Football getting ready to play in historic game

It's all come down to the bitter end for the Penn football team. When the Quakers meet Cornell in chilly Ithaca, N.Y., Saturday, the outcome of this final game of the season will determine the outright champion of the Ivy League. However, this down-to-the-wire situation isn't just high stakes for both the Quakers and the Big Red -- it's also rare for the Ivy League itself. In almost 150 years of Ancient Eight play and nearly 50 years since the league was officially formed, this is only the ninth time that the two title contenders have gone head to head in their last game to decide the title. "This is just a huge game that doesn't happen very often," Penn linebacker and defensive co-captain Dan Morris said. "The winner of this last game is the outright champion. It's probably the biggest game I've ever been a part of. It's really exciting, and we're all really pumped up." The last time the two big dogs of the league fought it out for the title was in 1991, when Dartmouth won at Princeton, 31-13. Penn, too, has been in this situation before. Coincidentally, it was at Cornell. In 1986, the undefeated Red and Blue stomped the previously undefeated Big Red, 31-21, to give first-year head coach Ed Zubrow his first of two titles with the Quakers. If the result in Ithaca 14 years ago isn't a good enough omen for the Red and Blue, then perhaps the fact that the visiting squad has won six of the eight previous battles with everything on the line will make the Quakers feel that the football gods could be smiling on them this weekend. Plus, Penn has departed victorious from Schoellkopf Field three of the last four times they've played at Cornell. * Even if this title matchup with Cornell is a high-stakes and highly historic game for the Quakers, Penn coach Al Bagnoli is approaching it with a business-as-usual attitude. "We don't approach it from a coaching perspective much differently," he said. "I don't think you want a sense that this is any different from what we've done last week or the week before or the week before that." However, with the kind of season the Red and Blue has seen so far -- with heroics on both sides of the ball from the Red and Blue to clinch a few last-minute victories -- business has been admittedly far from usual for some time. "We've actually been in a playoff atmosphere for the last four weeks, as soon as we had our first loss [at Yale]," Bagnoli said. "It's been a little hairy, it's been a little exciting, it's been a little unpredictable, but I give our kids a lot of credit for staying in there. So [the Cornell game is] no different than what it's been the last four weeks." * Something that's different for the Quakers from the last couple of years is that their roster is almost all healthy for this final game. While some key players who suffered bumps and bruises in Penn's 36-35 triumph over Harvard last weekend -- including wide receiver Doug O'Neill and defensive tackle Ed Galan -- sat out yesterday's practice, everyone should be ready to go today, according to Bagnoli. "At this point in the season, we're actually OK," he said. Only the season-ending broken collar bone of wide receiver Colin Smith keeps the Penn depth chart from looking completely full for Saturday.

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