COLUMN: Rivalry goes only one way

From Eric Goldstein's "Upon Further Review," Fall '95 No. 1 -- Some member of the Princeton football program will embarrass himself by badmouthing Penn and then losing to the Quakers. (See Keith Elias and Steve Tosches.) No. 2 -- No one outside Cambridge or New Haven will care who wins The Game -- the annual Harvard-Yale fiasco. (See the bottom of the Ivy League standings.) And No. 3 -- The Penn-Princeton game will determine the Ivy championship. (See 1993, 1994 and 1995.) Two years ago, the Quakers shut down NFL running-back-to-be Keith Elias and rode the shirttails of tailback Terrance Stokes's 272 rushing yards en route to a 30-14 victory. The Franklin Field Homecoming crowd stormed the field and tore down the goal posts in celebration of the championship-deciding win. One year later, Penn traveled to Princeton's Palmer Stadium in the midst of a dogfight with Cornell for the Ivy crown. After trading punches for over 20 minutes, Quakers cornerback Kevin Allen scooped up a blocked Princeton extra-point attempt halfway through the second quarter and raced 84 yards for two points. The run-back energized the Penn fans in the stands. The Quakers went on to roll off 24 unanswered points, winning the contest 33-19 and clinching a share of the Ivy crown. The numerous Penn fans, who had made the trip up I-95 and nearly matched the home crowd in numbers, flooded the field even before the game ended and congregated at the goal posts. With the final horn, the Quakers fans began rocking the posts as a few agile students climbed their way atop the crossbar. But as the posts began to sway, the Princeton players, in full pads, pushed their way through the crowd and stood guard at the foot of the posts. The enthusiasm from the Penn side of the stands is obvious. While the Dartmouth, Bucknell and Brown home games this year managed to draw only slightly more than 10,000 to Franklin Field, Saturday's contest is expected to bring almost 40,000 fans, including many alumni, to West Philly. The 87th edition of Penn-Princeton will again have serious championship implications. And because of the title ramifications, Penn die-hards can continue hiding their dirty little secret. Contrary to what Quakers boosters have been hyping for years, many Princeton fans could care less about beating Penn, other than from a standings viewpoint. The so-called Penn-Princeton rivalry is a one-way street. While Quakers fans revel in beating Princeton just to beat Princeton, Tigers fans view Penn-Princeton as just another Ivy League game. The fact is the Tigers historically have been too entrenched in the storied Big Three -- the triangular rivalry among Harvard, Yale and Princeton -- to worry themselves with Penn. While Quakers fans have made it a century-old tradition to bash the Tigers, only recently have Princeton students bothered to reciprocate our enthusiasm. It has only been in recent years, with Penn and Princeton fighting for Ivy League supremacy, that the supposed rivalry has blossomed. Slowly but surely, Tigers fans have been drawn into the Penn-Princeton hoopla. "We still have some older alumni that make a big thing out of the Big Three," Princeton coach Steve Tosches said. "But I think we look at the Big Three now as Penn, Dartmouth and Princeton, just because of the last five to six years." Of course, a five-year-old rivalry is something of an oxymoron. One of these days, either Penn or Princeton will creep back toward to Harvard's side of the standings. And when that happens, will "The Rivalry" continue? Unfortunately, to the Tigers, Penn-Princeton is special only because of the competitiveness of the series. But competitiveness alone does not constitute a rivalry. Much the same way Penn students detest Princeton, Cornell students detest Penn. Last year's Quakers-Big Red contest provided enough negative quotes to fill a Deion Sanders rap video. "It's no secret we don't like each other very much," Cornell linebacker John Vitullo said last year. Prior to the game, Big Red wideout Ron Mateo, who sat out the game with an injury, called Penn cornerback Jamie Daniels a "bum." There were also allegations from the Quakers bench that certain Big Red players were using racial slurs on the field. The bad feelings and theatrical antics of the players made for a great game -- one of the best in recent Penn history. "That's what rivalries are about," Cornell coach Jim Hofher said. "I don't know if the opponent considers it a rivalry, but we consider it one." Of course, most Penn fans do not think of Cornell as a rival, per se. But with 101 meetings between the two schools maybe we should. It all comes back to the issue of competitiveness. Simply put, Penn-Princeton is a more important game year in and year out. And simply put, Cornell has not been a serious factor since Ed Marinaro was a Heisman runner-up and not a star of Sisters. Then again, it really is easy to hate Princeton, isn't it?