Princeton QB Named Ivy League Offensive Player Of The Year

PRINCETON, NJ — Princeton University senior quarterback Chad Kanoff has been named the Ivy League’s Offensive Player of the Year, the conference announced on Monday.

Kanoff is the third Tiger to be named Offensive Player of the Year in the past five years, joining Quinn Epperly (2013) and John Lovett (2017). He is the fifth Tiger to earn Player of the Year since the award was divided into Offensive and Defensive in 2011. Kanoff is the 11th Princeton athlete to receive the Bushnell Cup.

Kanoff led the Ivy League's top offense, breaking the all-time single-season passing record with 3,474 yards. The previous mark was 3,412, set in 2011 by Cornell's Jeff Mathews.

He also broke the Ivy League single-season completion percentage of 73.2, breaking the mark held by current Dallas Cowboys head coach and former Princeton Bushnell Cup winner Jason Garrett.

Kanoff’s 284 completions this season is now the single-season record for Princeton. It is also the third best in Ivy League history. He also set the Tigers record with 29 passing touchdowns, matching the second-most in a single season in Ivy history. He also tied the Ivy League record with three 400-yard passing games and eight 300-yard passing games in a single season.

Princeton was 5-5 overall this year, and 2-5 in conference play. The Tigers finished seventh out of eight teams, making Kanoff the eighth Bushnell Cup winner to come from a team that finished in the bottom half of the Ivy League standings.

The others were Dartmouth's Folarin Orimolade (2016), Cornell's Jeff Mathews (2011), Dartmouth's Nick Schwieger (2010), Cornell's Derrick Harmon (1983), Columbia's John Witkowski (1982), Doug Jackson (1975) and Princeton's Walt Snickenberger(1974).

Off the field, Kanoff — who nearly went to Vanderbilt before deciding to bring his talents to the Ivy League — is part of the team chapter for Uplifting Athletes which works to raise money for rare diseases, specifically aplastic anemia. That disease impacted former Tiger Jordan Culbreath.

Kanoff was selected to present his Junior Thesis, "Cyber Warfare: A Call to Arms for the Intelligence Community," at the CIA in Langley, Va.

Yale senior linebacker Matthew Oplinger was named the Ivy League’s Defensive Player of the Year. Kanoff and Oplinger were announced as the Ivy League's 2017 Football Players of the Year and Asa S. Bushnell Cup recipients in front of a capacity crowd in the Mercury Ballroom of the New York Hilton Midtown.

They were selected as Bushnell Cup finalists, along with Brown senior linebacker Richard Jarvis, Penn junior linebacker Nick Miller and senior wide receiver Justin Watson, in a vote by the League's eight head coaches.

Patch file photo