October 29, 2014
Question of the Week: “What was most memorable for you about Princeton’s perfect 1964 football season?” (Asked of team members as the 1964 champs were honored at Saturday’s Harvard game)
“I lettered as junior that season, thanks to somebody on our team. On Fridays, we would practice in sweatshirts with no helmets. Somebody pulled the wrong way while we were running plays and banged into our Left Tackle Ernie Pascrell, who was all bruised and bleeding and messed up and unable to play that weekend against Brown. So I played all four quarters and that added up for enough for me to earn a letter. And I guess after that no Princeton team ever warmed up again without wearing helmets.” —Jim Stoops
“When we went up to Dartmouth, I had three field goals, all of pretty good length, and that was kind of a breakthrough for me personally. It’s nice to go and win up at Dartmouth regardless, but that game seemed important for me. The other was winning the Ivy title up at Yale when Cosmo ran up into the end zone. On the way back we stopped at some steakhouse in Connecticut, and ordered possibly one of the biggest meals that I’ve ever had. It was a good time.”—Charlie Gogolak
“It was the Yale game for a variety of reasons. First and foremost it was the game that won the championship up at the Yale bowl in front of 73,000 people. They were undefeated, we were undefeated. They had a great fullback Chuck Mercein, who was their captain. So it was kind of a mano-on-mano thing, just all the makings were there for a great game between two great teams. I had one of my best games. It was the game of the season for us.” —Cosmo Iacavazzi
“The most memorable for me was scoring the only touchdown of the game up at Colgate. Yale was memorable for all of us. It was at the Yale bowl, and we just put it to them. I remember the kickoff. I was on the kickoff team and I was racing down and made the tackle. And I remember looking over and seeing we had them starting on the 8 yard line. I had some interceptions and some fumbles that I caused. They had a big fullback I went head to head with the whole game and I kept thinking this couldn’t keep going, someone is gonna cave. And, they caved.” —Stas Maliszewski
“Well, I guess there were two things. We played the first ever Princeton game in Hanover. We traveled up there for the third game of the season. We’d been having trouble with Dartmouth in recent seasons, but we went up there and thrashed them 37-7. And the only game I remember really well was because we were 8-0 and fighting to stay undefeated and we played Cornell here. We got out to an early lead, I think 14-0 at halftime, and by the end of the third quarter it was 14-12, so we were in a dogfight. We got a field goal from our All-American kicker Charlie Gogolak with about five minutes to go. Then we intercepted a pass with about three minutes to go. It was a great feeling. We all got to walk off that field as an undefeated Princeton team, kind of a treasure really for Princeton football.”—Ron Landeck