DP Seniors offer some thoughts

I come from a place where college sports commands as much respect as Keith Elias at a Phi Beta Kappa meeting. There is only one real college in Dallas -- Southern Methodist. This is a school that has coped with its football program being dealt the death penalty, and then resurrected into a team that has about the same talent as Brown, whose most famous basketball graduate is -- gulp! -- Jon Koncak, and whose soccer field was best known as the home of the Dallas Tornadoes of the North American Soccer League. So it makes sense why SMU sports do not exactly rank as one of the top sporting venues in Dallas. The sport in Dallas is, you guessed it, football. (And that was true even when the Mavericks were good, mind you.) Yes, the Cowboys are two-time Super Bowl Champs, but college (not SMU) and high school gridiron action are up there as well. (Popular joke: What are the two most popular sports at the University of Texas? Football and spring football.) What's the point of all of this? Well, I just wanted to mention that although I have always been a sports junkie, on the eve of my high school graduation four years ago, I certainly did not think I could ever give two hoots about college sports. Four years later, I have come full circle. College sports is my life now (please, no jokes about my lack of a life, I know), thanks in large part to Penn, the Ivy League and especially DP Sports. I don't know exactly how this evolution came about. It wasn't as if I walked into the Quad my first day here and decided I would become a dedicated Quaker fan. Many of my friends said they knew beforehand Penn was one of the best athletic schools in the Ivy League. That was news to me. All I knew about Penn sports was that the Palestra was the greatest college basketball gym ever built. (This tidbit came from my Dad, a Temple graduate who spent many a night at Big 5 doubleheaders.) No, my initiation into the realm of Penn sports fanaticism came almost as randomly as my involvement with the DP, when two freshman hallmates dragged me to the intro meeting simply for some company. But as soon as I walked into the ugly confines that are the Pink Palace, I was hooked. It took longer, although not much longer, to get hooked on Penn sports. My first beat was freshman football, and the two things that stand out in my mind from that season go a long way in explaining why I became such a Penn sports maniac. (Those who know me well know that "maniac" is an understatement.) First of all, I remember sitting on the team bus on the way home from a 51-6 demolition at the hands of the Navy junior varsity. As coach Dennis Greene ripped into his players for a lack of effort, using almost every expletive in the book, I looked to my side and saw this huge, hulking offensive lineman break down in tears. I almost started crying myself. And although the team didn't necessarily like me very much (they were 1-5, I wrote about it, and they were not fond of that), I felt kind of like a part of that team, and I hurt with them. Secondly, I remember a feature I wrote on then-freshman quarterback Jimmy McGeehan, the precocious younger brother of Quaker quarterback of the 1980s John McGeehan (some family, huh). The story itself was pretty bad, and I didn't do Jimmy justice. But what I will take from that experience was sitting in Jimmy's room in the Quad, listening to him talk about his life, his family and football. It was at that point that I got the whole student-athlete thing. Sure, we don't have the same quality of athletes that are at Notre Dame and Miami, but we have real people, people like ourselves -- normal, everyday students with the same classes, the same worries and the same prospects for the future. It just so happens that these people have an incredible gift to perform on the field, on the court or wherever. When we cheer for any team here at Penn, we cheer for ourselves. And if we can't cheer for ourselves, then we most certainly can't expect anyone else to cheer for us. It is for that reason I embraced athletes such as Jerome Allen. Allen is blessed with a gift of being able to do whatever he wants, whenever he wants and however he wants on the basketball court. But that's not all. He studies his butt off in Wharton, works at the Mayor's office and sells concessions at Veterans Stadium. He and the majority of athletes here at Penn are real people, and you can't help but cheer for them at the top of your lungs every time. It is also for that reason why I despise people like Keith Elias. Whether I'd like to admit it or not, he also possesses a great athletic gift. But what else is he? This is a guy who said he worried about his teammates studying too much and losing focus the week of last fall's titanic Penn-Princeton clash. He would slack off for a while in preparation for the big game. It was poetic justice that the Ivy League's most celebrated football player of the year, one who mocked the ideas of the student-athlete system, choked big time and gained only 59 yards as Penn pounced on the Tigers en route to a perfect season. It is also for that reason why I abhor the likes of the Penn Athletic Department. If anyone should appreciate the accomplishments of student-athletes here at Penn, it should be outgoing AD Paul Rubincam and his soon-to-be outgoing staff. (Steve Bilsky, that could be your graduation present to me.) In my four years at the DP, I have been privy to some knowledge that may not otherwise have been available for public consumption. And the lack of concern (and simple brain activity) this administration has demonstrated for the needs of the athletes has been deplorable. I don't know how many times I have learned of athletes going to Rubincam or his lackeys with complaints over what is happening with their coach or their team. It's probably the same amount of times that Rubincam has said "we're working on it" or the number of rounds of golf he plays each year. The Athletic Department does not care about the athletes, and if there is ever a place where the AD should show some concern, it should be here at Penn and in other Ivy schools, where student-athletes are so much more important as people than at other schools. If the Athletic Department paid more attention to students' concerns, and less to raising money for construction, then maybe we would see less athletes walking off teams, and more coaches who have had pitiful records for the last few years given their walking papers. Over the last four years, the DP has instilled in me the desire to further the cause of the student-athlete, and I have tried to pass that on to the younger writers I have had the pleasure of working with in my year as editor. It is a sports writer's job not just to be a pain in the ass, but a competent pain in the ass. And while doing that won't make you many friends in high places, it will get you the respect of the athletes you are covering. And that was what was always most important to me while at the DP. I couldn't care less what Paul Rubincam and others think of me. It is the athletes that I care about. For if my peers can't and don't respect me, then I can and never will respect myself. Dan Feldman is from Dallas, Texas, and former sports editor of The Daily Pennsylvanian.

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