The Red and The Blue

Friday, the fifteenth of May, marked the forty-eighth anniversary of my graduation from the University of Pennsylvania (Penn) with a Bachelor of Economics Degree.  I am sure I received a wonderful education while I was there and I am proud to be forever associated as an alumnus with a world-class institution of higher learning.

However, as we Americans know, the college experience can be more than just studying.  And besides the partying, there is also college sports.  I have been a fan of Penn Quaker teams (currently numbering sixteen men’s and fifteen women’s) in a variety of sports since even before my matriculation there in August of 1963.  Obviously, since Penn was one of more than 100 colleges that had football teams in the 1950s, I was aware it existed, but I didn’t know too much about it.  That all changed on November 5, 1955, when the Penn-Notre Dame football game was televised into our living room on East Oneida Street in Oswego, New York.

My brother, Paul (HAPPY BIRTHDAY), and I would spend the next few hours glued to our black and white TV to watch the five win, one loss Fighting Irish as they visited historic Franklin Field to play the struggling Quakers who were looking for their first victory since 1953.  I remember Lindsay Nelson in his plaid sports jacket describe the action on the field.  Typically, my brother and I would each choose a team during the weekly televised college football contest to make it a kind of personal competition.  I usually picked the wrong team.  This time, I couldn’t lose.  As Paul was an applicant to the following year’s freshman class at Penn, he dutifully chose the Quakers.  I got Notre Dame by default.  What a break! 

However, what  a start!  Notre Dame’s Paul Hornung kicked off to Penn to begin the game.  Frank Riepl, a sophomore, playing in his first varsity game, took the kick 8 yards deep in his own end zone, but, rather than take a touchback, he ran it back all the way to the opposite end zone to give the Quakers the lead, 7-0.  The football Gods were against me.  I could never seem to beat my older brother.  In the second quarter, Penn lead 14-7 before a home crowd of over 45,000 fans and a national television audience.  However, the Fighting Irish tied the score before the half and went on to a resounding 46-14 victory.  It was the last time in my life I ever rooted against the Red and the Blue.  (Ironically, the following Saturday, the Fighting Irish travelled to Chapel Hill to play the North Carolina Tar Heels, the University I worked at for 5 years beginning in 2008.)

When my brother went to Penn as a freshman the following fall (1956), I became a Penn fan.  On November 27, 1958, I (along with my family) attended my first Penn athletic contest, the annual Thanksgiving Day football game against Cornell at Franklin Field.  Penn lost 19-7, but I wasn’t a fair weather fan.  Let’s go, Quakers.  Fight on, Pennsylvania.  Hoorah for the Red and the Blue.

Five years later, I entered Penn as a freshman.  I felt it was the right school for me.  It was located in a big city (Philadelphia) and offered a very diverse curriculum.  And there was a major college sports program.  My first football game at Franklin Field as a student was on October 5, 1963 against Dartmouth.  We lost 28-0.  We didn’t even score a point.  How humiliating!  However, four weeks later (November 2, 1963), I returned and the Quakers pulled off a minor miracle by defeating top-rated Harvard, 7-2, on a muddy field, aided by a very good punter (Bruce Molloy) who kept the Crimson pinned in their own end of the field.  That was the sole highlight of the1963 season.  There were no football highlights in 1964. 

On January 25, 1964, I attended my first Penn basketball game, against cross-town rival, Villanova University.  It was my first time inside the fabulous Palestra, home at the time of Big Five basketball.  Penn, Villanova, Temple, St. Joseph’s, and LaSalle all played their home games there, on the Penn campus.  To accomodate so many teams, there were almost always double-headers (including one with a bomb scare).  Two games for the price of one.  It was like the way movies used to be.  Unfortunately, my first experience at the Palestra wasn’t so great either.  The Quakers lost, 72-48.  However, two years later on March 1, 1966, Penn, led by seniors Jeff Newman and Stan Pawlak, beat Princeton 56-48 at the Palestra on its last game of the season to win the Ivy League men’s basketball championship. 

While watching four years of Penn basketball, I also got to see (three times) the great Princeton star, Bill Bradley, Class of 1965.  Once, the legendary NBA star, Wilt Chamberlain, showed up to see Bradley play as well.  What a buzz there was in the crowd when Wilt sat in the first row under one of the baskets.  I also got to see, whom I consider the greatest college player I ever saw live, Dave Bing of Syracuse University play against LaSalle.  When I was growing up in Oswego, I didn’t even know that Syracuse had a basketball team until he showed up in 1962.

By the time of my graduation from Penn in 1967, I had enjoyed few memorable moments watching the Red and the Blue at Franklin Field.  I had to wait for that as an alumnus.  On October 26, 1968, after losing to arch-rival Princeton for eight consecutive years, I attended a homecoming game and saw Coach Bob Odell’s Quakers win their fifth in a row while finally defeating  the Tigers, 19-14.  Odell, a member of the Penn class of 1944, was a football star who won the coveted Maxwell Award as a senior. 

Four years later, on November 25, 1972, I along with about 40,000 Penn fans entered Franklin Field to see if (under Coach Harry Gamble) we could win our first Ivy League football championship since 1959 (my brother’s senior year).  Penn took an early 14-0 lead, but Dartmouth scored twice in the final three minutes of the first half to tie the score.  It was still tied at 17 late in the fourth quarter.  However, Dartmouth scored two touchdowns again in the final three minutes of the second half for a 31-17 victory.  My first Penn Ivy League football championship would have to wait another ten years.  Ironically, one of the Dartmouth Assistant Coaches that day, Jerry Berndt, would become the Penn Head Football coach that would win that championship.

On November 13, 1982, I was back at Franklin Field along with about 35,000 others to see Penn fight it out with Harvard for the Ivy League title.  It turned out to be one of the most exciting football games I have ever witnessed in person.  Penn dominated the first fifty minutes of the game.  They entered the Red Zone (inside Harvard’s twenty yard line) six times, scoring two touchdowns, two field goals, but failing to score twice.  The Penn defense had utterly stifled the Crimson offense.  The score stood 20-0.

Then the tables turned.  Harvard rallied and scored three consecutive touchdowns in the next nine minutes to take a 21-20 lead.  However, fantastically the tables turned once more.  With only a minute left, Penn marched down the field and attempted a game winning thirty-eight yard field goal on the final play of the game.  The kick was no good.  Harvard wins 21-20?  No!  There was a penalty on the play.  Harvard was guilty of roughing the Penn kicker (Dave Shulman).  With no time left on the clock (a game cannot end on a penalty on the defense), Penn got one more chance to kick a game winning field goal, now from twenty-seven yards away, and this time it was good.  Incredibly Penn won, 23-21, to win its first Ivy League football title in 23 years.  It was a great day to be a Penn fan and I was there.