Midseason awards

Halftime. Time for the bands to come out and perform their occasionally-funny shows and time to watch hungover students shank the kick for cheesesteaks.

Also time to hand out the midseason hardware, both for Penn and for the rest of the Ivy League.

Offensive player of the half-year:
Penn: Joe Sandberg. The versatile senior has done it with power running, bursts of speed and from time to time, good hands out of the backfield. Sandberg is third in the league with 107 rushing yards per game and also ranks third with six total touchdowns.

Ivy League: Clifton Dawson. The Harvard running back continues his pursuit of the inevitable as he tears apart Ivy defenses. Dawson ranks first in the Ivy League in all-purpose yards and scoring and now stands 401 yards short of Ed Marinaro's Ivy League career rushing record. Honorable mentions to Yale RB Mike McLeod and Princeton QB Jeff Terrell

Defensive players of the half-year:
Penn: Brian Fairbanks and Joe Anastasio. The duo leads a front seven that has been among the league's best. Fairbanks leads the league with 8.5 tackles for a loss and Anastasio is eight tackles clear of the field for the team lead with 41 tackles.

Ivy League: Zak DeOssie. The Brown linebacker is about the only thing the 1-4 Bears have going for them. DeOssie is second in the league with 53 tackles and is way ahead of the pack with 36 solo. Honorable mentions: Harvard's entire run defense.

Trend of the half-year:
Penn: Fourth quarter issues. The Quakers haven't won a fourth quarter in any of their five games. It's only come back to hurt them once, and that might have been the game -- vs. Villanova -- when they played the best fourth-quarter football.

Ivy League: Academic issues, unspecified violations of team rules, midfield brawls, on-campus assaults, press conference meltdowns, senior skit hijinks, fast-food joint melees and a partridge in a pear tree.

Pleasant surprise of the half-year:
Penn: Robert Irvin. The sophomore stepped ahead of Bryan Walker on the depth chart and left the coaching staff with no regrets. Honorable mentions: Red zone "D," Gregory Ambrogi's punt returns, Soph. starter Tyson Maugle's INTs.

Ivy League: Yale's performance. Coming off a down year, and really a down decade, the Elis went shook off an embarrassing loss in the opener to go 2-0 against Lehigh and Lafayette. Now McLeod and crew are looking for a 3-0 start in the Ivies for the first time since 1989. Honorable mention: Ivy's 14-5 mark against the Patriot League.

Disappointment of the half-year:
Penn: Hard to say when out of the 30 team statistical categories, the only one Penn is last in is opponents' penalty yards. A disappointment in the sad sense is sophomore wideout Dan Coleman, who was a pleasant surprise with his cracking the lineup in the preseason and his breakout performance. But it turned to disappointment with an ankle injury, and he hasn't made a catch since.

Ivy League: Brown. Looks like the Bears didn't really win the Ivy League last year. Nick Hartigan won the Ivy League.