Football
Wenik | Amidst chaos, a search to save football’s soul
There’s a movement afoot in the National Football League to sanitize the game. High-dollar fines for helmet-to-helmet hits make headlines. Snazzy commercials with Ray Lewis, Tom Brady and men in white lab coats dazzle viewers. But everything the NFL does today comes with a tacit admission that football is an inherently violent sport.Players, critics weigh in on football's concussion crisis
To see if football has a future, I know I have to go inside the game. From the people who have been there. Who know that there’s something more to the game than just violence…
Double duty for senior athletes
After balancing school and athletics for three and a half years, nobody would blame senior football players C.J. Mooney and Dave Twamley for relaxing their last semester. Instead, they decided to double up and play for the lacrosse team this spring.
Three Penn football seniors prepare for NFL pro day
On Monday, they will participate in an NFL pro day at Villanova with 15 other college players, where they hope to impress various NFL and Canadian Football League (CFL) scouts.Your Voice | Preserving a dream
I was disheartened to see so many fellow students in the crowd show support to someone who presented a case to ultimately break up a huge part of what contributes to Penn tradition based largely on their admiration of his personal status.
Gladwell's condemnation of football raises eyebrows
Malcolm Gladwell — the British-Canadian journalist and author of The New York Times bestsellers “The Tipping Point,” “Blink” and “Outliers” — raised a controversy and a trail of questions Thursday night after his lecture at the Harrison Auditorium in the Penn Museum.
Strong | Once equals, Penn football now worlds apart from Notre Dame
Back when college football players didn’t wear shoulder pads and the most popular national sports were boxing and horse racing, Notre Dame and Penn were both competitive gridiron programs.
Jaffe | Lesson learned: Don't doubt the Bagnoli System
Al Bagnoli stubbornly ran the ball over and over again in the first half against Cornell at a rate of less than 1.3 yards per carry, but it paid off in the end. The lesson? Trust Al Bagnoli.
Wisniewski | Quakers had will to win this season
Penn’s title teams of 2009 and 2010 may have run the Ivy League table, but the 2012 version is the most impressive of the current dynasty.
Penn football clinches outright Ivy League title
Penn football earned its third outright Ivy League championship in four years Saturday afternoon with a 35-28 win over Cornell.
Tony | Jeff Mathews, meet Dan Davis
Penn’s biggest advantage to stopping Jeff Mathews and the Cornell passing attack on Saturday lies with getting to him with the linebacking corps.
Penn football's dynasty bid up to Holland
Andrew Holland will make his first career start when the Quakers head north to Ithaca, N.Y., on Saturday to take on Cornell in a bid for the outright Ivy League title.
Alter | Penn linemen were unsung heroes in title-clinching game
Saturday, with the season on the line, the Quakers in the trenches were the imposers and the Harvard Crimson the imposed upon. The result was another Ivy League title and victory cigars all around.
Greg Van Roten practicing on Packers' first team
Van Roten, who graduated from Penn in the spring of 2012, is now more than halfway through his rookie NFL season with the Green Bay Packers and serving as a backup center.
Loftus and Lopano just kicking it
Starting kicker Connor Loftus and starting punter and holder Scott Lopano like to have fun while they are waiting for their turn on the gridiron. But when they’ve gotten on the field this season, they have done a near-flawless job.Wisniewski | Penn football gives fans a reason to believe
Leading up to the de facto Ivy championship tilt against Harvard, I still didn’t give the post-Yale Quakers much of a chance. But boy, did they prove me wrong.
Red and Blue had Ragone’s back in the clutch
It happened on the final play of the third quarter. Penn, up 21-14 at the time, faced a crucial third down with three yards to go on the Harvard 36. Ragone, as he had already done 15 times that afternoon, tucked the football away and took off running. He scrambled seven yards — easily enough for the first — before he was brought down violently around the neck by the Crimson’s Nnamdi Obukwelu.
Phillips | Penn finds its identity and gets the job done
On Saturday, the Penn football team showed what it could do and then some, clinching at least a share of the Ancient Eight crown with a victory over a favored Crimson squad.
Penn football beats Harvard for share of Ivy title
Harvard won the opening coin toss, but not much more would go right for the Crimson at Franklin Field after that, as the Quakers scored on their opening drive and never trailed in a 30-21 victory.