Second half borders on absurd for Football

The Penn and Brown football teams scored 10 straight touchdowns in Saturday's 109 point offensive showcase. PROVIDENCE, RI. -- Call it a track meet, a horse race, ridiculous, incredible, electrifying or mortifying. It doesn't matter, because there is no way to aptly describe what took place during the second half at Brown Stadium on Saturday. Brown's last second 58-51 victory on Saturday was unlike any Ivy League game played before. The closest thing to the 109 points scored Saturday was a 1982 defensive struggle between Dartmouth and Columbia which ended with the Big Green on top 56-41. Not counting a fumbled kickoff by Brown with 11 minutes left in the game, a touchdown was scored on the teams' final ten possessions. If the game had gone into overtime -- as it appeared it would when Penn tied the game with 44 seconds left -- the scoreboard operators would have run out of room. Another sign of the day? Brown let a pair of four-year-old boys play with the deserted kicking nets on the sidelines, having given up on the notion of ever needing them again. In the fourth quarter alone, Bears quarterback James Perry completed 12-of-14 passes for 160 yards and three touchdowns as part of a 30-point fourth quarter outburst by his team. On the game, Perry threw for 470 yards and 5 touchdowns without throwing an interception or taking a sack. Penn's offense was no slouch either, as Jim Finn ran 17 times for 130 yards and four touchdowns in the fourth quarter. For the day, Finn set a school record with six touchdowns, and was second all-time with 259 yards on the ground. Terrence Stokes ran for 273 yards against Princeton in 1993. Of course, with every yard gained a yard was given up, meaning the teams returned to their locker rooms with defensive numbers as atrocious as their offensive numbers were spectacular. By the start of the fourth quarter, all 4,438 people in the Homecoming day crowd knew what each team would do. Everyone on the sidelines knew also -- even the cheerleaders who spent the whole game with their back turned to the field. It didn't matter. Every time Finn had the ball, he would grab a couple blocks and bust right through the line and into the secondary. When it came time for a touchdown, Finn would add a couple cuts and make sure the ball got across the line. On one touchdown run in the fourth quarter, he would have scored even if it had been a game of two-hand touch. Brown's defense was absurd, although Brown coach Phil Estes used his right as the winner to deflect all questions about his defense and laud his offense, which deserved every accolade it received. With enough time in the pocket to survey the field, study for a midterm and throw a picnic, Perry was dominant when Brown had the ball. Thanks to the fine hands of All-American Sean Morey and game-winning pass catcher Steve Campbell, Perry comfortably floated balls down the sidelines and over the Penn secondary. On Brown's first possession of the second half, Morey used a quick hitch move to draw Quakers corner Hasani White towards him before sprinting past him for a 19-yard touchdown pass. The same outside move was used by Brown receivers all half, as Penn coach Al Bagnoli rotated every Penn secondary player in and out of the lineup. "We ran out of answers," Bagnoli said. "We tried four man, five man, six man pressure. We didn't have any answers. It was a severe breakdown in the entire defense." Breakdown or no, there is no use pummeling the Quakers defense for its incomprehensible meltdown. Had Penn been the last team with the ball, there is little doubt the Quakers would have walked away with the win, making the defense's play irrelevant. Better to marvel at the 1,066 yards of total offense, and pray that it is a long time before two Ivy teams score another 109 points.

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