After 48 years, time for Swamis to hang up carpets

After 48 years, the carpets are starting to show some wear. We Swamis have flown around the world, welcome wherever we have gone, be it Cambridge, California or Canada. We've talked to Elvis impersonators and zookeepers, great running backs and Keith Elias. Former Philadelphia Mayor Ed Rendell was one of us. So was University President Judith Rodin. And William Jefferson Clinton, the 42nd president of these United States, had recently agreed to wrap up a turban next season. For 48 years, the world has looked to us for all the right picks and a dash of humor. That much will never change. But it's time to step off our carpets, unwrap our turbans and ditch our magic lamps. It's a sign of the times and, with a nod to sensitivity, we will ride off into the sunset after Penn trounces Cornell to win the Ivy League title at the end of this season. But from our initial gathering in 1953, it's been nothing but good times. Goalposts in the Schuylkill, toast on the turf, you name it --ÿwe've seen it all, and we've seen it coming. We're not happy to go out, but we realize that we must, and that nothing lasts forever. So, we will be making some changes as we prepare to hang up the carpets -- our cartoon companion has already found his way to the retirement home. But for the remainder of the season, we will continue to pick the Ivy League games as the Swamis whom you've always known and loved. When we come back with "President Bubba" next season to tell you who's going to win each Ancient Eight contest, we'll have a new name, but the same humorous journeys that you've come to expect. We'll just have a different way to travel around the world on a weekly basis. And we promise not to offend or humiliate anyone -- except Princeton. In all of our reminiscing and in all of our planning for the future of pigskin prognostication at Penn, we did not seek out a guest Swami this week. But we didn't have any need to search for one anyway, since we all already knew that our beloved Quakers will beat the living daylights out of Holy Cross tomorrow afternoon in Worcester. We may not have our turbans next season, but we shall return in some way to tell you who will win each week. We will always and forever be the Swamis.

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