Princeton Tigers Football (Ivy League) @ Powers Field at Princeton Stadium (Princeton, NJ)

A visit to a college football landmark - this time for ”the real thing”

*This trip occurred on November 15, 2025, and there was a GOOD reason I had the time to post about it on the same day as the game. Also, if you haven't seen it yet, every post on this site now has tags! It's part of a bigger update I'm still working on, but I did get one BIG part of it working, so I felt it was good to have them now.

However, I should also mention that this site now has a new URL! The old one still works (I'm FAIRLY sure), but this new one feels a lot more "official". Now, onto today's featured trip:

I’ll be honest: I’m not really into gridiron football for a few reasons:

1. Football games tend to be prohibitively expensive to go to - tickets start quite high for the back of the upper deck, and get rather expensive quickly if you want to get closer to the action.
2. I’ve heard that the actual live viewing experience at a football game isn’t that great - it’s more about the pregame festivities than the actual sport. Part of that is probably the stop-start nature of the game, but also because of the social aspects of tailgating.
3. I didn’t exactly go to a “football school” for college. I went to one of the satellite campuses of Rutgers University, and even if I wanted to travel to Piscataway for football games (assuming they let satellite students in at student prices), I graduated around the time Rutgers decided that being Big Ten fodder was better than being competitive against the likes of the University of South Florida, so it would have been a much more somber atmosphere watching Rutgers get demolished by future mid-tier NFL quarterbacks.

However, in starting this site, I’ve decided to try branching out a bit. For example, I looked into going to Metlife Stadium for one of its (bad) football teams, and while that trip may or may not happen this year, it’s still on my radar (and may even be useful for a thing I want to do next year). However, this trip marks the debut of gridiron football on this blog - and my first “live” football game since my senior year of high school¹. I won’t go over Princeton University as a school again, as I've already done so on this blog. Instead, let’s focus on the football team today.

For starters: as I mentioned back when I visited for soccer, Princeton is one of the two oldest college football programs in the nation (the other one being Rutgers). They were the visitors for the first ever college football game (of any code), and hosted the second game in college football history one week later.

The school lays claim to a whopping 28 national football championships - the most in the United States. However, the NCAA only recognizes them as having 15 - ranking them second in the Ivy League (after Yale’s 18 recognized championships, which leads the country²), and third overall (having recently been passed by Alabama winning their 16th “recognized” National Championship in 2020). The program also doesn’t exactly have the prestige it once did - a large part of that being due to the fact that Princeton is an Ivy League school, and while the Ivies are known for their academics…their athletics have fallen behind a bit (especially in football, where the league is not in the "top" college football division). However, one thing Princeton football is historically famous for: the design of their helmets, which has been copied by schools such as Michigan.

The main thing which made this trip possible: TICKETS ARE FIFTEEN DOLLARS! Sure…it’s technically $20 if purchased online due to fees (which I ended up doing to "control" my seat), but I couldn’t find anything close to that for Rutgers (again, mainly due to their torturers opponents). However, it must be noted that said price applies to every ticket in the stadium - from the back of the upper deck all the way down to the sidelines. Part of this is probably because Princeton isn’t exactly a football powerhouse (the Ivy League being part of the college football division below the big teams like Rutgers), plus attendances are a bit on the “lighter” side (the stadium has over 20,000 seats, but has averaged under 10,000 for a few years). In addition, it's all metal bench seating here, so be aware of that if you're thinking of coming to a game (though I feel like I've heard that metal benches are an improvement on other Ivy League stadiums).

Anyhoo, let's talk about the football stadium. It was built in 1998 on top of the stadium it replaced (which forced Princeton to play an entire season on the road), and is far and away the "newest" stadium in the Ivy League (with the second newest being 1984, and the rest being from before the Great Depression). I think the best way for me to talk about the stadium is from the "ground" (aka the field) up.

There's a full lower bowl surrounding the field, and a main concourse fully encircling it. Similar to the soccer stadium, the field is oriented more or less north-south; this is fairly important, as the south stands were covered and closed during the game. Also on the south side of the main concourse is access to the stands for an outdoor track and field stadium; in fact, the two stadiums share a tunnel (or two - I'm not fully sure), so there is kinda sorta the possibility of accessing the physical field from it when nothing's going on.

On the other three sides of the field (West, North, and East), there's a walkway that encircles the lower bowl; it does not have access to the south stands (which, again, were closed). The main "building" of the stadium rises from the main concourse on these sides as well - it's basically a horseshoe much like...Harvard.

Attached to the sides of the "horseshoe" (read: not the corners) are upper seating areas; however, the north section of upper seats was also closed. There are very small "upper concourses" for these seating areas which appeared to have concession stands, but none of them were open (I should also mention they only had three concession stands open, which I guess makes sense with the limited attendance).

Finally, while the stadium seems to lack any premium areas/suites, it looked like people were watching the game from inside various upper parts of the "horseshoe". I have NO idea how they got in there, as I didn't see any (or even an elevator); this may be because I didn't really try scoping out the building.

This game featured Princeton taking on one of their "main" Ivy League rivals: Yale. While it was a fairly close game (read: probably pretty bad all things considered), Yale ended up going home winners on a late field goal. I must say, however, that the game DID kinda prove the idea that while watching football plays happen in real time is kinda cool (case in point: Princeton got an endzone interception RIGHT IN FRONT OF ME), it's a bit boring to watch between plays, as nothing really goes on that's interesting, and the breaks kinda feel surprisingly long (I timed a media timeout at three minutes, and a between quarter break at five, plus halftime is 20 minutes).

There are two other things I wanna mention before I go (besides the ol' merch sitch):

1. The Princeton Band was small. I don't know if I SHOULD be surprised by that or not, but it was often hard to hear them during the game (and a little bit during their pregame and halftime presentations). However, one thing I will say about them: they are VERY well dressed with the orange (tartan?) blazers and MOST ESPECIALLY the straw boaters.
2. The Fifth Quarter. I couldn't find much information about its history online, but after the game, there's a fifteen minute period where fans are allowed onto the field to do literally whatever they feel like. The players (mainly the Princeton ones for this game) are also on the field during this time - mostly interacting with their families/friends.

MERCH

About a month before this game (in October 2025), I visited one of Princeton's campus stores and saw shirts for three of their biggest rivals: Penn, Harvard, and the aforementioned Yale (because apparently the other four Ivies are far less relevant to Princeton). In terms of other merch, the only thing that I was even remotely interested in for football was a soft foam/plastic mini football (which, in all honesty, I wasn't actually that interested in).

At the game, a merchandise tent greets fans who enter from the northeast gate; since this is the closet gate to the main parking garage, it's likely to be the first thing most fans see. While they had a lot of shirts and such I wasn't super interested in (and they didn't sell jerseys OR mini-helmets, which is a MASSIVE missed opportunity), they had a few more footballs, and I ended up getting one that was closest to the official NCAA size (and color).

I almost bought a small plush tiger as well, but ended up not doing so. It wasn't something I was planning on going home with, but as it turns out, I should have gotten it...