I'm sure it would be quite the cliche to call Penn-Princeton a great rivalry. But it would become a little less of a rivalry if the opposing team ceases to exist.
The Princeton sprint football team announced Tuesday that, due to injuries it sustained Friday in a 60-7 loss at Penn, it would forfeit its upcoming game against Army. With too few players remaining to field a viable roster, the Tigers decided that it would be better to take the week off and prepare younger players for next weekend's matchup against Cornell.
Princeton's program has been sputtering for some time now, and this latest rash of injuries has only served to emphasize a preexisting problem - numbers.
"At this point, the numbers are getting lower than are needed to maintain a successful football team," said Lon Johnson, a senior wide receiver for the Tigers.
Princeton, one of seven original members of the Eastern 150-pound Football League in 1934, is one of just five teams remaining in the sport today. Despite the forfeit and its underlying implications, the team is committed to doing what it can to carry on with its season.
"We're definitely not concerned with the program's future right now," Johnson said. "We're just trying to get over this one bad week that we're having right now. We're very serious about not having to miss another game."
Senior quarterback Alex Kandabarow, deemed the Tigers' best player by Penn coach Bill Wagner, broke his arm against the Quakers and will miss the remainder of the year. He sees the low numbers as a threat that has "always" existed.
But Wagner identifies more obstacles to the continued well-being of Princeton's program, among them limitations set by the administration.
According to him, a desire to curtail the proportion of athletes in the school's small student body (4,600 undergraduates) has led administrators to move against the minor program. For example, players are only allowed to cut 1.5 pounds per day to meet the 172-pound weight limit, a measure that doesn't exist at other schools.
"I mean, come on, guys are losing three to five pounds just practicing in our league," Wagner said. "No one is trying to hurt anybody, but don't dismantle something that's been working for 75 years because of the restraints of Princeton's academic people complaining that there are too many athletes in the freshman class."
Princeton's academic year starts later than its competitors', leaving it less time to enlist walk-ons - its lifeblood.
Wagner said that the program's alumni network "will step up and prevent the lightweight program from just rotting away and disappearing." But the writing is on the wall and action must be taken if the sport is to survive at Princeton. Just ask Kandabarow, Johnson, Wagner, or anyone involved.
"There are things you learn on the sprint football field that you definitely can't learn in the classroom, or a social club, or a fraternity," Kandabarow said. "I definitely think it's something worth going out of your way to preserve."
Ilario Huober is a senior International Relations major from Syracuse, N.Y., and is former Sports Editor of The Daily Pennsylvanian. His e-mail address is ihuober@sas.upenn.edu.
