Princeton University Athletics
Monday TigerBlog - Princeton's Heisman Winner
December 15, 2025 | Tiger Blog
The one this past weekend didn't disappoint at all. Navy came back to win it 17-16 on a game that could have easily gone the other way if a handful of bounces had bounced differently.
Navy also scored the game-winning touchdown on a fourth-and-goal from the 8 with 6:42 left and Army ahead 16-10. Would you have taken the sure three points? TB is a big believer in being bold, and that was definitely the time for it.
The play before that TD saw Navy fumble, Army recover, Navy strip the ball and Navy recover. It wasn't exactly the same play the Eagles had last Monday night against the Chargers, with an interception followed by a fumble followed by another fumble, for three turnovers on one play.
As TB watched that, by the way, all he could think of was how glad he was that he didn't have to be the scorer for the night. Sorting all that out was going to be a problem.
The first time Princeton ever used computer stats was in the mid-1990s in Palmer Stadium. At one point in the game, there was a pass completed to the one yard line, a fumble that was picked up by the defense and then another fumble that rolled into the end zone, where a Princeton offensive lineman fell on it for a TD.
The entire stat crew — of which one, Doug Gildenberg, still works football and basketball games to this day — sort of looked at each other and laughed.
The other biggest news of the college football weekend was the Heisman Trophy announcement, which unsurprisingly went to Indiana quarterback Fernando Mendoza. With that win, Indiana is now tied with Princeton for Heisman winners, with one each.
Princeton's winner was Dick Kazmaier, back in the 1951 season, the team's second straight perfect season. Kazmaier, who passed away in 2013 at the age of 82, was one of the great gentlemen TB has ever met.
As the years go by, fewer and fewer people know who he was and what he accomplished, at Princeton and beyond.
He came to Princeton from Maumee, Ohio, in 1948 after being a five-sport star in his hometown. He started out at Princeton as the fifth-string back on the freshman team, an undersized 155-pounder who didn't figure to be able to stand up to the pounding of head coach Charlie Caldwell's single-wing offense.
Instead, he thrived in it as a duel passing/running threat. As a sophomore he led the team in rushing as the Tigers went 6-3 while winning their final four games.
Princeton then went 9-0 and finished ranked sixth nationally in 1950. With only Kazmaier back on offense in 1951, Princeton nevertheless went 9-0 and ended up sixth again in 1951.
Among the highlights of his senior year was his 15 for 17 passing performance against Cornell in a 53-15 win. When the season was over, he was the overwhelming winner for the Heisman Trophy, with 506 first-place votes and 1,777 points, easily outdistancing runner-up Hank Lauricella of Tennessee, who had 45 first-place votes and 424 points.
The rest of the top 10 that year included future Pro Football Hall of Fame members Ollie Matson of San Francisco and Hugh McElhenny of Washington, who would share the NFL Rookie of the Year Award in 1952.
Kazmaier famously passed on an opportunity to play in the NFL, choosing instead to go to Harvard Business School before spending three years in the Navy and embarking on a long, successful career in business and philanthropy.
He was also one of the two athletes whose No. 42 jersey was retired, across all Princeton teams, along with Bill Bradley. That picture is from the retirement ceremony, with the author John McPhee (Kazmaier's roommate at Princeton), Bradley and Kazmaier.
The young guy is Greg Seaman, a men's lacrosse player in the Class of 2009 who is the last Princeton athlete ever to wear the No. 42.
There aren't too many people around Jadwin Gym who can still vouch for what a great person Kazmaier was. TigerBlog is one of them.
In fact, TB also would guess that the hundreds of people who walk by the two statues in front of Jadwin don't realize that one of them is Kazmaier, immortalized the way he should be, in a way that would have embarrassed him.
Next time you walk past, give him a nod and a high-five. Or get your picture taken with him.
There have been too many greater Princetonians than Dick Kazmaier.
