IVY ROUNDUP: Ivy journalism sinks to new low; Cornell coaching disgraced again

and Jed Walentas It seems as though some of our Ivy League counterparts are a wee bit sour -- as in sour grapes, that is -- about all the recent Penn dominance. For three long and tormenting years, the deprived faithful of the rest of the Ancient Eight have SAT on their couches and thought, How in the world can we suck this much? Sleepless night after sleepless night, they have laid (or maybe LIED) in bed and wondered, How in the world can we beat those #@*#in' Quakers? Hey Brendan, Michael, and all the rest of you pathetic would-be scribes -- here's a helpful hint from your fine feathered friends. (No, not the St. Joe's Hawks. The Ivy Roundup powers-that-be.) And the hint is?(drumroll, please)?You can't win! The Quakers are big-time! And you, well, how can we put this gently, suck! That message having been sent (and speaking of sending, did you see Ira Bowman send it in right on Columbia guard Chad Brown's head?), we can now speak to all of you -- the Quakers faithful, the Palestra patrons, the West Philly wackos?.That's enough of that -- we went too far. Aw, that's our bad. So you're wondering what's on the docket for today, right? You're ready, willing, and more than able to absorb an unadulterated sense of Ancient Eight hoops action and hardwood heartbreaks. Well, we here at Roundup aim to please, so let's get started. Dropped Ball of the Week For this oh-so-dreaded award, we kind of felt obligated to look at the stellar Brown athletic department. After all, the King of the Dropped Ball makes his home in Providence in the form of Bears quarterback Trevor "guess what I did on Valentine's Day" Yankoff. You remember Trevor, right? He did have quite an impressive number of drops during football season. (Before Coach Whipple yanked him and sent him to the pine, of course). To our surprise, another Bear almost took Yankoff's crown. The moment in question happened in lovely Hanover (just off the lovely Mohawk Trail, you know), N.H., as Bears guard Eric Blackiston came up short. Way short. With Brown trailing 71-70 and four teeny, weeny ticks remaining on the Leede Arena scoreboard, Blackiston had the rock. And then he choked on it. (Read: there was a fumble on the play.) Blackiston was stripped by Dartmouth guard Kenny Mitchell, and the Bears lost the Who-Will-Get-To-Finish-Second-Behind-Penn Bowl. A damn shame, really. Roundup zoologists report the Bears are back in hibernation. Hopefully, they'll come out in time to get beaten down at the Palestra March 3. Exit Stage Left of the Week Ah, the many sights of Ithaca. Snow, snow, snow, snow, snow, and a few cows. Oh, and of course, two of the finest coaches this country has ever seen. In the fall, we here at Roundup were lucky enough to tell you about Big Red football coach Jim Hofher. After voting his own team No. 1 for several consecutive weeks, Hofher led his mighty tundra warriors to a season-ending four-game losing streak. Great job, Jim! It's clear to us at Roundup that you truly are following the footsteps of former Cornell coach George Seifert. But not to be outdone by Hofher's fall antics, Big Red hoops (oxymoron?) coach Al Walker put on a show this weekend. First, he and his pathetic JUCO-led team got beaten down by Cedric "Century Mark" Laster and the Quakers. Second, he failed to beat Princeton the next evening -- in fact, a second-half double technical meant adios, se-or Walker. (That was for the benefit of $, LT, and all rest of you Espa-ol 140 studs out there.) Cornell Daily Sun journalist (oxymoron?) Brendan Sobie (more on se-or Sobie later) told us it was a bad call that set Walker off, but we have two other hypotheses: a) he was just mad because Yoda was outcoaching him, or b) he couldn't wait to get the hell out of that hellhole called Jadwin. Just something to ponder. Journalists of the Week We know what you're thinking, but it's not us. (And if you're wondering, we did feel shunned by the ESPYs on Monday.) Nope, this week's prize goes out to a terrific trifecta of tragic losers -- Brendan, Michael, and Adam. These fine Cornell and Columbia scribes all took time out of their busy days to launch an all-out verbal assault on the Penn athletic program. Unfortunately, Roundup, the sole bastion of truth, honesty, and justice (besides Lance Ito's courtroom and the New York Post, of course) has learned that these Pulitzer candidates didn't quite get their facts straight. Their columns were filled to the brim with fallacies, plain and simple. But we would like to thank these sorry souls for the bulletin board material. We at Roundup can only wonder if they feel personally responsible for last weekend's 30-point thrashings at the hands of the Quakers. That's about all the news we here at Roundup feel can be legally printed without putting ourselves in serious jeopardy of a libel suit. However, we do have one final request -- this one goes out to Temple Coach John Chaney. Since the Quakers will probably never beat you in our lifetime, will you at least be our Valentine?

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