Princeton-Harvard Football: A History in Pictures

1877: Princeton’s 1877 squad was the first to beat Harvard (and the first to lose to the Crimson – the teams played twice that year.) Now entering its 109th game, the Princeton-Harvard series trails only Princeton-Yale on the Tigers’ list of most-played rivalries.

Athletics at Princeton: A History

1921: Seven years after Palmer Stadium’s opening, the Tigers still were winless against the Crimson in their new home. With 50,000 fans looking on, Princeton’s Ralph Gilroy ’23 turned a short pass into a 65-yard touchdown play with five minutes remaining, and the Tigers held on for a 10-3 victory.

Bric-a-Brac

1926: On game day, the Harvard Lampoon stoked the rivalry by rolling out a phony edition of the Harvard Crimson that reported, among other things, the death of Princeton coach Bill Roper. The Tigers won, 12-0, in a game that PAW reporter Hugh McNair Kahler 1904 called “indescribably intense” but cleanly played. Still, bad blood had been building for several years, and in the weeks that followed, Princeton and Harvard announced plans to suspend their series.

PAW Archives

1934: Harvard captain Herman Gundlach and Princeton captain Mose Kalbaugh ’35, right, shook hands at midfield before the game that restored the two schools’ rivalry. The Tigers won, 19-0. Since then, the series has endured just one interruption, from 1943-45 due to World War II.

PAW Archives

1957: Eight days after the death of legendary coach Charlie Caldwell ’25, the Tigers traveled to Cambridge and earned a 28-20 come-from-behind win, a crucial step in Princeton’s first official Ivy League championship. (The league formed in 1956.) Running back Mike Ippolito ’60, above, scored three touchdowns in the game.

The Daily Princetonian Larry Dupraz Digital Archives

1969: Ellis Moore ’70, above, may have been the greatest Crimson killer of his era. He ran for five touchdowns – still a Princeton single-game record – in a 45-6 Princeton rout in 1967 and racked up three more scores in a 51-20 win two years later.

Bob Matthews/PAW Archives

2006: Trailing by four points in the fourth quarter, Jeff Terrell ’07 drove the Tigers 61 yards in eight plays, throwing to Brendan Circle ’08 for the game-winning touchdown. Princeton would finish the year 9-1, win the Big Three championship, and share the Ivy League title with Yale.

Beverly Schaefer

2012: As Kevin Whitaker ’13 wrote in PAW, Princeton’s pregame optimism “was quickly laid to waste” as the Crimson surged to a 20-0 halftime lead. Trailing 34-10 early in the fourth quarter, the Tigers began the most extraordinary comeback in Princeton Stadium’s history, and when Roman Wilson ’14, above, caught a 36-yard touchdown from Quinn Epperly ’15 with 13 seconds left, Princeton sealed a shocking 39-34 victory.

Beverly Schaefer