M. Hoops fans show entrepreneurial spirit

A few Quakers fans were eventually forced to stop selling their "Romanczuk 3:16" T-shirts and Dunphy heads on a stick. So much for entrepreneurial spirit. Just before the Penn-Princeton game got underway, the students responsible for the production and sale of the popular "Romanczuk 3:16" T-shirts and the "Dunphy-on-a-stick" collectibles were reprimanded by Penn Director of Marketing Bill Richter and forced to stop selling the items. According to the one of the students, who requested anonymity, Richter went as far as to call for security when he saw the unlicensed sale of the memorabilia. Richter said he was only looking to follow NCAA regulations, which prohibit the use of a player or coach's likeness without following strict compliance guidelines. "These are all NCAA rules," Richter said. "You can't take an athlete's name or likeness or any such thing and sell that without complying with a whole host of NCAA guidelines. "Offenses could range from something as serious as eligibility is lost for that particular athlete to being no situation whatsoever." After Richter showed a Dunphy-on-a-stick to its real-life counterpart and got approval from the Penn coach, Richter allowed the group to distribute the sticks free of charge inside the Palestra underneath either basket. The student said that the only intention of the group -- none of whose members are in the Wharton School -- was to foster school spirit and they felt Richter may have overreacted. "I don't know if it was the right reaction to attack us, we were just trying to create some school spirit behind the team," the student said. "Had they got permission, we could have helped them distribute those things," said Richter, who expressed interest in creating a student representative to generate ideas for promotions at Penn sporting events. "You can't just grab someone's likeness or someone's name and expect to commercially turn a profit." The students who made the Dunphy sticks, however, said they actually lost money on the endeavor. The students claim the idea for the Dunphy novelties were in fact the brainchild of small forward Jed Ryan, who wanted to see center Geoff Owens' likeness on a stick. When they decided to take action, though, plans changed. "We were looking through a media guide and we found this picture of Fran Dunphy with a big bushy mustache," one of the students said. "We just decided it had to be Dunphy on a stick." The Romanczuk T-shirts are a takeoff on the popular "Austin 3:16" shirts made for wrestler Steve Austin. "I was watching a Maryland game a couple weeks ago, and I saw they made some 'Francis 3:16' shirts for Steve Francis, so I pretty much stole it from them," the student said. The group of entrepreneurs do not plan to continue selling their gear outside of the Palestra before games, although they do have some T-shirts left. "I think we're going to retire the Dunphys," the student said. "Next year we'll see what happens, [but] I don't think we're going to do anything else this year." Although the Dunphy-on-a-sticks have now become collector's items, the manufacturer said that a bidding frenzy would be pointless. "A price cannot be put on Dunphy's head," he said.

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