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Roger Hughes, the Charles W. Caldwell Jr. ’25 Head Coach of Football at Princeton University, has put together one of the great two-year stretches in the last 50 years of Princeton football, capping it with a season for the ages. An Eddie Robinson Award finalist for Division I-AA Coach of the Year in 2006, Hughes led a Princeton squad that was picked to finish sixth in the preseason media poll to a 9-1 record and the 2006 Ivy League title. The nine wins was the most at Princeton since 1964 and the league title was the first for the Orange and Black in more than a decade.
Hughes, who has improved Princeton’s winning percentage in six of the last seven seasons and is the only coach in the history of Ivy League football to improve a team by at least two wins in three straight seasons, guided Princeton to the 2006 title despite starting an entirely new offensive line and linebacking corps. His offense finished first in the Ivies in both passing yards and total yards, and his senior quarterback, Jeff Terrell, became Princeton’s first Bushnell Cup winner (Ivy League Player of the Year) since 1995. Terrell is only the second Princeton quarterback to win the award; the other is longtime NFL quarterback and current Dallas Cowboys offensive coordinator Jason Garrett.
Princeton rallied to win five games it trailed in the second half, four games it trailed in the fourth quarter and two games it trailed in the final five minutes. The highlight win of the season was a 34-31 win at Yale, when Princeton rallied from a trio of 14-point deficits and threw for 446 yards in a thriller. That win clinched Princeton’s first bonfire in 12 years, a tradition for any team that sweeps Harvard and Yale in the same season.
That championship run followed a brilliant 2005 season, when the Tigers earned their first seven-win campaign since 1995. Outside of the 2003 season, when four starters, three of whom were All-Ivy picks and eventually invited to NFL mini-camps, were lost for the season, Princeton has won 29 of its last 42 games.
Under Hughes, 24 Tigers have earned first-team All-Ivy honors, and several others have been named to either the second team or earned honorable mention. His highest number came in 2005, when 10 Princeton players earned All-Ivy honors. He also had a pair of All-Americas in Jay McCareins, a Buck Buchanan finalist for Defensive Player of the Year, and Colin McDonough.
He has also had significant success helping his players move to the next level; within one month after the 2006 NFL Draft, four members of the Class of 2006 (Ben Brielmaier, Jon Dekker, Jay McCareins and Justin Stull) had signed with NFL teams. One season earlier, three departing seniors were invited to mini-camps, and Zak Keasey would eventually sign and play for the Washington Redskins. 2006 Bushnell Cup winner Jeff Terrell signed with the Kansas City Chiefs within hours of the past NFL Draft.
Hughes was named head coach at Princeton in January 2000, and he took a team starting 10 freshmen and sophomores to a 3-7 record in his first season. Along the way Princeton improved its Ivy League record by two games, to 3-4, and defeated a pair of 7-3 teams, Brown and Yale. Hughes coached three players in his first season at Princeton who signed NFL contracts, including one, Ross Tucker, who started for the Dallas Cowboys in 2002 and the Buffalo Bills in each of the last three seasons.
Hughes came to Princeton after nearly a decade as offensive coordinator at Dartmouth, where he led an offense that propelled the Big Green to a 22-game winning streak and two Ivy League championships in 1992 and 1996, with the 1996 squad going undefeated. While at Dartmouth, he helped develop Jay Fiedler into an NFL quarterback.
He began his coaching career at Doane as he started his graduate work at Nebraska the following year. He then moved to Lincoln as a graduate assistant, helping the Cornhuskers to the 1984 Sugar Bowl and the 1985 Fiesta Bowl while working on his doctorate. He continued his career at Doane again, as offensive coordinator in 1987, and he earned his Ph.D. in exercise physiology from Nebraska in 1987.
His career then took him to the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater, where as running backs coach he helped his team to a conference championship and a berth in the NCAA Division III quarterfinals. His next stop was Cameron University in Lawton, Okla., where he spent three years as offensive coordinator and strength and conditioning coach. While at Cameron he also worked with the quarterbacks and the offensive line before leaving in 1992 to join John Lyons’ staff at Dartmouth.
Hughes is a product of the football-mad state of Nebraska, where he grew up in tiny Crawford, population 1,115. A three-sport athlete at Crawford High School, Hughes attended Nebraska Western Junior College on a basketball scholarship. He left after one year to attend Doane College in Crete, Neb., where he played football as a tight end and golf before graduating in 1982.
Hughes, 46, is married to the former Laura Van Werden, a certified public accountant. The couple has a daughter, Maddison, age 10.
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