The contest was billed as The Game of The Century.
On a rainy Saturday in 1993, Penn and Princeton faced off at Franklin Field, each bringing a 7-0 record. The last time two undefeated teams had met this late into a season was 1968.
In front of a Homecoming crowd of over 35,000, Princeton got the ball first - but wouldn't have it for long. Penn capitalized on a Tigers fumble on the first drive and never let Princeton closer than a touchdown en route to a 30-14 victory.
As the jubilant Quakers fans tore down the goalposts, the reality of the game sunk in for many on the Penn squad.
The Red and Blue had defeated one of their toughest foes, winning their 10th game in a row.
This was really happening. There was no denying it now. The Streak was here.
During The Streak, as it is known in Ivy football lore, Penn won 24 straight games over four seasons in the 1990s. It remains the longest winning streak in FCS history (Montana tied the mark in 2002).
At the time, it would serve to restore pride to 33rd Street and lift a program out of a slump. But before The Streak could commence with a two-point win over Harvard in November of 1992, there needed to be changes within the Penn program. One was with the coaching staff.
In 1991, Penn toiled to a 2-8 finish, its third-straight losing campaign. But losing wasn't something to which the Quakers were accustomed. With six Ivy titles during the previous decade, another one felt overdue.
After the season ended, Penn's head coach of three years, Gary Steele, stepped down. In his place, athletic director Paul Rubincam hired a man from Union College with an 86-19 record and four undefeated seasons.
His name was Al Bagnoli.
He stormed in, taking the Quakers to a 7-3 finish (5-2 Ivy), just one game shy of a share of the Ancient Eight Crown during his first season. The last two wins of the year would become part of The Streak.
"When I got here, they had talented kids and for whatever reasons, it just wasn't as operational a program as you'd ideally want," Bagnoli said. "We needed to give them some confidence. There was a little bit of a confidence issue."
Bagnoli brought with him "The System," a multi-formation offense combined with a 5-2 defense, different from the schemes employed throughout the league.
Entering his sophomore season when Bagnoli was hired, Michael "Pup" Turner, a running back-turned-defensive end, sensed the change in the locker room and on the field.
"Coach Bagnoli ran a tight ship," Turner said. "He was very organized and business-like and that resonated with us."
In Bagnoli's first contest in 1992, the Quakers looked sharp. Playing a Dartmouth team which featured future NFL quarterback Jay Fiedler, Penn went into the locker room in Hanover, N.H., at the break up, 7-0.
But in the second half, Fiedler torched Penn for five touchdowns and the Quakers fell, 36-17.
"I remember on the bus ride home . kind of a resolute feeling that we weren't going to go through that again," Turner recalled.
Penn opened the 1993 season against the Big Green, trying to prove it could now play with the big boys of the League.
The Quakers held on for a 10-6 victory over the three-time defending Ivy champs.
Mission accomplished.
But while hosting 0-3 Fordham two weeks later, the Red and Blue found themselves down, 24-14, at the half after missing four field goals. Before they even really knew it had started, The Streak could have ended there.
Then, the Quakers engineered one of their biggest comebacks of The Streak.
The defense allowed Fordham's quarterback to complete just one pass in the second half and Penn escaped, 34-30.
"That was a time where we needed to dig down on both sides of the ball," then-sophomore wide receiver Miles Macik said. "To me, that's what started it for us, that we could clamp down pretty much no matter what situation was thrown at us."
After emerging from the Game of the Century unscathed, the Quakers were, as The Daily Pennsylvanian headline boasted, "8-0 with two to go."
Next up was Harvard, which had a particular hold over the Quakers in New England.
"The alums got me nervous, to be honest with you," Bagnoli said. "We won at Princeton and then someone came up and said we hadn't won a game at Harvard since 1970-something."
But for the first time in 20 years, Penn left Boston with a victory, 27-20.
The Quakers clinched their eighth Ivy title and, for the icing on the cake, a win the following week gave Penn its first undefeated season since 1986.
Bagnoli and his players claim that they rarely talked about The Streak. It wasn't the team's focus; the goal was winning games one by one.
"Realistically, we went out and tried to shut out teams and we knew if we did that, the streak took care of itself," said then-defensive coordinator Mike Toop, now at the helm of his alma mater, the U.S. Merchant Marine Academy.
Penn was on a tear, but getting to 24 wins was not easy. The Quakers never completely dominated their opponents; half of their victories during The Streak came by a margin of 10 points or less.
"We knew teams were going to play their best against us because word had gotten out about how many games we had won," Macik said. "We really had to come together as a team."
In 1994, with future MLBer Mark DeRosa at quarterback, Penn ran the table and took home the Ivy crown again, completing the school's first back-to-back flawless seasons since 1904 and 1905.
Now the Quakers seemed invincible. Some people clamored that the League should lift its playoff ban on its teams. A number of the players, including Macik, entered the 1995 season never on the losing side of a college football game.
Penn's luck almost ran out in Week 3 against Bucknell.
With just over a minute to play, the Bison scored on a long pass to go up, 19-17. Yet an excessive celebration penalty gave the Quakers good starting field position. Penn got close enough for kicker Jeremiah Greathouse to punch in a 41-yard field goal with 27 seconds left to lift Penn to an improbable 20-19 victory.
The Streak was still intact for now, but the very next week, Columbia proved to be the first team in nearly three years that Penn couldn't overcome.
"They played pretty much a perfect game," Bagnoli said. "I don't remember a turnover by them. It was just a huge defensive game."
Columbia, a team that once boasted its own streak - 44 straight losses during the 1980s - halted Penn's winning streak at 24 games with a 24-14 victory.
"I didn't know how to react," Macik said. "I hadn't lost a college football game in three years. I can remember sitting on the bus home and I didn't know how to feel."
During The Streak, Bagnoli solidified his place in Penn's coaching history, records were etched in the books and three future NFL players, five All-America selections and 21 first-team All-Ivy players competed for Penn on the Franklin Field turf.
A certain bond formed among the players of the 1992-95 teams that can still be found a decade and a half later.
"It's playing with guys that, some of them are your best friends and some of them you probably wouldn't have been friends with if you weren't on the team," Macik said. "It sounds crazy to say, but on game days you're going out there and laying it all on the line for each other."
Turner, now a teacher and coach, uses his experience to motivate his students.
"The phrase that stuck with me was that 'It was the thing done well,'" Turner said. "For the rest of your life, you have an example of how to do something the right way."
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