So our obvious rivals are Harvard and Yale, the other two of the HYP tradition. Standing at number two and number three on the U.S. News and World Report college rankings, they're our targets for everything academic and athletic. We travel in frenzied hoards to the football stadium in orange and black and go insane. We even organize buses to go to the away games. Last year, we managed to bring 500 people to Yale and rushed the field when we kicked Yale's derriere. And we had a bonfire to commemorate our glorious victory over both of them, the first bonfire in 12 years, burning away effigies of Handsome Dan and John Harvard.
But it's a long-distance relationship for us to maintain. Traveling to Yale is a minimum of three hours, and traveling to Harvard is at least four. It's a 6 a.m. wakeup call and a 9 p.m. return to school. And this year the Harvard game was the weekend before midterm week! It's amazing how many people actually go to these away games; it must be all the hype.
Doesn't it seem that Princeton is like a third wheel in this equation? Harvard and Yale have a pretty established rivalry, meeting up every year to play in "The Game." Meanwhile, all the way off in New Jersey, we want to get in on this too. I mean, do they even put on face paint for us? Rivalries don't usually exist between three schools, only two. You know what happens when you Google "triple rivalry"? John Cena versus Triple H, the WWE wrestlers.
What about the whole HYP triumvirate, the acronym buzzing around the Mid-Atlantic and New England in teenagers' minds? That's pretty old school. That was way back in the day in the 19th century when Harvard, Yale and Princeton were the only good schools in America (commonly referenced as "The Big Three") and every established upper-class family sent a son to one of them. In the early 20th century, they even had some formalized agreements about athletics, establishing such a rivalry that has lasted until this day.
Today, they still stand as the top three, but our rivalries don't exactly resemble an equilateral triangle. Harvard and Yale are only an hour apart, and they have a much more intense rivalry going, evidenced by the "We Suck" prank Yale pulled on Harvard at The Game in 2004. I'm not exactly sure why they put up with us; it's not so much about being adversaries as much as it feels good to beat the number-one school in academics at some big school sport. I'm feeling our rivalry tradition is lost and is just plain weak.
So I'm suggesting a new school rivalry. We can definitely have a rivalry with another school that doesn't average above a 2300 on the SAT. Who's it going to be? Rutgers is the closest university with a football team, and they tried to start something up a year or two ago by vandalizing our campus, but we never play them anyway. Plus, the general consensus, if it had to concede Harvard and Yale, would definitely go for a higher-ranked school. I say the University of Pennsylvania.
Don't chant "safety school" just yet, it's actually a worthy adversary. Penn's ranked fifth. They're another Ivy League, they're only an hour and half away by train and they're pretty much humping our leg for a rivalry. They have an inferiority complex because of us and they're begging us for attention. "Puck Frinceton" T-shirts are commonplace on Penn's campus. They already believe a real rivalry exists (it doesn't), and they are ready to fight. Plus, we've already got a heated rivalry with them in men's basketball, but not much more than that.
I don't want to suggest that we should engage in this rivalry just to indulge them, but it's a more feasible option. Trying to stay in with Harvard and Yale is foolish — I mean, in their eyes, who's their number one rival? For Harvard, it's Yale, and for Yale, it's Harvard. We don't even have a significant other, and yet we're digging a threesome. So let's settle down — let's return the love, and let's go kill Penn at football, basketball and everything else.
And, by the way, the Princeton-Penn men's basketball game is February 12th. Ben Chen is a mechanical and aerospace engineering major from Los Altos, Calif. He can be reached at bc@princeton.edu.
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