Wenik | It's time for Penn football to take Villanova off the schedule

I f you were in attendance at Franklin Field on Saturday, you probably knew exactly how Penn football’s game against No. 6 Villanova was going to end up.

Okay, so James Brown wasn’t leading the Quakers onto the field to the tune of “Living in America,” but this was a mismatch of “Rocky IV” proportions.

Willing or not, the Red and Blue basically played the role of Apollo Creed to the Wildcats’ Ivan Drago — a shorter, slower throwback to simpler times ... hopelessly out of their element nowadays.

Proponents of the Penn-Villanova series point to its history — an origin that dates back to 1905 ­— and the civic pride element that comes with two Big 5 schools duking it out on the football field instead of a basketball court.

But one look at the stats from Saturday’s 41-7 blowout brings to light a tired old cliché about history: Those who don’t learn from it are doomed to make the same mistakes.

Last year, Villanova held the Quakers to 20 rushing yards on 30 carries in a 35-6 demolition. In fact, Penn has lost its last 14 games to the Wildcats, which begs a question: What did the Penn athletic department think was going to happen when it put this game on the schedule?

Saturday’s results may have been worse than anyone on the Quakers’ coaching staff could have imagined. Villanova put up 567 yards of total offense. Su perstar quarterback John Robertson — playing with a cast on his broken non-throwing hand and an injured hip — threw four touchdown passes in the first half, which earned him the rest of the day off.

The ultimate humiliation may have come on a 54-yard touchdown run by running back Gary Underwood up the middle to make the score 21-0 with 3:32 to go in the first quarter. Underwood turned Penn cornerback Kevin Ijoma around entirely, leaving him grasping at air and showing three packed sections of students just how far behind the Quakers are from their neighbors.

“I remember the games [against Penn] when we were fighting for our lives,” Villanova coach Andy Talley said. “So there are gonna be years when we’re gonna be rebuilding and years when they’re rebuilding, and this is one of those years. And so it looks a little lopsided.

“But this is a game I would like to see continue, because Penn has the same problem [we do]: Who are they gonna play out of league?”

What kind of impression, though, does such a big loss give to the Penn students in attendance — many of which were freshmen receiving their first exposure to sports on campus? The Quakers are surely far better than Saturday’s score indicates, and should be in contention for the Ivy title. But the students that left early might not know that fact — or care.

Penn will travel up to Dartmouth next week for its Ivy opener — the same Big Green team that took the Quakers to four overtimes last year. And Dartmouth has a solid dual-threat QB of its own in Dalyn Williams.

“Hopefully we can use this as a learning mechanism and kind of move forward, but things don’t get tremendously easier,” coach Al Bagnoli said. “As I told everybody, now you get to take a seven-hour bus ride to Dartmouth, and a week after, you get to go to [No. 16]Fordham.”

Yet Penn will possibly have to face Williams and co. without senior linebacker Dan Davis and junior safety Trent Dennington. Both suffered concussions during the game.

When Drago was brutalizing Apollo in the ring, Duke desperately yelled for Rocky to “throw in the damn towel.”

He waited until it was too late, but Penn’s athletic department shouldn’t.

Throw in the towel. Don’t play Villanova anymore.

Please note All comments are eligible for publication in The Daily Pennsylvanian.