Forget for a second that Penn's chances at an Ivy football title took a serious hit with its second league loss Saturday.
What is going on in that Quakers locker room is its own significant story, where a group of men is getting more than it ever bargained for.
Last weekend's triple-overtime loss to Yale was the third time this season Penn has tasted defeat on the very last play of the game. As if that weren't a sadistic enough fate, the Red and Blue lost all three of its overtime games - all league contests - last season as well.
"We've been through so much in the last two or three years," senior captain Joe Anastasio said. "We've worked hard. It seems like we're always getting down to the last play, and it's not coming our way."
The first of those heartbreaking losses came against this very Yale team in New Haven.
"There was a bitter taste in my mouth after that game," senior quarterback Bryan Walker said. "It carried through and motivated us through the whole offseason, and we took that anger or aggression and tried to focus it [against Yale this year]."
This time, though, the Bulldogs waited until the third overtime to pull the plug on these tough-luck Quakers, turning what had the makings of a picture-perfect redemption story into a cruel joke at the expense of a beleaguered group.
"Honestly, I thought it would be the flip side," senior captain Nick Cisler said. "I thought this was the perfect situation to get some payback. The whole team felt the same way, especially when it got to the third overtime - this is ours, this is how it is supposed to happen."
But as the dust settled on this latest nail-biter, reality quickly set in. As incredible as it seemed, Penn managed to outdo itself. Three overtimes and no dice - could this have been scripted any more absurdly?
"We're due for an OT win," Anastasio said. "Maybe it will come next week, maybe next year. It's statistical, we've got to get one."
But really, anybody would have said that same thing after the second OT loss. And the third one.
And now they're all still saying it, after the fourth OT loss in two seasons.
Still, even if the Quakers are singing a different tune after their next extra-time encounter, the book has already shut on this year; Yale is not about to drop two league games.
Therein lies the special quality of this team, and of the group of seniors who lead it, who will now likely leave Penn without a ring.
"As of today, I have 25 days left of football that I'm ever going to play," Cisler said. "I'm not going to have anything like this in my life afterwards, so I've got to take advantage of each opportunity that I can."
They play football for its own sake. They take the worst of hits, and they keep on coming. Last year's overtime games were not interspersed throughout the season; they came all in a row, one after the other. They took devastation one weekend and turned it into motivation the next.
They came out with the kind of effort that could make those eventual losses so bitter. But they kept on playing, and they're still playing now.
"We're never going to give up," Walker said. "You could tell that [against Yale]. All the guys on offense, on defense, they wanted to be out there, they wanted the play to come down to them. That's all you could ask for."
Ilario Huober is a senior International Relations major from Syracuse, N.Y., and is former Sports Editor of The Daily Pennsylvanian. His e-mail address is ihuober@sas.upenn.edu.
