Another cycle of Penn sports traditions is about to begin. In the coming weeks and months, a quarter of the student population will have its first chance to throw toast at Franklin Field and to heckle a Princeton or Villanova basketball player at the Palestra, among other things.
Another quarter of the student population will do all that for the last time as undergraduates, which will likely create as much sober reflection as ecstasy.
Those moments will bring together this year's freshmen and seniors with the rest of the student body in the same way that past generations of Penn students have been united countless times over the years. The names and faces may change, but the things that truly last in the memory are about much more than people.
Of course, there are plays that transcend the moments at which they occur: A game-winning field goal that shakes Franklin Field but would not have happened if not for a roughing the kicker penalty on the first attempt. A desperate blocked shot or banked-in three-pointer that sends the Palestra, or at least half of it, into delirium.
Yet some of the things that make Penn sports truly special take place outside of the painted lines. These are the things which deserve to be highlighted as the school year begins.
Throwing toast is one. The desire to drink a highball, regardless of the age at which it is legal to do so, has been sustained for so long that both the song and the act of throwing toast have come to define Penn sports fandom perhaps more than anything else.
So as ever, Franklin Field will literally be toasted when the Quakers meet Duquesne on September 17, and the toast Zamboni will make its way down the track once again.
The other great -- but controversial -- Penn tradition is the rollout banner. There will surely be many from the Penn student section this coming basketball season, firing all manner of one-liners at the opposition during timeouts.
There was a time when rollouts were not permitted to cascade down the Palestra stands because they got too raunchy for the Penn administration's tastes.
Now, however, the memories of the ban have faded, and rollouts are cherished once again -- even if they still dance gingerly along the boundary of good taste.
Pieces of bread and paper don't make plays or win championships, but they do create lasting memories.
They bind together generations of Penn sports fans as a kind of social currency, with a value that transcends anything monetary.
Yet as I watched the attendance at football and basketball games decline last year, I started to wonder whether that value was starting to decrease.
The mix of athletics and academics here really is unique. The success and attention that Penn teams have gained over the years gives standing to the insults of Harvard and Yale that are part of this school's most famous song.
More importantly, however, those two eternal rivals as well as many other Ivy League institutions have not been able to use sports to bring their student bodies together the way Penn has. That is, in part, because some of them simply have not wanted to.
But the reply from 33rd Street has always come back the same -- a big crowd at either Franklin Field or the Palestra cheering their Quakers on to another Ivy League title.
That passion which has defined Penn sports for so long has always started with the students. The time to bring it forth is approaching once again.
Jonathan Tannenwald is a senior Urban Studies major from Washington, D.C. His e-mail address is jtannenw@sas.upenn.edu.
