There were two huge stories this weekend in Ivy football outside of Penn’s title-clinching game. I briefly mentioned both of them in my Ivy football recaps story but here’s some more analysis and links to other schools’ newspapers.

The biggest story was that Princeton fired coach Roger Hughes. The Daily Princetonian has an article detailing the firing, which took place less than 24 hours after the team had won its season finale. (Be sure to take a look at the comments.)

Choicest quote from the article: “It was surprising how early [the announcement] was, but it’s nice because if you’re going to do it, do it early,” [sophomore quarterback Tommy] Wornham said.

Last year the only Ivy coaching change was Jack Siedlecki, who announced his retirement as Yale coach the day before Thanksgiving. Yale would eventually replace him with Tom Williams in early January.

Ironically, Williams was responsible for the second big story of the weekend. Coaching in The Game for the first time, Williams took a play out of Bill Belichick’s playbook. But just like the New England Patriots coach two Sundays ago against the Colts, a big fourth-down gamble failed miserably.

Leading 10-7, Williams elected to use a fake punt on fourth and 22. It was stopped seven yards short and Harvard would score the go-ahead touchdown on the next possession, eventually winning, 14-10.

Here are the recaps from The Crimson and The Yale Daily News. The comments to the YDN article were pretty vicious, including my favorite: “In the same vein as the ‘68 Crimson headline, ‘Harvard Wins 29-29′, how about the Daily running, ‘Williams loses to Harvard 10-14′?”

However, I tried to find a column from either newspaper attacking/lauding/lamenting/questioning Williams’ decision, but couldn’t find anything. The Crimson did have this notebook, but no real opinionated column. Considering the YDN had an entire page dedicated to The Game, you’d think they’d have more than one story on the actual contest. It appears not. (Forgive me if I missed one somehow.)

The decision to go for it even got national attention. Sports Illustrated columnist Peter King wrote about it, though he disagrees with my Belichik comparison. From section 10, bullet point h of his Monday Morning Quarterback column (he apparently doesn’t know how to use bullet points correctly):

h. Don’t even compare the Yale coach’s call — running a fake punt while up 10-7, under three minutes to go against Harvard, fourth-and-22 at his own 25, best punter in the Ivy League back to punt, no timeouts left for Harvard, Yale defense having controlled the day, runner stopped short of the first down at the Yale 40 — to Bill Belichick’s. Not applicable. Belichick had a fourth-and-2 with Tom Brady on his side, not wanting to punt the ball so Manning could have two minutes to make him regret it. The call by Tom Williams made Belichick look like a Bill Walsh/Albert Einstein combo platter. I don’t want to make this a scar-kids-for-life moment, because it shouldn’t. But imagine those kids at Yale, walking off a football field for the last time in their lives, thinking, “This is my last memory in football? My coach going for it idiotically on fourth-and-22, causing us to lose to our arch-rivals?”

In response to King’s comments, the football humor site (that has NSFW language and occassionally photos) Kissing Suzy Kolber said “Jesus, [Williams] really did that? What a moron.”

Tags: Football, Ivy League, Roger Hughes, The Game, Tom Williams

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