I have written something like 30 columns in my three years at the DP, and few people have been lambasted in those columns more than the folks behind the marketing of Penn's athletic program.
Specifically, I have been highly critical of the school's inability to get people to come to football games.
But in my efforts to be a fair and balanced journalist, I have to give credit where credit is due. Recent efforts to lower ticket prices and make football games free to Penn staff members and their families are great.
What's even better, however, is the new focus that Athletic Director Steve Bilsky and Director of Marketing and Promotions Dan Flynn have placed on making football an important part of university life.
As Flynn told me, Penn will be taking a "last stand" approach to football on campus over the next few years.
"Football has been the cornerstone of the athletics department for decades, and we think the timing is right to make some changes to ensure that it remains that way for years to come at Penn," he said.
Bilsky has committed resources to bring football back to what it was like when he attended Penn. He wants students to wake up on a Saturday with one thing on their mind -- football. He wants Franklin Field to come alive from its twenty-year cavernous slumber.
And for the most part, the folks in charge of marketing Penn football have done a lot over the summer that should increase attendance for the coming season.
Not only did they overhaul the ticketing policy, but they pushed back as many games as they could to 3:30 p.m. This way students don't have to wake up for (relatively) early noon games, and suburban parents can coach their kids in soccer and then come to the game.
But if Bilsky and others are serious about "saving" football, they must go to the next level -- putting a more attractive product on the field.
This is not to say that the football team is bad. In fact, in recent years it seems they are almost always undefeated. But who are they going undefeated against?
The football team's three nonconference opponents this year are Duquesne, Villanova and Bucknell, or as most sports fans refer to them, "boring, pretty boring and boring." We're not talking about any teams that are going to draw in the casual sports fan.
Duquesne is worse than -- gasp! -- Columbia.
Bucknell? When Penn played them in basketball last year, it was by far the worst-attended game of the year. And that was against a team that won a game in the NCAA Tournament (and an ESPY). Their football team is just mediocre.
Villanova is a Division I-AA powerhouse, but to the casual sports fan, nothing special.
It's nice to know that we have a football coach in Al Bagnoli that wants to go undefeated every year. You shouldn't ask for anything less in a coach.
That's why Bilsky and others around him need to strong-arm Bagnoli to inject some life into the football team's schedule.
I'm not asking for games against Michigan or Penn State. I'm just asking for Penn to roll the dice a little bit. Since 1987, Penn has played just 12 different non-conference opponents -- all of which were at the I-AA level.
Of those 12 opponents, most have had at least one game against a I-A in the past few years. Villanova is playing a couple of games at Rutgers for the prospect of getting a return game. Richmond has a game this year against Vanderbilt.
Sure, these teams would probably kill us, but who cares? I'd rather watch us get slaughtered by a Big East team than beat a Patriot League opponent by 30.
Even if we had to play a handful of games on the road to get one at home, just stepping onto the field with these bigger schools would go a long way towards raising the collective consciousness of Penn football. At least we'd be playing games against teams on Sports Center and College Gameday.
People would start talking about the football team as if it were a legitimate college football program, not one that hides in the inferior bubble that is Div. I-AA.
Yale was able to get Army onto its schedule for the 2010 season, making it the first game between an Ivy school and a I-A team (albeit a bad I-A team) in well over a decade. And Yale hasn't had the kind of recent on-field success to stand on that Penn has had.
But adding a I-A opponent is not the only way to liven up the schedule. Why not -- as I suggested in the first column I ever wrote -- play an annual rotating double-header with Penn, Villanova, Temple and Delaware?
Penn's athletic department, however, could use some help from that bastion of hypocrisy known as the Council of Ivy League Presidents (the only group that I have criticized more than Penn athletic marketing).
This group puts ridiculous restrictions on football that makes it very hard for the sport to be rescued from oblivion. Next year, the rest of the NCAA will get to play 12 regular season games. One of the rationales of adding a game to the schedule was to encourage more I-A teams to play I-AA opponents.
But the Ivy presidents only allow football teams to play 10 games. With the rest of college football several weeks into the season before Ivy teams start playing, it makes it that much harder to schedule an early-season game.
The presidents could also lift their illogical ban on football postseason play, making those non-conference games against Duquesne and Bucknell relevant for seeding.
If Penn is truly interested in making a last stand, it should publicly call out the Ivy presidents for their bias against football.
The athletic department should be commended for redoubling its efforts at selling Penn football. Now they need to turn their attention towards developing a better product to sell.
David Burrick is a senior urban studies major from Short Hills, N.J. His e-mail address is dburrick@sas.upenn.edu
David Burrick is a junior urban studies major from Short Hills, N.J., and executive editor of The Daily Pennsylvanian. Camp David appears on alternate Thursdays.
