From the stands: Flirting with Sprint perfection

An impossible dream played out on Franklin Field Friday night before an audience of 700. Two football teams, both consisting of men no larger than you or me, took the field to play for a shot at perfection. Sure, there was also a Collegiate Sprint Football League championship on the line for 4-0 Penn and equally undefeated Army -- the game's winner would clinch a tie for the crown. But championships are just second-rate certifications of preeminence; perfection is the only way to know. And in 66 years of sprint football, no Penn squad had ever known. Twice champions, an undefeated season had remained out of reach for the Red and Blue. And so when the clock expired with the score standing at 20-16, Penn, the impossible was finally in reach. With a victory over Princeton this Friday -- a team Penn already trounced once this fall -- 66 years of imperfection will become a trivia question: How many years stood between the inception of sprint football at Penn in 1934 and the first perfect season in team history? The sport -- originally called lightweight football -- had its beginnings at Penn but, like the invention of computers, left the University with little to boast about thereafter. At the beginning of this season, the team's all-time record stood at 127-220-11. Forty-one of those losses came against the United States Military Academy; forty-eight were suffered at the hands of its naval counterpart. And while the evident preponderance of scrappy bangers at the service academies bodes well for the national defense, it did little for the nerves of Penn players or fans on the eve of the latest battle with Uncle Sam. Having already beaten Navy earlier this season, Penn was on the verge of another unprecedented accomplishment. Never before had the Quakers beaten both service academies in the same season. This, too, will soon be a footnote on perfection. But records are easy to capture, order and set aside. What should not be lost by those who watched or played on Friday night is the magic of the moment. At night, under the lights, Franklin Field is not so very large, and a group of 700 fans seems not so very small. The athletes on the field have not yet learned to stop listening to the fans behind them; there have not been enough fans behind them to learn that trick. What they heard through three quarters was silence, occasional cheers and quite a few conversations about Friday night plans. It would have stayed just like that except for the players down on the field. They wanted to win in a way that could be felt, let alone seen, from a seat a couple hundred feet away. There were no conversations in progress, no one loosening up or cooling down or turning his head long enough to get a drink from the Gatorade table. Every eye on that sideline was locked on the football. And so, in the stands, support began to build. As the fourth quarter wore on, chants began to coalesce. "De-fense, De-fense," at two different speeds and then as one. Down by two, Penn tried twice to drive down the field. Each time, it punted away and held on defense. Throughout, the crowd stayed in the game. But with time running out, fourth-and-three from the 43-yard-line, the crowd stood in silence once again, watching their team take one last shot at Army's end zone with time running out. They remained silent, first in nervous anticipation and then in disbelief, as Scott Moore came down with a Jim Donapel prayer for a 30-yard pick up. And then, all hell broke loose. They roared through Mark Gannon's game-winning, tackle-breaking five-yard run. They gutted it out through the last gasp Army effort and, with a roar of admiration and approval, stormed the Franklin Field turf in celebration as Donapel took a knee and let the clock run out. Later, as the celebration was winding down, players could be heard thanking friends, families and random fans for coming out to watch. But it was the fans thanking the players who truly got the point.

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