Perfect day for PU football
By: Bob Nuse
Every football team begins each season with the same goal to win every game they play.
Princeton University has been playing football since the sport’s inception in 1869. And seven times since 1922, Princeton has achieved this goal.
The Tigers begin a new season on Saturday at Lehigh, hoping to be the eighth PU team and first since 1964 to record a perfect season.
On Wednesday, several of the great players from those glory teams at Princeton gathered at the Nassau Club. Cosmo Iacavazzi, captain of the undefeated 1964 team was there. So was Joe Zawadsky from the perfect team of 1950. Sally Lane, widow of Art Lane, the captain of the 1933 undefeated team was on hand, as was Ann Fries, daughter of Gil Lea, who is one of two living members of the great 1933 Princeton team.
The featured guest was Jack Bales, the other of those two living members of the undefeated 1933 team. That team not only went undefeated, it was nearly perfect. In the first seven games of the 1933 season, Princeton did not allow a point. It wasn’t until a 26-6 win over Rutgers in the eighth game of the season that an opponent managed to score on Princeton. And in the season finale, Yale managed two points as the Tigers won, 27-2.
They gathered at the Nassau Club to pay tribute to Bales on Wednesday. There was a letter from Dick Kazmaier, who was unable to attend. Bales’ son, John, a member of the PU Class of 1962, spoke and told wonderful stories about the Jack Bales who was not a football player.
His son told stories of his father sailing 700 miles with a friend down the Missouri and Mississippi Rivers. And of how he worked a summer on a ranch in Wyoming developing the body that would become a football player at Princeton.
Bales, of course, was modest about all the praise.
"The older I get, the better I was," he said.
But Bales was quite a player, and student, for the Tigers. He graduated magna cum laude with a degree in psychology. As a junior, he played offense and defense and was in on 65 percent of the plays as he earned honorable mention All-America honors. In 1933, when PU enjoyed that perfect season, Bales missed all but four of the games due to injury.
Even with the injury, he was part of one of the greatest PU teams to take the field. On Saturday, the current group of Tigers will begin the season looking to become one of those teams that lives forever in PU lore.
There are questions and holes to fill on the current Tiger team, but there is also optimism. Maybe this will be the team that becomes the first since that 1964 team to go through a season undefeated. The 1995 team came close, finishing 8-1-1. The 1965 team came even closer, going 8-1 with only a loss to Dartmouth in the final game keeping that team from joining the immortal ranks.
This year begins like so many others for the Tigers, with boundless optimism. Jack Bales will be there to watch this team play, just as he has so many other times since graduating in 1934. And just like those other seasons, this one will begin with thoughts of perfection.