More from Monday's Media Day

You can read my column and Mikey Wiz's notebook on thedp.com/sports, but here are a few tidbits about the upcoming season we couldn't fit in:

Alternate uniforms: The Quakers went all- Nike in their gear, including new alternate uniforms. Senior WR Joe Holder discussed it a bit on his video yesterday, but here's some more from him:

Quite frankly I love them, they’re pretty stylish to say the least. With all the new gear that Nike gives, they finally got a little modern in their pro cut, which is great for receivers- it makes it easier to catch … It’s all about if you look good you play good, and the team seems to like the uniforms so we can’t complain.
Everybody pretty much enjoys all Nike stuff, especially with the warmup gear, it becomes more of loungewear too because it’s pretty stylish as opposed to some of the other stuff. But we won’t complain, just happy to get what’s given to us. Nike, they’re the best in the business, so if we switch to all Nike there’s nothing wrong with that.

With four starters returning to the offensive line, the talk of Media Day was replacing the loss of Greg Van Roten, who is currently playing with the Green Bay Packers. Both coach Al Bagnoli and offensive line coach/offensive coordinator Jon McLaughlin spoke about it, but McLaughlin's thoughts are really worth a read:

You’re never gonna replace one superstar with another guy of equal experience or maybe even equal talent, but what we really need to do is have those four guys coming back all improve their game exponentially and then that will be a better unit as a whole, so will we have Greg Van Roten out there? No, but we’ll have a good football player out there, and if the other four guys who are coming back all kind of take their game up, then collectively, I’m pretty excited about our starting five right now. I think we have a better offensive line to date than we did a year ago in preseason and just because we have some guys with playing experience and some guys with some confidence, and last year we were replacing six seniors – four starters and two backups – and so this year we’re replacing one starter and a backup and so we’re a much more veteran, much more confident offensive line. I think it’s showing so far in preseason camp, and that’s been good and that’s been fun. So we won’t replace Greg with one guy, but hopefully the sum of the parts will be better than what it’s been.

In addition to the task of reclaiming the Ivy trophy, Penn must first get through a tough non-conference schedule. This year they play two CAA teams (perennially the top conference in the FCS) in Villanova and William & Mary. Here's what QB Billy Ragone had to say about the early challenges:

I think if anything it’s going to help us. It’s going to prepare us for the Ivy League schedule. We’re going to prepare for these games just like we would an Ivy League game. You know, there’s always going to be injuries, dings and knicks and stuff but you just hope that nothing major to any major contributors is going to happen and some of that stuff is out of our control and if it happens, it happens and we’re going to have to deal with it. We obviously hope that it doesn’t happen to any of our players offensively and defensively.

And of course, my favorite part of media day involved filming a few segments of 30 Seconds With (which actually lasted about three minutes each). The print graphic is in Wednesday's paper, but you can watch the full video of lone senior captain Brandon Copeland below. Enjoy!