COLUMN BY RACHEL CYTRON: Penn sloppiness will help it in future big games

Sure the Quakers came uncomfortably close to losing to Fordham – an 0-4 team which on paper did not belong on the same field as the 3-0 Quakers and in reality was the first team in 13 years to get shut out by Columbia. A team which came into the game ranked dead last in all of Division I-AA in offense. A team which scored only 11 points in its first three games. But Saturday's game has as much to do with building towards a championship season as defeating defending-champion Dartmouth in the season opener or stampeding Bucknell two Saturdays ago. A championship team must beat the good teams and demolish most of the weak teams. But a game such as Saturday's can also be extremely valuable because a team must also realize that it is not unbeatable. Take it from Penn junior running back Terrance Stokes who after the game said, "I think mentally this game really helped us a lot, because we know that we are not invincible now." That was painfully obvious to the 10,529 shocked fans at Franklin Field. Ten penalties for 91 yards, a called-back touchdown, four missed field goals, four Penn fumbles – one returned for a touchdown. Even the easy things came hard on Saturday. An illegal procedure call on the point-after kick, another illegal procedure call, – and even worse another one – and then the point after kick from the 25-yard line. Maybe Penn realized it wasn't unbeatable early in the game when a fumble by Stokes set up a Fordham field goal and the Quakers were trailing for the first time all season. Or towards the end of the third quarter when Penn was down by 16. Maybe it was then when the Quakers realized that beating a team like Fordham isn't automatic. A Stokes run can lead to a fumble. A Penn interception can be almost instantaneously be followed by a fumble. Getting the ball inside the Glockner zone doesn't mean an automatic field goal, getting it into Horowitz's range doesn't mean an automatic three points either. Hey, even the point-after isn't automatic. So how can all this be positive? A team, especially an undefeated team, has to know that it is possible to lose. If it doesn't then all these mishaps just seem unreal – as unreal as the 30-14 Fordham lead. And the sad fact that the Ram lead was real. Coaches can talk forever about how a team shouldn't take its opponent lightly. But until a game like Saturday happens, who really believes it? Who really believes that this season's Penn squad could fall way behind and come close to losing to the likes of Fordham which had scored 11 points all season? But the best thing about this near upset is that you can bet it won't happen again. You can bet that when the Quakers play the beatable, laughable teams of the Ivy League, they'll remember the Fordham game. And if a play goes awry against Brown or Yale or Columbia they'll realize that a performance like Saturday's happened once and they'll make sure it doesn't happen again. And this was a greater lesson for the Quakers than a blowout victory would have been. Don't buy any of this? Think a team must always feel it's invincible? Consider another reason why Saturday's game will make the Quakers a better team in the long run. It was one hell of a gut-check. Because while much of that game may have seemed unreal, the Quakers woke up to reality and came back. Big time. A championship-caliber team makes plays such as Jamie Daniels's fourth-quarter interception to set up a 30-yard touchdown run by Stokes. A championship team makes defensive plays like Sheldon Philip-Guide's diving interception at Penn's10-yard line as he wrestled the seemingly complete pass away from the Fordham receiver. And Andy Berlin's tackle forcing the fumble recovered by Dave Betten late in the game. And going 3 for 3 in fourth-down conversions, including a surprise pass to seldom-utilized Matt Tonelli. It takes a game with do-or-die plays such as these to build confidence – the kind of gut-check confidence that doesn't come when you slaughter a lame team. So if later in the season when it really matters (read: Ivy League games) and the Quakers find themselves down to a real team, they'll know they can come back. Because they've done it before. And they'll know that they are beatable. Because it almost happened. Rachel Cytron is a College senior from Mountain Lakes, N.J., and Sports Editor of the Daily Pennsylvanian.

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