Announced attendance of 5,000 at this game. Actual attendance? Maybe 2,000, because of the rainy weather which, if you wore rain gear, wasn't all bad. More heavy mist than rain and it actually warmed up to above 60 by game's end, which was 10:15 p.m. Much as I wanted Cornell to win, I also wanted the bleeping game to be over for selfish person reasons like having a 6 am flight out of EWR Saturday. It went on forever.
This was a game neither team wanted to lose - or win, for that matter. It was exciting TV fare, and maybe some smart HS junior football player seeing the broadcast will think better of Cornell than, oh, Lehigh or Harvard or Rutgers.
Either Princeton's secondary isn't very good or Cornell's receiver have gotten pretty good at catching the ball. Although while the receivers were free to catch, they were typically dropped where they caught the ball.
Calling multiple time-outs to ice Princeton's field goal kicker didn't accomplish much at the end of the first half other than convince the Tigers to run a fake field goal and trot in for a TD. Plus it got Princeton in a mood to exchange the favor for us at game's end when we needed a 49-yarder to tie which we did the first time (straight through the uprights), which didn't count because of Princeton's last-moment-possible time-out call, but not the second time, when it went wide right. O, Fortuna.
Is the Big Red Marching band on drugs or what? There were more Cornell band members than Princeton fans, I think, and the band maintained a high energy level before, during, and after the game. Could it just be genuine enthusiasm? Nice to be a Cornellian.
Nice game. Too bad we lost. Fun to watch. Wasn't as bad being there in person as I feared given how heavily it rained during the day.
And Princetonians rag us about lousy weather in Ithaca?
[Edit add] Halftime ceremony honored an Iraq vet, who forgot to duck when an IED when off, and is coming back from severe hand and leg injuries. He got a very strong round of applause from most all the crowd. Couldn't see this happening in the 1960s or early '70s. Iraq war (conflict?) may or may not be dumb, but we've done a good job separating our feelings for the war from the soldier who's doing his job.