Brandon Copeland the captain of the Ivy League champion Penn Quakers

All is not lost as far as football is concerned in Philadelphia this Fall while the Eagles have struggled the University of Pennsylvania has captured the Ivy League championship. The Quakers claimed the title outright on Saturday with a 35-28 win at Cornell. It’s the 16^th time overall and 13^th outright title in Penn’s history. Head coach Al Bagnoil collected his ninth league championship – all outright – in his 21^st season leading the Quakers. This senior class is the fifth in school history to leave with three Ancient Eight championships joining the 1985,1986,1987 and 2004 classes.

In the Bagnoli era, six of the nine championship teams were undefeated in Ivy League play and three of those didn’t lose a single game. So the Quakers have had some dominating teams. For example, the 2009 team finished 8-2 overall and perfect in the league thanks to a defense that allowed 58 points in the seven Ivy League contests. They gave up just 21 points over the final five games and had a pair of shutouts.

The 2012 team had to work for everything they got.

“It wouldn’t be us if we didn’t make it interesting,” said defensive tackle and team captain Brandon Copeland following the win over Cornell. In the game, the Quakers took the lead for good with one minute to play and time ran out with the Big Red at the Penn eight-yard line.

It was typical of Penn’s season. In the Ivy opener at Dartmouth, they were up 20-0 at halftime only to see the Big Green pull to within seven with three and a half minutes to go. Against Columbia, they scored twice in the final seven and a half minutes to overcome a 10-point deficit and still needed a game saving tackle at the three-yard line as time expired. After their only league loss – at Yale – the Quakers needed a pair of field goals in the final 2:12 to beat Brown. The script was no different against rival Princeton, a late touchdown gives Penn the lead and the defense forces a turnover with the Tigers facing a third-and-goal at the six-yard line. The 30-21 final over defending league champion and preseason favorite Harvard might be deceiving but the win over the Crimson and their high-powered offense (which the Quakers held to over 200 yards below their per game average) wasn’t sealed until Copeland got a sack for a safety with less than two minutes to go. Perhaps the least dramatic game all season might have been the 27-13 loss to the Bulldogs but that might have been the Quakers most important game.

“Based on where we were coming off that Yale game, I didn’t recognize our team,” Bagnoli said. “Sometimes, thank God for long bus rides because you get a chance to really think about things. Ever since then, to our kids credit, they regrouped and refocused.”

“After that loss to Yale,” Copeland said, “we (the seniors) sat together in the locker room and (running back) Jeff Jack said, ‘we’ve won championships before and swept the Ivy League two times but this one would be that much sweeter if we could comeback and run the table.’ He was right. It wasn’t easy, it wasn’t perfect and it wasn’t pretty at all but the seniors led practice from that day on. We were hard on each other and tried to practice perfect so we could play even better. After that Yale game, I think you’ve seen a huge turn in our team in terms of energy and aggressiveness. Our team could have splintered but we stayed together. There weren’t many easy wins but 30 years from now we all remember this season as a testament to as long as you believe anything is possible.”

e-mail Rock Hoffman at RDVSports@yahoo.com