Before last season's Penn-Columbia football matchup, Lions coach Bob Shoop made the questionable decision to guarantee victory, despite the fact that Columbia had not beaten the Quakers since 1996.
The move backfired, as a highly motivated Penn squad went up to New York and delivered a 31-7 thrashing of the Lions. After the game, Quakers coaches and players admitted that they had taken exception to Shoop's comments, and used them as motivation for the game.
"I heard something about that," Penn coach Al Bagnoli said sarcastically when asked about Shoop's guarantee.
But a humbled Shoop was singing a different tune when asked about the game.
"They play football the way it's meant to be played," Shoop said after last year's matchup. "They're where we want to be. They're the model."
Shoop was not disrespecting the Quakers. He was trying to be the Quakers. And for the Lions coach, attitude is the first step in building a winning program.
This is something Penn athletics has in abundance.
As Shoop said, Penn has become something of a model for other Ivy League schools trying to build athletic programs. And the other Ivy schools are measuring success by how they do against Penn.
So, Bagnoli, don't take too much offense to Shoop's comments. It wasn't the first time, and it won't be the last time that coaches of other Ivy schools go above and beyond the call of duty to get their teams motivated to play the Red and Blue.
The success of Penn's football and basketball teams has been well-documented. Bagnoli has led his teams to four out of the last six Ivy League championships.
Penn basketball has made it to the NCAA Tournament seven times since 1993. Penn and Princeton have held a stranglehold over Ivy League men's basketball virtually since the beginning of time.
Everybody knows about the two revenue sports. But envy for the Penn Athletic Department hardly ends with football and basketball.
Take a look at the major fall sports.
Men's soccer has overcome the loss of 2002 All-American Matt Haefner to garner a No. 15 ranking in the NSCAA poll, and currently sits atop the Ivy League with a 2-0 record.
The Penn women's soccer team has won five in a row and is a perfect 3-0 in the Ivy League thus far. And field hockey has won seven of eight to climb back into the league race.
Volleyball is rebuilding this season after losing the greatest class in program history to graduation. But the team is on solid footing for the future, thanks to Penn coach Kerry Major Carr, who has won three league championships in her first six years at the Palestra.
Carr exemplifies what has made Penn athletics so successful over the last few years: coaches who know how to recruit good players, who know how to get the most out of their players and most importantly, stay with the school for years to keep the teams growing. This is how Penn manages to field championship-caliber programs year in and year out.
The Athletic Department took a hit this summer when women's basketball coach Kelly Greenberg unexpectedly jumped to Boston University. But it recovered by hiring Patrick Knapp away from Georgetown.
The hiring is a testament to where Penn is as an athletic program. Because of the success that coaches have had in recent years, top-flight coaches want to come here. Columbia could never have pulled off a coach hiring of somebody of Knapp's stature.
This brings us back to Shoop. In contrast to last year, he's saying all the right things before tomorrow's game.
"With [Penn's] football and basketball programs, they're the ones we're aiming to be like," Shoop said yesterday.
He then went on to compare his best receiver, Brandon Bowser, to a young Dan Castles, using Castles as the standard by which Ivy League receivers are measured.
It appears that Shoop's days of guaranteeing are over. But when it comes to Penn envy, he's only entering his prime.
Harry Berezin is a senior history major from San Francisco and is Sports Editor of The Daily Pennsylvanian. His e-mail address is harryb@sas.upenn.edu
