Not too long ago, wide-eyed freshmen had a virtual guarantee, known if not spoken: Play football for Penn and an Ivy title ring will be yours.
Nick Cisler saw that reality. He wanted to play for Penn - to win - so much that he swore off football near his Michigan home for the northeastern, non-scholarship brand. So much that he worked his way up from the sixth-string fullback to the blocker for one of the Ivy League's best tailbacks - and really, best teams.
Except they haven't played like it for quite a while.
The winning Penn model - let's call it Bagnoli-ism - got a stiff challenge last year when one measly play (one measly player, really) derailed a season that had added up on paper to be a good one. The guys who bought into the collective watched as individuals took the team down with them. Worse, it was indicative of a trend that outlives Penn's kicking woes and overtimes.
Last year's 3-4 season was no longer the one that got away - in fact, there had been three goose eggs, dropped in a fairly conspicuous row.
Those three missed titles - the last two slipped by as closely as titles can slip by a 3-4 team - are a weight on the Quakers' shoulders. In an odd way, they are also the best educational tool around, though not by choice, of course.
Cisler said losing the tough games was largely about pressure situations - never exactly a slam dunk for amateur athletes who don't have a coach's experience when it comes to do-or-die moments. "Obviously, in the past three years we've had plenty of them," Cisler pointed out.
"In high school, my [team] was 48-0, so I'd never lost a game, and then you come here and have so many heartbreaks, so many different situations."
Although they were promised only the best, it would be hard to think that this year's seniors weren't prepared for the worst after last year's three overtime losses.
So for the Quakers, learning the quirks of a third offensive coordinator in four years seems like nothing. Instability in the kicking game has become almost a fact of life.
If the seniors are going to do it - win a title and avoid a fate as soldiers of a dark Penn era - they will have to outrun their bad luck, their history and seven other Ivy League teams bent on their defeat.
That's an awful lot to place on anyone, as recent history has shown.
But history also says that Bagnoli-ism produces a bounceback. If the model holds, this would be the year to turn it around. Unless.
Unless it's something more. Unless the losing streak doesn't go away; it becomes a sea change within the league that threatens Penn's perch for good.
To prove that their reputation and their tradition will indeed continue, the Quakers need this year.
The view from the bottom could be the biggest thing pushing them back to the top.
Andrew Scurria is a junior in the College from Wilmington, Del., and is Senior Sports Editor of The Daily Pennsylvanian. His e-mail address is scurria@sas.upenn.edu.
