DALLAS -- Our Penn Quakers are playing in one of the biggest sporting events in the country tomorrow night: the NCAA Tournament.
The sad truth is that your average Penn student doesn't know that.
When Ivy League Player of the Year Ibrahim Jaaber and company tip off against Texas at about 9:40 p.m. tomorrow on CBS, some Penn students will be watching. But most will be out to dinner, at the movies or catching up on homework.
That's just wrong, and Penn administrators -- both in and outside the athletic department -- are to blame.
The NCAA Tournament is a big deal. Over 300 of the top basketball programs in the nation have spent months fighting for the 65 spots in the event, which starts today.
Millions of people around the country will fill out their brackets and millions of dollars will be wagered on the games.
And nobody puts up more money each year at this time than CBS, which spends about half a billion dollars a year for the right to broadcast every game. It's worth it, though; March Madness is consistently one of the top-rated sporting events of the year.
But where is the March Madness on Penn's campus?
Nowhere.
There are no banners on Locust Walk cheering on the team.
There's no big event planned on campus for students to cheer on the Quakers.
There's pretty much nothing.
So, what are other schools doing?
At Bucknell, a school with a third of the enrollment of Penn and hardly the same storied basketball history, t-shirts promoting the school's second-ever appearance in the Big Dance are flying off the shelves.
At tiny South Alabama, a No. 14 seed that plays No. 3 seed Florida today, a big announcement on the school's Web site proudly declares that the school is playing in the NCAA Tournament and that there is a bus leaving at 5 a.m. this morning to the game in Jacksonville, Fla.
At little-known Winthrop, a South Carolina school that will take on No. 2 seed Tennessee tomorrow, university president Anthony DiGiorgio went on ESPN2's Cold Pizza yesterday morning to talk about how excited he and the rest of his school are for the Tournament.
So why is Penn different?
Some will say it's because Ivy League administrators are ashamed of athletic success. These critics argue that the more success Ancient Eight squads display on the court, the more poorly it reflects on the league's academics.
But the bigger problem at Penn is that most of the higher-ups just don't care.
That's a big problem externally, especially as the school fails to capitalize on the great branding power of having a team in the field.
Penn could use the game as a chance to say that it's different than the rest of the Ivy League schools. It's a chance to say that our student body is more than just a bunch of rich, white nerds -- your stereotypical Ivy student.
Heck, it's a chance to say that we're not Penn State.
But instead, the school does nothing. If you go to Penn's Web site right now, is there any mention of the school's trip to the tournament?
Of course not.
An appearance in the NCAA Tournament is also a great way to build school spirit.
As it stands right now, Spring Fling is the only gathering of the entire student body, and that's not even in celebration of Penn.
At a school so concerned with getting wealthy alumni to feel love for the school, why not start building that pride while the students are on campus? And what easier way to get the students excited about Penn than to rally them around the school's appearance on the biggest stage in college sports?
Many other universities around the country -- large and small, from the best at academics to the worst -- are starting to recognize the great power of sports. Ask Gonzaga, a tiny school in Spokane, Wash. -- now a basketball powerhouse -- what embracing sports has done for the school's national reputation and school spirit.
But Penn is not one of these schools. It chooses to use cold, corporate techniques to promote itself both internally and externally, from Madison Avenue marketing firms to sterile barbecues on the wind-swept plaza outside the Annenberg School.
College is about more than barbecues and corporate seals. And if officials would only realize that, Penn would be a far better place.
David Burrick is a senior urban studies major from Short Hills, N.J., and former Senior Sports Editor and Executive Editor of The Daily Pennsylvanian. His e-mail is dburrick@sas.upenn.edu
