Long after most fans had cleared the stands at Lafayette's Fisher Field following the Penn football team's 37-0 shellacking of the Leopards to open the season, two hand-drawn signs still hung from the metal railing that runs up along the concrete steps behind one end zone.
Both were pro-Penn signs, one was of the generic "rah-rah" variety while the other read as an astute observation of the make-up of this year's team. That sign read: "Penn Football: The Five-Year Plan."
There are seven fifth-year seniors on the Penn squad this season. Six of them came in together as freshmen in the fall of '97, and most of them live together in the same house on 40th Street.
Jeff Hatch, Ed Galan, Gavin Hoffman, John Holahan, Kevin Martin, Dan Morris and Brian Person. They've grown up together. They've been on two Ivy championship squads, and, if all goes well this season, will be able to claim membership on a third -- thanks in no small part to the team's depth of experience.
"I think it's a real big deal," defensive end Person said. "More so for the team than individually. You have guys around here who know what it takes [to win]."
In the Ivy League, the only way to get a fifth year is to get a medical redshirt, which means that you've missed a significant portion of at least one of your four seasons.
And, even though each one of these guys has missed a chunk of time due to injury, they all agree that just being around the program for an extra year has helped.
"For me, it's an amazing difference," said offensive lineman Hatch, who switched over from the defensive line after his junior year. "It's given me an extra year at the offensive line."
The 6-foot-7, 305-pound Hatch started all 10 games last season -- his first on the offensive line -- and he'd like to play football professionally, even though he didn't pick up the game until his junior year in high school.
"I only played two years in high school," Hatch said. "So it's been good for me to just play football in general."
While he's been getting some looks from scouts and inquiries from agents, Hatch is concentrating on making sure the Quakers finish with an unblemished record before he thinks about "next level" stuff.
"I'll be in the office watching films, and there'll be [scouts] in there," Hatch said. "But I'm not the type of person that can let myself get caught up in that. I just need to concentrate on playing."
That's why defensive lineman Galan wanted to come back. Named to the All-Ivy team last year, Galan -- who broke his wrist as a freshman -- not only wanted to come back to improve on his 51-tackle, three-sack season. He also wanted to play with his brother.
Ed and John Galan started on the defensive line together last season, and they became the first brother duo at Penn to earn first-team All-Ivy honors in the same season.
"It's definitely pretty exciting, without a doubt," Galan said of playing another full season with his brother. "It's one of the major benefits, and one of the main reasons I came back. You couldn't write a better story."
Galan gets another major benefit out of having been around for so long -- he's seen his opponents a lot.
"You know things that other kids wouldn't know," Galan said. "You know [an opponent's] tendencies, which means that your reaction time is quicker because you've seen it before."
"Everybody that starts for more than one year can pick those kinds of things up," quarterback Hoffman said. "Especially if the guys on the other team stick around for awhile, you develop something of a rivalry with the better players."
Hoffman is a three-year starter and is in his fifth year of college, but hasn't ever been injured. After a redshirt freshman year at Northwestern, Hoffman started in his second season there before transferring to Penn.
"There they can just redshirt whoever's not ready to play and basically just have you practice all year round," Hoffman said. "So that year, when I was running the scout team, was probably my biggest season of improvement, because I was competing against the first-team defense everyday."
Hoffman transferred to Penn in 1999 and started right away, breaking most single-season passing records his first year. He's gone on to take virtually every Penn career mark, too. And even though he didn't come in with the other guys in his house, after two and a half years, he's far from an outsider.
"I was lucky to get in a house with guys my age," Hoffman said. "There was, of course, an adjustment period, but I definitely don't feel like an outsider or the new guy anymore."
Hoffman, too, has aspirations to the pro level. Scouts come to practices and games to check him out, thanks largely to the stellar numbers he put up last year.
"I'm realistic," Hoffman said. "I know I'm probably not going to get drafted in the first round or anything, but I do think I have a chance to catch on somewhere.
"Right now, I'm just happy that I have this one last season."
That seems to be the consensus among the team's "super seniors." They know they're going out, so it might as well be on top.
"You never want to think of it as your last hurrah," Galan said. "But you get down and you think, 'I only have eight practices left' or, 'That was a great win, but it's my last win over Brown.'"
Galan is driven by the shot the Quakers have at an undefeated season.
"We have a chance to be one of the best teams ever here," he said. "So yeah, it's definitely bittersweet, but it's better that way than to be flat out bitter."
