The Prince's response

 

The DP and the Daily Princetonian have a tradition of exchanging columns the day of the first Penn-Princeton men's basketball game.  This year I wrote one for the DP, but unfortunately the editors at the Prince had forgotten.  However, they have now responded with their own column.

I thought in the interest of fun -- and since we at the Daily Pennsylvanian have a legitimate blog on which we can do it, unlike the Daily Princetonian -- I'll respond to selections from their column in the style of former baseball blog, Fire Joe Morgan.

Read along after the jump (as a nod to our esteemed colleagues in New Jersey, all text from their column is in orange).

To the sports editors of The Daily Pennsylvanian:

You're supposed to italicize the names of publications.

The sports editors at The Daily Princetonian sincerely apologize.

Again, it should read "The Daily Princetonian."

It is customary for our papers to exchange columns on the eve of the first Penn-Princeton basketball game of the season, and Tuesday we were unable to keep that tradition alive. Please accept our deepest regrets.

But when we politely said we did not have room in Tuesday’s paper for your rants on the one sport that your university still holds dear, we were not lying. Had we told you that your basketball team’s 74-63 loss to Columbia was impressive, we would have been lying.

Just to clarify, Columbia is second in the league standings right now.

No, we had a national title for women’s squash and an undefeated season for swimming and diving to cover, and that makes for a busy day for a sports page, doesn’t it?

Hmmm, interesting. The women's team won the Howe Cup -- which is the equivalent of the national championship in women's squash, though squash is not officially sanctioned by the NCAA -- on Sunday. So I don't understand why the Prince had to cover it on Tuesday instead of Monday. We at the DP always cover matches the next day, especially big events.

Similarly, men's swimming finished their season on Friday. So why no coverage in Monday's paper?

In addition, why I can understand not putting in our column, it should be noted that The Prince failed to even write a preview of the Penn-Princeton game. I guess their policy is to not cover events in a timely manner. (Disclaimer: I did not read Tuesday's print edition, just looked at the website. So if they failed to upload a story, but did print one, then I'm wrong).

We would not expect you to empathize of course — your current managerial board has not had to deal with such an issue — but if you are curious, just ask the Pennsylvanian editors from 1986. They covered Penn’s last NCAA title — in women’s fencing, in case you were curious. They might understand.

Again, for clarification, women's squash is not an NCAA sport, so don't think you won any NCAA titles this past weekend.

You claim we don’t care about tradition, but pick a sport and have our athletic tradition go 12 rounds with yours. We win championships; you throw toast. You disagree?

Wrestling.

Penn has 60 first-team All-Ivy selections, 61 EIWA champions, 23 All-Americans and 5 NCAA champions in its 103+ years of existence. It also has the nation's oldest booster club for a collegiate wrestling team.

Princeton is too ashamed of its wrestling tradition to even have a page dedicated to its history or media guide on the athletic department's website. (On the Ivy League's official website I did find out that Penn has won 11 Ivy titles to Princeton's 10, but the Tigers haven't won it since 1985-86.) Also, Princeton last beat Penn in 1991.

(We can call men's basketball a toss up even though Penn dominates the series record.)

Travel up to Princeton the next time your men’s hockey team battles our 12-player coed club team, and we can discuss it in further detail.

This is the Mid Atlantic, not New England, the Upper Midwest or Canada. We don't play hockey.

But instead of trash talking, we are taking the high road. We are apologizing and congratulating you for squeaking out an ugly overtime victory against our Tigers last night.

Thanks, though to be honest after beating you guys for the fifth straight time/8th out of 9/13th out of 15 it is getting a little boring.

After years of Penn playing Roy Horn to Princeton’s Tigers,

Are you implying Penn:Princeton::owner:animal? (Oh and I got an 800 on the SAT verbals if you want to make a joke about my analogies skills.)

If you're talking about when the Tiger mauled Roy, first off shame on you for making fun of a gruesome injury. But secondly, to which years are you referring?  Certainly not recent ones (see above). Certainly not in the past (Penn's all-time record against Princeton is 122-97).

it’s nice to finally share the wealth (pun intended).

Read this please. Also see my comment later re: "please stop with the tax evasion" etc...

Princeton went up 11 points early, and then it left the door open wide enough for Ben Franklin and his pet turkey to waddle through.

I could make a back door joke but I won't.

Penn couldn’t hold its nine-point second-half lead,

Just like you couldn't hold your 11-point lead.

but the Quakers did outscore the Tigers in a sloppy overtime period. Congrats. Drink a Highball to this victory, you’ve earned it.

After watching your boring offense we do deserve a drink.

In your column Tuesday, you snidely called Jadwin Gymnasium a “Space Mountain,” an allusion to the aesthetically unpleasing indoor Disney World rollercoaster. We love the analogy. For 40 years, opposing Ivy League teams have been coming to “Space Mountain,” and, more often than not, the results are the same: They enter wide-eyed and excited, spend their time here getting uncomfortably pushed around and stagger home nauseated and defeated.

Except for Penn. Overall Princeton leads the series 55-53 at home, but Penn leads 22-16 since Jadwin opened. (By comparison, Penn's home record overall is 61-23, and 45-12 in the Palestra).

Plus, I loved Space Mountain in Orlando. I definitely didn't feel defeated after I left it.  In fact, it was a very easy and enjoyable ride.

Last night was not one of those nights, but it did feature stomach-churning inconsistency and unnerving carelessness from both teams. Your website last night called the game an “overtime thriller.” This begs the question: Did you watch the same game we did?

"Begs the question" Really?  Plus, just because a game is sloppily played doesn't mean it isn't exciting.

Also, please stop with the tax-evasion, silver-spoon and trust-fund jabs: They are as played out as they are unoriginal. After all, do you see a safety-school joke anywhere in this column?

Right there?  But seriously, I'm all for getting rid of all of these stupid cliched jokes -- thanks for no Oatmeal references. But if you don't want us to use these jokes, then why did you say you wanted to share the wealth as noted above?  Come on!

And if Bill Bradley ’65 is fat, as you claim, consider him the fattest man in history who was an NCAA Player of the Year, who was twice named an All-American, who was a presidential candidate, who was a captain for a gold-medal Olympic team, who was a Rhodes Scholar, who was a congressman for 18 years, who was a Truman Award winner, who was an NBA champion, who was the subject of a Pulitzer Prize-winning biography, who was a distinguished Eagle Scout, who was a champion of impoverished children, who was named to basketball’s Hall of Fame. The fattest thing about Bradley is his resume.

Listen, I said "Bill Bradley is fat." I didn't say "Bill Bradley was fat." So his playing days aren't relevant. But come on, you can't look at this photo and not tell me he is fat?

You write that we at Princeton have a lot to be embarrassed about, but we just don’t understand why. Did you mean our constant appearances in Time’s list of “Strongest College Sports Teams?”

My column was about the basketball team, not every Princeton sport. So yes you made that list (although I think you mean Sports Illustrated and not Time). However, Penn's basketball program ranked 34th in ESPN's most prestigious schools since the tournament expanded to 64 teams in 1984-85. Princeton did make the list. At No. 40.

Or the popular basketball offense named after our institution?

BO-RING BO-RING. I'd rather have Glen Miller's nameless offense rather than your precious one that scores less than 49 points multiple times a season (three so far this year).

Or how about the fact that Princeton’s football team has more national championships than any other program in the nation?

Listen, you guys played in the first college football game ever. That's impressive, not going to lie. But just because you beat Rutgers and nobody else in a given year doesn't mean you really can claim to be "national champions." All self-respecting football fans know that legitimate national championships don't start till 1936 when the poll system was introduced. Since then Princeton has a whopping zero national championships.

As for Penn, we also have zero legitimate national championships. But that doesn't mean we don't have a good tradition. In fact, Also, Penn's 1897 team that went 15-0, and won the national championship, has the second best record of any college football team ever. Again, that's not really a "legitimate" national championship, but that's still an impressive record.  By comparison, Princeton's most wins in a season is 13, though seven of those victories were against schools that no longer have football teams.  Also, Penn beat Princeton, 6-4, that year. Finally, even though Princeton started playing football seven years before Penn, we still have more wins, as our 792 wins are 10th all-time. Princeton, at 781, is not in the top 10.

But in conclusion, thanks a lot for writing a column, editors. (Though next time you might want to double check some of your facts.)

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