From the laughs in the room, it was apparent that Bill Bradshaw was kidding around.
But the more I think about it, the more I think that every word was true.
Temple's athletic director was introducing Fran Dunphy as the new coach of the Owls men's basketball program when he spoke about what 17 years at Penn have done to his old college buddy.
"He suddenly has matured," Bradshaw said. "He's much wiser. He's come to his senses.
"He's coming across the river to Philadelphia's university -- Temple."
Dunphy said yesterday that it took a long walk near his home in Villanova on Friday to convince himself that the job was the right one to take.
And Bradshaw described it exactly right. Dunphy came to his senses.
I don't want to put thoughts in the coach's head, as Dunphy was so full of his typical "coachspeak" yesterday that it was difficult to explicitly glean anything about his decision-making process.
But Dunphy made the right move -- a move that, after the past two seasons, should not anger anybody in the Penn community.
It has become a pattern.
Breeze through the Ivies, get a low seed, lose in the first round. Breeze through the Ivies, get a low seed, lose in the first round. And so on.
That has happened seven appearances in a row, and Dunphy's eight straight tournament losses are an NCAA record.
What if Dunphy were to stay at Penn for 17 more years?
Is the 14th one-and-done NCAA berth any more special than the 13th or the 12th? When does "just happy to be there" get old?
By moving on to Temple, Dunphy is not in a position to even make the four-letter tournament every year -- the Owls haven't made it in the last five seasons.
But he does put himself into a position -- with scholarships, lower academic standards and a better conference -- to attract the talent needed to make a more serious run in the Big Dance.
At 57 years old, Dunphy has never coached a game on the second weekend of the NCAA Tournament.
And to me, in addition to a little extra cash thrown his way, this is what the move is all about.
The Owls advanced to the Elite Eight four times since Dunphy took over at Penn in 1989.
By taking the job at Temple, Dunphy showed that his coaching career was not all about loyalty, the atmosphere of an Ivy League program and holding the keys to the Palestra.
Dunphy is a winner, and this is what winners do. They move up to the big time.
He's trading in the front row of the Palestra bleachers for the bench at the state-of-the-art Liacouras Center.
He's ditching the perennial one-bid league for the Atlantic 10, which has drawn multiple bids in 14 of the last 16 tournaments.
And best of all, he's never again going to make that trip from Dartmouth to Harvard in February to play another game at a nearly empty high school gym.
So even though he may look like a traitor for going from one Big 5 school to another, when you see him on the other bench at next year's Penn-Temple game, I'd tell you to give him a big ovation for all he's done for the Quakers. And whatever you do, don't boo him.
That would not be like booing Johnny Damon for going from the Red Sox to the rival Yankees.
It would be like booing a Triple-A baseball player for moving up to the majors.
Zachary Levine is a junior mathematics major from Delmar, N.Y., and former Sports Editor of The Daily Pennsylvanian. His e-mail address is zlevine@sas.upenn.edu.
