COLUMN: DeRosa and Quakers show improvement

From Luke DeCock's "A Front Row View," Fall '95 Saturday, Brown's Mark Whipple was the one praising Penn -- effusively -- and it was Bagnoli who began his press conference with a humorous anecdote and a smile. Here, too, was Mark DeRosa. Not the Mark DeRosa of previous post-mortems this season, not the one staring at the floor and shaking his head and muttering about how he had to stop throwing the ball into crowds and how he had to cut back on the interceptions. Saturday, DeRosa smiled and stood with his head held high, his only two incompletions off the improbable hands of Miles Macik. College football, especially in the Ivy League, is like the old cliche about Philadelphia weather. If you don't like it, wait a minute, and it'll change. And change it did. It had to rank as one of the more improbable turnarounds of recent Penn football history. Fresh off last week's humiliation at the hands of the Tribe, the Quakers beat the Bears almost be fore Brown had gotten off the bus. Halfway through the first quarter, the game was over: 21 points in less than 7 1/2 minutes. Had the game continued at that pace, Penn would have won 168-0. Needless to say, it would have been an Ivy record. Still, the Quakers were but a point off the Ivy record of 59 points, shared by two teams -- one of them being Brown last year against Columbia. Not a bad performance against a team expected by most accounts to finish in the top half of the league. Not bloody likely now --- Brown lies at 0-3 in the Ivies, a promising season receiving last rites on the soggy Franklin Field turf. So, having ended the streak that followed The Streak, one looks to the future. Columbia and Princeton play each other next week; obviously, the Ivy title chase will become much more coherent when that's decided, but let us look for a moment at the possibilities. If Columbia wins, the Ivy title pretty much lies in their hands. Undefeated in the league with three to play, one of which is the Brown squad that was so unimpressive Saturday, the Lions would be in a very envious position. In the more likely event of a Princeton victory, the Quakers-Tigers game at Franklin Field the next week would effectively be the Ivy title game, assuming the Quakers are able to handle Harvard, Yale and a disappointing but always feisty Cornell team. Which of course brings back memories of 1993, and Keith Elias, the slippery hands of Joel Foote, Terrance Stokes rushing for 272 yards, students with their chests painted in the frigid November air and when it was still a novelty to toss goal posts into the Schuylkill. Saturday's Penn victory has set in motion a chain of events that will likely reach its climax at Franklin Field on Nov. 4. Could we, as college football fans, be so lucky? The bandwagon rolls on.