It's the ultimate image for college football fans across the country. Their team wins a championship of some kind or pulls a major upset, and they get to do what they've seen hundreds of times on SportsCenter -- tear down the goal posts.
After such a victory, thousands of fans flood the field and attack the structure at the back of the end zone, hoping to bring it to the ground. It's a symbolic gesture that shows... well, nothing, really. But it's cool! And it gets you on TV!
I've stood on the field and watched some of my fellow students climb up onto the Franklin Field goal posts twice in the past three years. Inevitably, this series of events occurs:
• Fans cheer when someone gets on the crossbar and starts jumping.
• More people start jumping, but fan applause diminishes.
• The uprights start to tilt in one direction, causing a rejuvenated crowd to start chanting again.
• Nothing else happens. Ever. Nobody really notices, either, because Penn doesn't exactly command a national TV audience.
You see, most colleges have grass fields, meaning that the goal posts are merely stuck there until a strong force -- like thousands of excited students -- pulls them out. Those colleges that have artificial turf fields often have breakaway goal posts, which can be removed from the ground fairly easily as well.
Here at Penn, we have neither. The Franklin Field goal posts are stuck deep in the concrete ground. The front part of the goal posts can come off, but you would need a crane-like machine, which Penn students probably won't have access to during a football game.
One would hope this would lead Penn students to the obvious conclusion: They're not coming down.
And yet, in spite of this, people try their hardest to make the impossible happen. Last year, some of the football players themselves even got up there and gave it a try. The goal posts won again, making them the only Ivy League structure to beat our football team last season.
Barring a complete collapse, the Quakers will once again win the Ivy football title outright this year. A win over Cornell next Saturday will be cause for well-deserved celebration.
But here's a fresh idea -- instead of looking like idiots and charging the goal posts in a futile attempt to bring them down, how about we don't do that this year? How about we find another way to celebrate our gridiron dominance?
There are plenty of safety reasons to stay away from the goal posts. Recent incidents across the country, including one at Brown in 1999 and a near-disaster here in 1998, were reason enough for the University to install the sturdiest goal posts known to man. (At a hefty cost, by the way. It probably would have been cheaper in the short run to install flimsy breakaway goal posts, but there's no use harping on that now.) Obviously, though, safety reasons aren't going to resonate with people on this campus who want to partake in a tradition they can't quite explain.
It also should be noted that not every school lets its students rip the goal posts down. Earlier this month, West Virginia police used pepper spray to prevent students from getting to the back of the end zone when the Mountaineers upset Virginia Tech. That's a stupid idea, and it would be a PR nightmare at Penn, which is why it won't happen. Of course, the rioting in the streets that followed later that evening at West Virginia probably won't happen here, either.
I'm merely a newspaper columnist, and chances are, nobody's going to listen to me. People are still going to attack the goal posts and fail miserably next Saturday (they might even do it if we lose). Fortunately, the University prepared for this by forming a task force to find a new celebratory tradition.
Except we haven't heard a thing from that task force since it was formed last winter. With all due respect to the administrators on the task force, NOW would be a good time to come forward with your ideas. And they had better be clever, because if they're not, it's not even worth it.
This is a lose-lose situation for Penn students. If nobody stops us from trying to take down the goal posts, we look like morons and fail for the third straight time. If police fight off the students, disaster could happen. Because nobody can seem find an alternative, how about the students act as the bigger people for a change?
For everybody's sake, don't bother with the goal posts next weekend. Be happy for our anticlimactic Ivy League title and celebrate in style. Maybe Judith Rodin and Steve Bilsky will be so impressed that they'll buy the first round at Smoke's. It's not like they're going to have to spend the money to replace goal posts any time soon.
Steve Brauntuch is a senior Communications major from Tenafly, N.J. and editorial page editor of The Daily Pennsylvanian.
