I think it meant "fiasco" for Princeton specifically and not in general - they had him ready to accept a immediately full-tenure position which they didn't offer and later he went on to solve the Poincaré Conjecture. Sure, one can say that they couldn't have known the future but considering the Soul Conjecture is described as an extraordinarily difficult problem that he solved in a short 4-page paper, they could have tried harder. Anyway, granted, hindsight is 20/20.