DP SPORTS SWAMIS: Maintaining order in Ivy football

In Proverbs 17:9 the Almighty advises that "He that repeateth a matter separateth very friends." The lesson that aphorism is meant to teach is simple. If you are audacious enough to try to capture an Ivy crown two seasons in a row, you're bound to stir up some chunky karma. Thankfully, our loyal band of gridiron brigands has previous experience with this sort of gravity. Baggy Bags and his Funky Bunch were able to duplicate Ancient Eight perfection in both the 1993 and 1994 seasons. Still, this current set of Quakers is attempting to win its fourth title of the decade, a feat which has gone unachieved since Dartmouth did it in the 1970s. This is a task not meant to be taken lightly. Despite their heavily varnished exteriors, the other seven schools that comprise the Ivy League are capable of unimaginable treachery and they now have all of their blue-blooded tentacles aimed right at our beloved warriors. The Quakers cannot be expected to overcome this sort of danger without some assistance. So here we come to save the day. We Swamis, Penn's Pontiffs of Prognostication for nearly half a century, decided to give our magic carpets an impromptu lube job and journey throughout the Northeast in order to identify the forces of evil assembled against our beloved Red and Blue. We aim, of course, to do much more than identify our enemy. We aim to annihilate their puerile plotting and make the world safe for a Penn football repeat. We aim to make the world safe for Penn hegemony. We first brought down our trusty rugs on the green pastures of Harvard University, the haunt of the last of our inferior Ivy brethren to momentarily hold Ancient Eight supremacy. Our search for sinister plots was, as you can imagine in a hamlet as villainous as Cambridge, rather short-lived. As we maneuvered our dual-cam carpets around the third sub-basement of Widener Library, past the room where Harvard burns their money, we happened upon a meeting of the Harvard coaching staff. Coach Tim Murphy and his pencil-necked Crimson staff, appropriately outfitted in tweed and seersucker, were in the midst of a jolly good belly laugh when we Swamis entered their chamber. They were too busy chuckling at the picture of Penn coach Al Bagnoli they had doctored-up to look like Che Guevara to notice our theft of their playbook. A quick glance through their playbook let us know that the Harvard backfield will probably be more concerned with the post-colonial implications of ethnic-sounding names like Germino and Puzio than with the hurting that these Penn defenders can inflict. Confident that we had nothing to fear in Beantown, we marched further into the New England abyss until we reached the frothy town of Hanover, New Hampshwhere. Luckily, we arrived just in time for practice. Much to our surprise and delight the only player that bothered to show up was, well, no one. After all, this is Dartmouth, in the middle of that worthless filler between Boston and Canada, and classes had not started yet. While we half expected to see placekicker Alex Csizinsky attempting to split uprights under the watchful eye of former Melrose hunk and Dartmouth alum Andrew Shue, all we saw were cows. And a Wal-Mart. Our sneaking suspicion that the Green With Envy would improve on their 1-6 1998 campaign was put to rest after visiting this sleepy little hamlet. We Swamis, still confident that danger must be brewing somewhere, pushed on to ever-insignificant Providence, R.I., and to Brown. Here we were sure we would encounter an impressive array. Penn's sole 1998 defeat came in the form of a 58-51 barnburner at Brown. We were pleased as punch, however, to find out that the administration of the most pliable of Ivies had gone beyond simply abolishing all academic requirements and had forbidden weightlifting. It seems as if the Brownies see pumping iron as merely a tool for the perpetuation of patriarchy. Well, thanks to their brilliant leaders, not a single member of the Bears D-line is strong enough to even hoist their personal copy of Fleur du Mal. Looks like another safe stomping ground for the Penn juggernaut. After the laughable display we found in Providence, we Swamis had gained a healthy confidence about our heroes chances this fall. We had visited those usually suspected of Ivy treachery and had found nothing but a bunch of dandies, a throng of high-elbowers and a rag-tag bunch in sore need of academic rigor. And besides, we were starting to get rug burn in some unmentionable areas. So we zipped on back to our beloved West Philadelphia. Granted, we had seen much of our future opposition, but we still had a nagging worry that a real threat might still be lurking. To seek guidance, we most sagacious of handicappers, knocked on the door of the College Hall office of President Judith Rodin, who with her extensive research of Ancient Eight football wiped away any doubt we had about Penn's chances for a conference repeat. "Penn, 7-0. Dartmouth, 1-6." Madame President, you are a Swami through and through.