The long road to Palestra glory begins at The Line

Tomorrow, the difference between a man and a boy will be a number on their wrists. Tomorrow, the Pretenders will wake up early after a night of partying and start to watch cartoons while the Warriors trek to their place in... The Line. The Line is capitalized because it is longer than a simple queue for a bank teller on a Saturday afternoon and congregates those with more hunger and passion than your average lunchtime crowd at Le Petite Creperie. Saturday will yet again mark the start of an annual event like no other at Penn -- the wait for prime season tickets for men's basketball. The reward for these loyal fans is unparalleled. For them, a seat in or near the front row in the Mecca of college basketball awaits. For them, the benefits include being the first to storm the court after winning a third consecutive Ivy League championship and a berth to the Big Dance. Penn basketball at the Palestra is more than an immensely gratifying form of entertainment; it is the gathering of past, present and future in the same building -- it is a living, breathing embodiment of Penn tradition. If Ben Franklin were alive today, he would give it all up -- all of it -- to have center court seats, student section, front row. And once he had those seats for the season, he wouldn't use them -- he would be standing for the entire game. Beating our Ivy brethren by upward of 40 points is more than another athletic competition at Penn -- it is an all-too-rare assertion of our dominance in a group of schools we too often envision as our superiors. In the Palestra, the U.S. News darlings of Harvard, Yale and Princeton are nothing but minor speed bumps on our way to the championship. Those in the student section know that nothing can replicate the feeling of pummeling our smarmy neighbors from Jersey in a game that they take equally as seriously and fight equally as hard to win. Alas, the sour taste of disappointment will be all the Tigers get this year. But I shouldn't need to sell this season on promises of an Ivy title, a Princeton bludgeoning or a national upset or two along the way -- the experience speaks for itself. Regardless of the team's win-loss record, games at the Palestra are an integral part of a complete Penn experience. You have your Econ Scream, your Hey Day, your toast-throwing and, above all, you have your throat-hoarse-from-screaming pain after a Quakers basketball game. The warriors this weekend at Hutchinson Gymnasium know this already. They've been waiting all offseason after a painful loss to Illinois in the NCAAs. Their only solace was that next year is always around the corner. And next year, my friends, starts tomorrow. Get out your blue and red face paint, work on your signs for the December 7 home opener against La Salle and exercise your knees for standing at attention for extended periods of time. If you were lucky enough to get a low-numbered wristband and are planning to spend the weekend down at Hutch with images of crying Princeton fans dancing through your head, good for you. If you didn't, it's not too late to get a group together and participate in the fun starting tomorrow at 11:00 a.m. And if that doesn't appeal to you, the least you can do is trek down to the ticket office early Monday morning -- tickets go on sale for non-Line participants at 11:00 -- and get yourself a season ticket. You may miss out on the fun in the Line, but you'll participate in a spectacle like no other at this university. Meanwhile, I'll be getting my sleeping bag and food rations together for two uncomfortable nights of sleep -- but it'll be worth it in a few weeks when the season starts. That's when the quality of a four-year tenure at Penn isn't a matter of ranking in a magazine. It's a matter of spirit you taste, smell and feel in the Palestra -- a spirit that no endowment, no student-faculty ratio, no SAT score can ever replace. It's a matter of passion, and it's something you'll start to see this weekend at The Line.

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