NEWARK, Del. -- Negotiations have taken place over a possible home-and-home series between the Penn and Delaware football teams, although the games would not take place until 2011 at the earliest.
Penn's Associate Director of Athletics, Earl Cleghorn, said that the two schools' athletic directors "have had some discussions" about having the Quakers and Blue Hens face each other.
Cleghorn is in charge of scheduling for the football team and works on finding non-conference games in conjunction with Athletic Director Steve Bilsky and football coach Al Bagnoli.
There are a number of caveats, however. First of all, Penn does not have an open date on its schedule until the second week of October in 2011. Second, Cleghorn said that it is one of the program's goals not to play too many non-conference games against teams that offer athletic scholarships.
Penn is currently in the second year of an eight-year contract with Villanova, which plays in the Atlantic 10 Conference. Nearly all the other non-Ivy League teams that Penn plays in football come from the Patriot League, which like the Ancient Eight does not offer athletic scholarships in the sport.
"We want to give our kids a fair opportunity to compete and have some success," he said. "We think that this eight-year deal that we have with Villanova is very compatible with us, and we're looking forward to continuing that through the eight years."
After that, Cleghorn said, Penn would be willing to explore a deal with Delaware. It would have to include games at both schools.
"We wouldn't go into a situation that wouldn't be" a home-and-home series, Cleghorn said. "We're not interested in getting into something that we would be over our head in and that would not be fair to our youngsters."
Cleghorn did acknowledge that Delaware might not want to give up one of its home games in a season to play at Franklin Field.
"Financially, they do very well" from selling out every game, he said. "They even turn around and give [Division II] West Chester a nice check to have that [game] at Delaware."
But he also said that Delaware would have plenty of its own fans at a game on 33rd Street.
"If we played them here at Franklin Field, it would probably be somewhere in the 30s to 40,000 people for that game," he said. "It would be something I think we'd all love."
Delaware coach K.C. Keeler agreed with Cleghorn.
"We'd love to play Penn," Keeler said. "I know their coordinators and head coach very well -- it would be a fun place to play."
