Although the 1890s may have been the period of most intense cycling activity, the 1960s saw a dramatic renaissance, with Princeton winning five consecutive National Intercollegiate Championships between 1961 and 1966. Among the Leading riders on these championship teams were Leif Thorne Thompson '65, Mikk Hinnov '66, and three-time Olympian John Allis '65.
In 1976 Princeton cyclists departed from one long-held tradition when they admitted women to the team.
Frank J. Quinn
Dick Swann
Big Three was the name given Harvard, Yale, and Princeton in the days when they settled ``between them,'' as the New York Times once put it, ``the question of primacy in football,'' and overwhelmed their other opponents in the process. At a time when games were ninety minutes long, as against today's sixty minutes, and schedules were also somewhat longer, Princeton rolled up a season's score of 637 to 25 in 1885; Harvard dominated by a record margin of 765 to 41 in 1886; and Yale shut out everybody, 698 to 0, in 1888. Huge totals like these reflected single-game landslides over smaller colleges (e.g., Yale 142, Wesleyan 0; Princeton 140, Lafayette 0; Harvard 102, Amherst 0), but they included substantial victories over colleges of approximately equal size (e.g., Princeton 82, Rutgers 53 0; Harvard 77, Cornell 0; Yale 64 Michigan 0).
These scores were made before football had spread to the West and the South, with the help of Big Three football stars who went out in the 1890s and early 1900s to coach at such colleges as Chicago, Wisconsin, Iowa, Minnesota, Purdue, California, Stanford, North Carolina, Virginia, and Vanderbilt. There were many from Princeton and even more from Yale -- eight members of Yale's famous 1888 team became coaches.
The Big Three dominated football for half a century, until 1919. Princeton football historian Donald Grant Herring '07 said that November 1 of that year marked ``the beginning of the end'' of their reign. That was the Saturday that previously unheralded West Virginia beat a very good Princeton team 25 to 0. The decline was further evidenced in 1921 when Centre College of Kentucky, whose student body numbered 264, upset Harvard 6 to 0, and again in 1922 when the University of Iowa, playing its first intersectional game, defeated Yale 6 to 0.
Although originally drawn together by their mutual interests, the Big Three have had their differences among themselves. The only unbroken football relationship among them is the one between Princeton and Yale, which dates from 1873. Harvard and Yale, who first played each other in 1875, sustained a two-year break in the 1890s when Harvard dropped Yale from its schedule. The Harvard-Princeton series, which began in 1877, was interrupted on Harvard's initiative for almost all of the two decades from 1890 through 1910, and on Princeton's from 1926 through 1933; both interruptions began during periods of especially intense rivalry when feelings ran high, and there were charges and countercharges of.excessive zeal on and off the field. But these football breaks did not preclude friendly gestures in other areas. Soon after the 1926 break, Arthur Sachs (Harvard 1901) made a handsome gift to Princeton and Harvard to support the publication of Art Studies (which was jointly edited by their art departments), wishing thus, he said, to stress Harvard and Princeton's friendly relations in terms of cooperative scholarship at a time when their ``desirable'' relations in athletics had become ``overemphasized.''
As early as 1916, the Big Three had attempted to counteract this ``overemphasis.'' That year, in an effort to keep ``the spirit and the associations of professionalism out of college sports,'' the presidents of the three universities adopted a statement of principles setting common standards for athletic eligibility both as to scholastic standing and financial aid. A supplementary agreement, adopted in 1922, reduced the length of football schedules and outlawed spring practice and postseason games. Except for the years of the last Harvard-Princeton break, when there were dual agreements between Yale and Harvard and Yale and Princeton, the Harvard-Yale-Princeton agreement continued in effect until 1945, when the three universities entered into a similar arrangement with the other members of what became the Ivy League.
Over the years the Big Three concept spread to other sports, from baseball to wrestling, and even after the organization of the Ivy League, retained some of its original influence. In 150-pound rowing, Harvard, Yale, and Princeton crews have since 1922 annually competed for the Goldthwait Cup, and there have been special Big Three meets in cross-country. With coeducation, the Big Three idea has taken hold in a number of women's sports, including field hockey, whose Princeton adherents proudly celebrated their third successive Big Three championship in 1975.