Check out the tough-talking new guys running athletic programs in the Ivy League.
These guys aren't shy about speaking their mind. These guys aren't afraid to make major personnel shake-ups.
Heck, these guys aren't even guys.
That's right. The fraternity has just gone co-ed.
It started in the summer of 2002, when Dartmouth named then Senior Associate Director of Athletics JoAnn "Josie" Harper to the athletic director job, making her the first woman ever to hold the position at an Ivy League institution.
While it took decades to promote the first woman to an Ivy's athletic director desk, the next domino only took two years to fall.
This past summer, Columbia tapped Dr. M. Dianne Murphy, then the athletic director at the University of Denver, to head its athletic department after the retirement of 13-year veteran John Reeves.
If any of the Lions faithful didn't know what to expect out of their new head woman, that uncertainty lasted exactly one day.
Upon taking office, Murphy made her stance crystal clear in addressing the athletic department, calling Columbia's facilities "woefully inadequate" and blasting the old regime's work on women's sports and athletic scheduling.
But the sound bite of the day came when Murphy called athletics at the University a "tradition of losing," fitting for a team that has only four winning seasons in men's basketball since 1979. In the same span, Penn has had 17 and Princeton has had 22.
Has the change at the top been effective in stemming this losing culture? It's still a bit too early to tell.
But an 8-4 record for the men's basketball team shows just what some excellent recruiting by Joe Jones, who's arrival predated Murphy's, and some tough words can do.
While Murphy first attacked Columbia's problem vocally, Harper has made her presence felt in Hanover through her actions involving Dartmouth's two highest profile sports.
The first major tremor to shake the program was the pressured resignation of men's basketball coach Dave Faucher after 13 seasons of little success.
Harper brought in first-time collegiate head coach Terry Dunn, who had been the top assistant at Colorado.
Despite the departure of last year's Ivy League Rookie of the Year Leon Pattman for personal reasons, Dunn already has four wins -- one more than Faucher had in his last season with the Big Green.
But Harper's biggest move came last week, shortly after Dartmouth had fired football coach John Lyons.
Harper hired Buddy Teevens, a name that should ring a bell in Hanover, and actually, all over the country.
Teevens quarterbacked the Big Green from 1975-78, and returned as head coach in 1987, only to leave again six years later for a Division I-A job.
Now, after two stints with the Big Green and experience at seven other schools, Teevens has landed back in Hanover. He appears to be the perfect candidate to resuscitate a program that finished a league-worst 1-9 overall last season.
He's certainly familiar with Dartmouth's program. And perhaps more importantly, he can attract recruits with his credentials that include an assistant job at Florida and most recently, a three-year stint as Stanford's head coach.
Teevens will not be immune, though, to the recruiting difficulties at Dartmouth. As if the academic requirements at one of the nation's elite universities were not enough, the football program is now faced with the challenge of a dean of admissions who has expressed that intercollegiate sports do not belong at a school likeDartmouth.
But Harper's department has made a statement with the hiring: Dartmouth is still committed to bringing sports back to the days of Teevens' Ancient Eight championships, as a player in 1978 and as a coach in 1990 and 1991.
Results on the field and on the hardwood should come with time for these women, just as their promotions did.
But Dartmouth and Columbia, with a little bit of girl power, are quickly on their way to ascending from the basement of the Ivy League standings.
Zachary Levine is a sophomore mathematics major from Delmar, N.Y., and is Sports Editor of The Daily Pennsylvanian. His e-mail address is zlevine@sas.upenn.edu.
