Cold comfort indeed for Tiger fans and players alike who, having just suffered through the first loss to Fordham in Princeton history, were looking ahead to a meeting with Ivy League favorite Brown just seven days later. Dripping with sweat, his uniform stained by mud, blood, and grass, defensive end Dan Swingos '99 sat in the post-game interview room wearing an expression that said he would gladly play another game -- right then and there -- if only for the opportunity to hit somebody.

The team captain was blunt about the on-again off-again performance of both the offense and defense in the first three weeks of the year. "We will not win another game this season if both sides don't come out and play," he said. "We're not good enough. If both sides come out and play, we can win the rest of our games."

On an afternoon when the defensive line limited Fordham to 20 yards net rushing and sacked quarterback Steve O'Hare 10 times, Princeton had still, inexplicably, managed to lose. "As far as I could see, we dominated them up front," said Swingos. "I'm baffled right now."

What happened was that O'Hare, despite the relentless Princeton rush, found his receivers often enough to pile up 253 yards passing on just 16 completions. Still, things looked bright well into the second half. Princeton's defensive secondary played nearly three full quarters without giving up a big play, and a nine-yard touchdown pass from quarterback John Burnham '99 to wide receiver Danny Brian '00 and a 27-yard field goal by Alex Sierk '99 had given Princeton a 10-0 lead.

But with 17 seconds remaining in the third, the dam burst. On second down and nine, Fordham wide receiver Gerry McDermott lined up on the right side, took a short pass from O'Hare at the left hash mark, and skipped into the left corner of the end zone behind a crunching downfield block. Princeton punted the ball away on its next possession, and three plays later, O'Hare found McDermott behind the Princeton coverage for a 54-yard gain to the Tiger goal line. Fordham punched it in on the next play, and suddenly led the game 14-10.

The Tigers faced a third-and-10 on their next possession when a defensive holding call gave them new life at the Fordham 22. Three straight carries by senior tailback Nathan McGlothlin put the Tigers on the Fordham eight, setting up a go-ahead touchdown pass from Burnham to senior wide receiver Ryan Crowley.

Fordham took possession on its own 21 with 5:04 remaining in the contest, and once again the battered O'Hare bettered the Tiger secondary. With passes of eight, 38, and 15 yards, he set up a game-tying 42-yard field goal by freshman Brian Colsant.

The final Princeton possession was the second biggest mystery of the contest. With 1:31 on the clock, a proven field-goal kicker on the bench, and a dismal 0-3 all-time record in overtime, the Tiger coaching staff didn't even try to put Sierk in a position to win the game. Instead, the Tigers ran out the clock on three plays and headed into OT.

The biggest mystery of the afternoon was the Tigers' overtime possession. Colsant had put Fordham ahead 20-17 with a 38-yard field goal. A failed running play and a false-start penalty had Princeton facing second and 15 at the Fordham 29 when Burnham found wide receiver Ray Canole '99 for a nine-yard gain. Then, with two downs remaining and Sierk warming up on the sidelines, Burnham dropped back to pass. Tosches later said that the play was supposed to be a rush up the middle, which would have given Sierk a straight-on look at the goal posts. Instead, it wound up being a short pass to the left flat, which was picked off to end the game. "We made a mistake at the line of scrimmage," Tosches said. "And that kind of typifies the whole day."

It would have been better for the Tigers' psyche to have played Lehigh and Fordham in reverse. In the loss to the Mountain Hawks on September 26, also in overtime, it was the Tigers who came back to tie the game in the final minutes, and despite the loss, the locker room mood was much less funereal. "I'm proud of our offense," Tosches said in the training room after the game. "They made some big plays. They could have made more, but they made some big plays."

With a Homecoming Weekend crowd packing Lehigh's Goodman Stadium, Princeton fell behind 14-0 in the second quarter. But Burnham found Brian for a 12-yard TD with 7:46 remaining in the half, and after a third Lehigh touchdown made it 21-7, Sierk drilled a 36-yarder to send Princeton into the locker room trailing by 11.

The Tigers' defense began to tighten in the second half, holding Lehigh to a single field goal three minutes into the third quarter. Then, with 2:22 remaining in the third, junior free safety Ryan Demler picked off a pass and returned it 14 yards to give Princeton the ball at its own 39. Three plays later, Burnham connected with junior Phil Wendler for a 30-yard pass to get the Tigers to the Lehigh 28. Six straight McGlothlin carries put the ball on the Lehigh three, and Burnham found Wendler again, this time in the end zone, to bring the Tigers within seven points.

The Tiger defense made two big stops in the fourth quarter, and a 27-yard punt return by Crowley gave Princeton the ball on the Lehigh 36 with 5:59 to play. Burnham gained 11 on a keeper, and then it was all McGlothlin. The 6'2" 230-pounder from Virginia carried on five plays in a row, and the fifth took him over the line for the touchdown. Sierk's PAT tied the score with 2:23 remaining.

Lehigh threatened again in the final seconds, but junior cornerback Gerry Giurato intercepted a pass on the goal line with 22 seconds on the clock, sending the contest into overtime.

As they had been in the past, and would be in the near future, the Tigers were disappointing in overtime. Lehigh scored when quarterback Phil Stambaugh eluded the Princeton rush and scrambled 20 yards for a touchdown. On the Tigers' possession, Burnham was forced into a fourth-down desperation pass that was intercepted in the end zone, foreshadowing the ending of the Fordham game a week later.

-- Rob Garver

Back in business?
Ivy Leaguers in the NFL

This may come as a shock to fans forced to endure Princeton's uninspired opener against Cornell, but the people who are paid to evaluate college talent seem to believe the quality of play in the Ivy League is rising. This past spring, three Ivy players were chosen in the first six rounds of the NFL draft -- the best result since 1975. And while there may not be a Calvin Hill (Yale, 1969) representing Ivy football in the pros today, the number of Ivy players on NFL rosters is undeniably on the upswing.

Most people know about Jason Garrett '89, who, due to an injury to Troy Aikman, holds arguably the highest profile job in pro sports: quarterback for the Dallas Cowboys. Yet there are seven other Ivy players on active NFL rosters, not including Mitch Marrow of Penn -- the ex-Ivy player with the greatest potential -- who suffered a season-ending injury. Should anything happen to Marshall Faulk, the Colts' starting backfield would be Keith Elias '94 and Yale's Chris Hetherington. The media has noticed the growing number of Ivy players in the NFL, and The Wall Street Journal even ran a feature story on the subject in its Weekend section.

This recent publicity is a change for the Ivy League, which in recent years had grown accustomed to seeing its players disappear from football after graduation. In fact, the two best-known figures around the NFL with Ivy League connections weren't players at all. Chris Berman, the dean of football on ESPN, went to Brown, and George Seifert managed to recover from his 3-15 stint as the head coach of Cornell in 1975-76 to win a pair of Superbowls with the 49ers. When it came to players, however, the NFL was largely uninterested. Perhaps it was talent, but there also was the suspicion among NFL coaches that when the going got tough, Ivy leaguers would sneak off to Wall Street.

Garrett's story ought to belie that reputation. Despite an outstanding career at Princeton, where he set the Division I-AA record for completion percentage, no team drafted Garrett in 1989. His subsequent path to the Cowboys is a study in determination. He spent the first two years of his professional career in football's minor leagues -- a purgatory from which few players emerge -- first on the New Orleans Saints' developmental squad, and then in the World and Canadian Football leagues. Garrett finally cracked the Dallas roster in 1993, and while he has had several moments of glory (including a brilliant performance in 1994 against Green Bay in the playoffs, for which he won NFL Player of the Week), he spent most of his career on the inactive list until he finally earned the backup job this past summer.

For ex-Ivy players like Garrett in the NFL, the next big hurdle is credibility. Listening to ESPN, you'd think Jason Garrett's real surname is "from Princeton." Ivy leaguers are still curiosities in a league dominated by players from big conferences like the PAC-10. Yet most professional teams do scout the smaller conferences, hoping to discover the next Jerry Rice (who graduated from Mississippi Valley State). And some of those teams now include the Ivy League. The New England Patriots, for example, take the league seriously enough to send scouts to several games, and in training camp this summer they took a hard look at an undrafted free agent from Harvard named Jeff Compas.

The unanswered question is whether the NFL is just looking harder for talent in the league, or if the talent level is actually rising. The answer may be a little bit of both. Ivy schools are not oblivious to the link between poor play and falling attendance -- and it's undeniable that the crowds are shrinking. As the Journal pointed out in its article, attendance at the Harvard-Yale football game is off 42 percent over the past decade. Last season, the heavily advertised Princeton-Yale game in the Meadowlands drew a mere 7,731 spectators -- fewer fans than the University of Nebraska sometimes draws for spring practices.

No Ivy team wants to rely on opening a new stadium to draw a capacity crowd, and that's not just because of the home-field advantage. Smaller crowds mean less revenue to pay for the prohibitively expensive football programs, which is one reason the universities have sought out corporate sponsorships and advertising. This year the Penn-Columbia game will take place in Philadelphia on First Union Community Day -- the same First Union whose advertisement adorns the back of the Princeton program. There may be another link between crowds and revenue. Many universities believe there is a connection between football and annual giving: that happy, football-going alumni are more likely to donate money to their university.

Yet advertisers and alumni will only go to games in large numbers if the product is decent, and the product ultimately depends on the players. Perhaps because they realize this link, several Ivy administrations recently seem to have granted their coaches more leeway to seek out talent. Yale, for example, which had suffered several losing seasons, jumped into the transfer pool last year with both feet. The move paid immediate dividends as Rashad Bartholomew, who transfered from the Air Force Academy over the summer, helped the Elis upset Brown during the first week of the season. "I guess we're dealing with the 'new' Yale," Brown's head coach, Phil Estes, bitterly said. "Now they can get transfers in."

If those players raise the quality of play in the league, then fans will enjoy more entertaining games on Saturdays in the fall -- and may even have a few more alumni to root for on Sundays. But better players often come with a price. Penn forfeited five games last season because Marrow played in those games despite not taking the minimum number of courses required to remain eligible. Perhaps it was an innocent mistake, but it may also have been a warning. Like it or not, the Ivy League is changing.

-- Wes Tooke '98

Women's volleyball seeks 11th league title

As usual, the women's volleyball team has plenty reason to believe that the Ivy championship is something akin to a birthright -- but if the Tigers pull off their 11th league title, it will be in a very different style than in recent years.

The three Ivy championship teams of the past four years relied on the big guns of the remarkable class of '98, which garnered nine all-Ivy selections. In their absence, whatever this year's version of the women's volleyball team (4-6 overall, 0-0 Ivy) lacks in firepower, it hopes to make up in sheer determination. "This year's team has great chemistry and a lot of heart," says setter Melissa Ford '00.

Now in his 16th season, head coach Glenn Nelson always grooms his teams to focus on defense and ball control, and this year's squad, despite struggling to reach .500, is playing classic Princeton volleyball.

"I can't fault the effort on this team. We're making plays on defense that no one has ever made before," Nelson says. "But on offense we're just not putting balls away."

With an even mix of veteran experience and wide-eyed rookie naiveté, the Tigers return three starters, including all-Ivy outside Rose Kuhn '99, who has been the Tigers' most consistent hitter.

At the other outside spot, Sabrina King '01 provides a crafty, if less powerful, complement to Kuhn, while Emily Brown '01 and Alexis Collins '02 comprise a brand-new middle attack now that Erika Hansen '00 has moved to the right side. And for the third season in a row, all six starters think the East Coast begins on the other side of California's Interstate 5.

With the liberal inclusion of defensive specialists Somer Bingham '01 and Martha Moore '02, Princeton has been passing nails and baffling opposing hitters, but even with repeated swings for points and solid setting from Ford, the front row has had trouble ending crucial rallies.

"It's different from last year," says Ford. "There's not as much pure athletic talent. Last year's seniors had the big hits, and now we just have to take on their role."

Thus far, a few unexpected losses have dampened some of the Tigers' high spirits. But slow starts have plagued Tiger volleyball even in championship seasons, and a strong 2-2 showing at the September 26 Delaware Tournament -- in which the Tigers bounced back from a rough 3-2 loss to the host Blue Hens squad by defeating a strong Bucknell team, 15-9, 15-13, 6-15, 6-15, 15-10 -- suggests that they will be plenty prepared for their Ivy foes.

"It's going to be a battle," says Ford.

-- Josh Stephens '97

Born to run

Men's cross-country entered the season with the goal of bettering last year's 17th place finish at Nationals, and so far that goal seems realistic. The Tigers opened at home against a mediocre La Salle team (right) and cruised to an easy victory despite resting two of their top three runners. On October 3, the team traveled to Lehigh for the Paul Short Invitational, where it faced stiffer competition, including national powerhouses Michigan and Michigan State. The Tigers took fifth, and appeared ready to defend their Heps title -- and its accompanying automatic bid to Nationals.

paw@princeton.edu