dawn of the Associated Press poll in 1936. (And even then, it wasn't the AP that listed Princeton as National Champions.)

The term "Ivy League" has been in use since 1935, while in 1933, New York Tribune (later New York Herald Tribune) sports editor Stanley Woodward, himself a football player at Amherst (not an Ivy League school, but a rather Ivy-ish one), wrote, "A proportion of our eastern ivy colleges are meeting little fellows another Saturday before plunging into the strife and the turmoil" -- meaning they were playing other, but less football-equipped, Northeastern colleges, and all but one (Cornell) won.

Another myth says that the term "Ivy" comes not from the plants that tended to get planted and grow on some of the school buildings, but from the Roman number IV, since there were originally 4 such schools linked: Harvard, Yale, Princeton, and the 4th one varied, depending on who was telling the story.

The Ivy League for intercollegiate athletics was officially founded in 1954, with those 3, plus Columbia, the University of Pennsylvania, Brown, Dartmouth and Cornell. Princeton has won it 11 times: 1957, 1963 (shared it with Dartmouth), 1964, 1966 (shared with Harvard and Dartmouth), 1969 (shared with Yale and Dartmouth), 1989 (shared with Yale), 1992 (shared with Dartmouth), 1995, 2006 (shared with Yale), 2013 (shared with Harvard) and 2016 (shared with Penn). Flags honoring the team's achievements ring the stadium.

The League title count, through 2016, is as follows: Harvard 17, Penn 17, Dartmouth 17, Yale 15, Princeton 11, Brown 5, Cornell 3 and Columbia 1.

Princeton produced many of the game's leading pioneers, but its greatest player of the 20th Century was Dick Kazmaier, who in 1951 became the last Ivy Leaguer to win the Heisman Trophy, edging out USC star and future Giant legend and sportscaster Frank Gifford. The Chicago Bears drafted him, but he chose instead to go to Harvard Business School. A native of the Toledo area, he enlisted in the U.S Navy, settled in Boston, founded an investment firm and served as director of the American Red Cross. He died in 2013, age 82.
His Number 42 is the only one retired by Princeton football, and a statue of him stands outside the stadium, which he did live to see. Among the guests at its dedication was Princeton's greatest basketball player, Knicks legend and former U.S. Senator from New Jersey, Bill Bradley, who got them to the Final Four in 1965. (Interestingly, while his Number 24 was retired by the Knicks, Bradley also wore 42 at Princeton.)

Kazmaier's daughter, Patty Kazmaier-Sandt, played hockey at Princeton, but died of a rare blood disease in 1990. In 1998, the Patty Kazmaier Memorial Award was established as the NCAA's Heisman Trophy equivalent for women's hockey. No Princeton player has yet won "the Patty Kaz."

Its mens' hockey equivalent is also named for a Princeton player, Hobart "Hobey" Baker, who also played football, enlisted in the U.S. Army during World War I, was killed in a flight training accident after the 1918 Armistice, and never played the pro game. Princeton's hockey facility, Baker Rink, is named for him. 200 Elm Drive.

The award was established in 1981, and the model for it was Steve Christoff of the 1980 U.S. Olympic hockey team. The 1st winner was another member of that team, and a teammate of Christoff's at the University of Minnesota, too: Future New Jersey Devils Stanley Cup winner Neal Broten. He's 1 of 6 Devils to win it, the others being Tom Kurvers in 1984, David Emma in 1991, Scott Pellerin in 1992, Brendan Morrison in 1997 and Mike Mottau in 2000. Other notable winners include Paul Kariya in 1993, Chris Drury in 1998, Ryan Miller in 2001 and Blake Geoffrion in 2010. But no Princeton player has won the Baker, either.

Across from the south end of Princeton Stadium, on the other side of the Weaver Stadium track facility, is their arena, Jadwin Gymnasium. Leander Stockwell Jadwin was captain of the track team, but was killed in a car crash a few weeks after his graduation in 1928. In 1965, his mother gave the University $27 million. The school took $6.5 million of that, and built their new gym, which opened in 1969 -- and looks it, totally incongruous with the classical architecture of most of the campus.
It seats 6,854, and "the Jadwin Jungle" cheering section makes it rival Penn's Palestra as the greatest venue in the League. In the 1970s and '80s, it was the site of the State high school wrestling tournament, before it was moved to Atlantic City, a dumb move given Princeton is a centralized location and Atlantic City is not.
Jadwin replaced Dillon Gymnasium, built in 1947, honoring former Princeton football captain and big-money donor Herbert L. Dillon, and still hosting the wrestling team and both genders' volleyball teams. But it only seats 1,500, so even when Bradley led them to the Final Four in 1964-65 (the schoolyear in which construction on Jadwin began), it was inadequate. Elm Drive.
There's 2 more interesting notes to Princeton's football history. One is the Tigers nickname, inspired by the orange and black color scheme, and first used for a baseball game against Yale in 1867, in honor of the House of Orange, whose family inspired the Nassau name.

Not only did this inspire the adoption of the color scheme by the Detroit baseball team, which was named the Tigers as a result; but every Princeton graduate I've ever met has either a ceramic or a stuffed tiger, often a big one, in his home or his office (or both).
The other is that head coach Herbert Crisler, nicknamed "Fritz" for his name's sounding like that of Austrian composer Friedrich "Fritz" Kreisler, introduced the "winged" helmet design at Princeton in 1935. When he was hired at Michigan in 1938, he took the design with him, and it is identified with Michigan now. But Princeton had it first, and, after dropping it after he left, restored it upon the opening of the new stadium in 1998. They've experimented with both versions, black on orange and orange on black, and will use black on orange this year.
Stuff. This is the Ivy League. There's no team store at the stadium. The Princeton University Store has what you would be looking for -- unless it's books specifically about Princeton football, of which there don't seem to be any in print. 36 University Place, at Edwards Place, a block south of Nassau Street and a 10-minute walk north of the train station.

During the Game. This is the Ivy League. You don't have to worry about obnoxious drunks endangering your safety.

Princeton has a very good band, and they're not stuffed-shirt Ivy League types. Unfortunately, they sometimes take it a little too far, wearing tiger-striped jackets, or orange plaid jackets.

The Tiger mascot has no official name, but, like his Detroit counterpart, he's a good one.

After the Game. Even with small crowds, traffic might be an issue, due to the town being old and the streets not exactly being equipped to handle thousands of football fans in cars. Better to have parked elsewhere and walked in, especially in the Fall, when the leaves are changing, making Princeton one of the loveliest campuses (campii?) in the country.

Sadly, my favorite Princeton restaurant is gone. The Annex, at 128 Nassau Street, was open from 1947, and the 17 short steps (not good for a man with big feet) to their basement dining room meant that you went down to Heaven. The veal marsala was worth looking at all the orange around town. But it was a victim of the Bush Recession, and closed in 2009. The location may now be jinxed: Two replacements, an Italian restaurant named Sotto 128 and The Princeton Sports Bar have both opened and closed since.

But some Princeton icons remain: Tiger Pizza at 110 Nassau, P.J.'s Pancacke House at 154 Nassau, Hoagie Haven at 242 Nassau, George's Roasters & Ribs at 244 Nassau, the Ivy Inn at 248 Nassau, J.J. Winberie's at 1 Palmer Square, the Yankee Doodle Tap Room at the Nassau Inn at 10 Palmer Square East, Mediterra at 29 Hulfish Street (Palmer Square North), La Mezzaluna at 25 Witherspoon Street, Alchemist & Barrister at 28 Witherspoon Street, and Witherspoon Grill at 57 Witherspoon Street (next to one of the best municipal libraries in New Jersey).

Of course, the ultimate go-to place in Princeton, as with Rutgers in New Brunswick, is Thomas Sweet. The original is at 183 Nassau Street.

If you're a European soccer fan, you're probably out of luck. The only place in Princeton I've ever seen put a Premier League game on its TV was the Witherspoon Grill, and it's a bit pricey. An Indian restaurant called The Pind, at 4591 Route 27 in Kingston (Franklin, Somerset County on that side of the road; South Brunswick, Middlesex County on the other side), 3 miles north (officially; actually, it's more east) on 27/Nassau Street from Palmer Square, supposedly shows matches, with a particular attention toward Bayern Munich. German and Indian, together?

Sidelights. Princeton is too small to host minor-league sports. The State capital has baseball's Trenton Thunder at Arm & Hammer Park, 14 miles southwest; and once had hockey's Trenton Titans at what's now the Sun National Bank Center, about a mile closer. Baseball's Somerset Patriots play 19 miles to the north, at TD Bank Ballpark in Bridgewater.

Princeton is about halfway between New York and Philadelphia. It's 43 miles to the Devils' Prudential Center, 46 miles to Red Bull Arena, 50 miles to the Giants' and Jets' MetLife Stadium, 52 miles to the Nets' and Islanders' Barclays Center, 53 miles to the Knicks' and Rangers' Madison Square Garden, 62 miles to Yankee Stadium, and 71 miles to the Mets' Citi Field. It's 48 miles to the sports complex in South Philadelphia, home to the Phillies, Eagles, 76ers and Flyers; and 62 miles to Talen Energy Stadium in Chester, home of the Philadelphia Union.

To its Ivy League rivals: It's 46 miles to Franklin Field and The Palestra, home of the University of Pennsylvania; 62 miles to Columbia's athletic complex, at the northern tip of Manhattan Island; 132 to the New Haven Green and the Yale campus in Connecticut; 221 miles to Cornell University in Ithaca, New York; 232 miles to Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island; 261 miles to Harvard Square and Harvard Yard in Cambridge, Massachusetts; and 316 miles to Dartmouth College in Hanover, New Hampshire. And, while Rutgers not an Ivy League school, it's 21 miles from Nassau Hall in Princeton to Old Queens in New Brunswick.



Morven

Drumthwacket

After George Washington's victory at the Battle of Trenton on December 26, 1776, 12 miles down the road, the Battle of Princeton

Princeton has produced 2 Presidents: James Madison, Class of 1771; and Woodrow Wilson, Class of 1879, who later became the school's President, Governor of New Jersey, and got elected President of the United States in 1912 and 1916. It's also produced one notable failed Presidential nominee of the 20th Century, Adlai Stevenson, Governor of Illinois, Democratic nominee in 1952 and 1956, and U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations; and one First Lady, Michelle Robinson (Obama).

Grover Cleveland was a trustee of the University in the last few years of his life. And Albert Einstein lived the last 22 years of his life at Princeton, while teaching at its Institute for Advanced Study. However, Cleveland's house, Westland, at 15 Hodge Road; Wilson's home, at 72 Library Place; and Einstein's home, at 112 Mercer Street, are all still privately owned, and not available for public tours.

Cleveland -- and disgraced Vice President Aaron Burr, and his father Aaron Sr. who was the University's President -- are buried at Princeton Cemetery. 29 Greenview Avenue.

There's one other Presidential connection. Just after his stunning victory over the Hessians at Trenton on December 26, 1776, George Washington took his Continental Army up the road, and beat the British at Princeton on January 3, 1777. This included routing them from Nassau Hall, where cannonball "scars" can still be seen. The address for Princeton Battlefield State Park is 500 Mercer Road.

Morven, home of Richard Stockton, was the Governor's Mansion from 1956 to 1981 -- serving Robert Meyner (1954-62), Richard Hughes (1962-70), William Cahill (1970-74) and Brendan Byrne (1974-82) -- and is available for tours. 55 Stockton Street.

Further down Route 206, at 354 Stockton Street, and also available for tours (check its website), is the current Governor's Mansion, with the odd name of Drumthwacket. It has served Tom Kean (1982-90), Jim Florio (1990-94), Christine Whitman (1994-2001), Donald DiFrancesco (2001-02), Jim McGreevey (2002-04), Richard Codey (2004-06), Jon Corzine (2006-10) and Chris Christie (2010-18, and he is term-limited out, with Lieutenant Governor with a new Governor Kim Guadagno running against former Ambassador Phil Murphy to replace him in the election, this coming November 7).

Also nearby, about 4 miles down Route 571, past Route 1 and the railroad, is Grover's Mill in West Windsor, the location that Orson Welles chose for the aliens' landing site in his 1938 radio production of H.G. Welles' (no relation, note the spelling) War of the Worlds. It was all made up, and the people there aren't crazy about the connection.)

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A Princeton football game is a nice way to spend a Saturday afternoon in New Jersey, without getting seriously worked up about who wins or loses. I highly recommend it.