$2.6 Million dollars advertisers paid for a 30-second ad during Sunday night's Super Bowl game. Source: USA Today

The Penn women's basketball team boarded the bus in New Haven, Conn. having hit a new low. The game was theirs. They had a 20-point lead. Then the Elis bullied their way back, clinching the game with 6.9 seconds left. Final score: Yale 53, Penn 52. The Quakers' conference record: 1-4.

For many legacy students, the benefits of having alumni connections extend beyond the reassurance gained during the application process. These connections also helped put Penn in their minds as they begun to consider various schools - even though some had doubts about following in their family's footsteps.

Penn has a lot going for it. It boasts an all-star faculty, majestic buildings with the requisite ivy and its famous founder. But for many of its students, Penn also means family. College freshman Joseph Dubroff's first memory of Penn is of playing on the button as a three year old while visiting his oldest brother.

It seemed to me Saturday night that Penn thought it was better than Yale and did not have to exert the maximum effort to beat the Elis on the road. That turned out to be false, as Yale gave the Quakers a wake-up call with a 77-68 win. But it was not so far from absurd.

One year later, a plan to improve MBA life may still require a bit more work. The MBA Executive Committee - chaired by Statistics professor Ed George, composed of Wharton faculty and students and charged with setting the direction for most of the Wharton MBA program - issued a four-point plan last February.

University architects may be planning to replace black parking lots with green grass, but administrators are working to keep Penn's budget out of the red.

Before coming to Penn this semester, Nicolas Luna was worried about the "hard American life," as he calls it - working hard, studying hard, partying hard. But Luna, an exchange student from Argentina, had one thing to ease his transition - a Penn student to show him the ropes of Philadelphia.

The Undergraduate Assembly's advising reforms wisely encourage better advisor-advisee relations, accessibility.

Former Penn professor Tracy McIntosh and the University of Pennsylvania have both reached settlements in a civil suit filed by the graduate student McIntosh sexually assaulted in 2002, according to case records filed in the Philadelphia Court of Common Pleas.

College senior Bryce LeFort has been suspended by the University for the spring and fall 2007 semesters for violating the University's Code of Student Conduct, according to a suspension agreement shown to The Daily Pennsylvanian. The person who gave the DP access to the document has requested anonymity due to the agreement's confidential nature.

"The key is to get the ball rollin' and keep it rollin', and we've got that ball rollin'." Coach Charlie Powell and the men's track team certainly lived up to his credo at the Giegengack Invitational hosted by Yale University this weekend. The Penn men's team set nine IC4A qualifying marks, led by junior Tim Kaijala, who not only set an IC4A mark but also set an NCAA provisional mark in the 800-meter run.

When Joey Rhoads was honored before Saturday's game for reaching the 1,000-point plateau, she walked into the stands, hugged her parents, and handed them the commemorative ball she received. That was the only time all night she left the court, and the only time she gave up the ball.

Ekaterina Kosminskaya's first home match was a brief one. In less than an hour the freshman won twelve straight games and put away Richmond's number one player, Pamela Duran, 6-0, 6-0. The rest of the afternoon didn't go much better for the visiting Spiders, as the Quakers won 6-1 in a convincing fashion.

NEW HAVEN, Conn., Feb. 3 - The John J. Lee Amphitheater has been a bad place for the Penn seniors to play. Up to last weekend, Mark Zoller, Ibrahim Jaaber and Stephen Danley had lost two games here, and won last year by only two points.

Three straight wins in one weekend - the best medicine for a losing streak. After a tough loss to Hofstra last week, Penn wrestling responded in dominating fashion, winning its three varsity matches this past weekend at the Palestra. The Quakers started out strong Friday morning with a 33-4 decision over Brown.

Ace classes, get diploma, leave for New York City - four challenging years at the University of Pennsylvania can be pretty simple for some students. However, in the not-so-distant future, the last of these steps just might change: Instead of a one-way ticket to New York, Penn students may soon be buying Septa tickets across the Schuylkill to stay in Philadelphia.