So this is how it ends for the Red and Blue, no strangers to heartbreak by any stretch, but filled with a season-long optimism that makes Saturday's loss - and ostensible elimination from title contention - that much harder to swallow.
Kicking blunders, gut-wrenching turnovers, potentially blown calls - the Quakers have been there before in recent years, sure. But all in a mad-cap fourth quarter, with so much on the line?
Even Mother Nature, it seemed, had put money down on the visiting Crimson.
"It was one of the weirdest wind days I could ever remember," Penn coach Al Bagnoli said, shaking his head. "We spent 60 minutes into the wind. It was unbelievable. I don't think I'm being facetious."
Let's state the obvious first: Great teams make their own breaks, and as resilient as they've been to even get themselves into contention, the 2008 Quakers are hardly a great team. Not with their revolving door at quarterback and lack of a go-to receiver.
In this season's Ancient Eight, though, greatness was not a prerequisite for a championship campaign. And of the three good teams with genuine shots at a title heading into last weekend (Penn, Harvard and Brown), the Quakers may well have been the goodest, the only squad with a defense worthy of an Ivy crown.
All of this seemed to hit Bagnoli at once after Saturday's game as he ran through the circumstances that had led to the crushing loss.
Twenty-seven first downs to Harvard's 12, a 150-yard edge on the ground and a discrepancy of nearly 200 overall.
"You kind of sit here and say, 'What'd you do wrong?'" Bagnoli said. "I don't know what else to tell you."
The questionable officiating seemed to stick in his craw more than anything else, a notable gripe from a coach who doesn't often express his displeasure with the men in stripes.
The main grievance stemmed from a play early in the fourth quarter, on a second-and-goal from the six with the Quakers down by 10. Quarterback Keiffer Garton rifled a low pass to a sliding Kyle Derham in the front of the end zone.
The sideline official ruled that he trapped the nose of the ball against the turf. Garton, Derham and Bagnoli all pleaded their cases to the zebras afterwards, to no avail.
The significance of the episode - especially after kicker Andrew Samson pushed the ensuing 23-yard field goal right of the goal posts - is not difficult to grasp in the context of a three-point loss.
"Wow ." Bagnoli sighed, bringing the play up unprovoked, absent any reporter's question. "That looked like it was not even close to a trap. Maybe I had a bad angle."
Maybe he did - or maybe his squad got hosed. In either case, the same sentiment that came over Quakers fans on their way out of Franklin Field doubtlessly permeated the Penn locker room as well.
To paraphrase a cinematic classic courtesy of Marlon Brando, "We coulda been a contender . "
Matt Flegenheimer is a sophomore Economics major from New York. His e-mail address is mfleg@dailypennsylvanian.com.
