Hey football fans, it's Tommy here again. We were gonna have Will Snow write this week's Swami blurb as the football squad heads into week two, but we figured Penn would be upset if we let that much alcohol anywhere near our football coverage.
See, the good ol' lad, young Willie Bear, the Junior Comma Sports Editor, pride of Nashville, Tennessee, most-blessed-and-best-dressed, turns 21 today. And so if you find any typos in today's paper, it's because we sent after midnight.
Yep, everyone's favorite #AllAroundGoodGuy has an uphill battle today if he plans on making it to all his classes. And speaking of uphill battles, Penn football faces a Division I football team on Saturday.
I'll be honest, I wasn't impressed with Penn's showing against DII Ohio Dominican last week. Which is fine— I was never going to be impressed. Impressing while playing a DII team, where a blowout is expected and anything less is concerning? Now THAT'S an uphill battle.
But the fact of the matter is, that first game sent up a huge red flag. My former colleague (as a sports editor, a Swami, and a resident of the hallowed halls of the Beehive) Tom Nowlan wrote a column titled, "Penn football's win over Ohio Dominican taught us very little." I disagree (although if you take words two-through-six out of that headline, I'd concede it reflects my feelings on the Writing Seminar I'm currently taking).
Now, the Quakers didn't lose last week. And they won by a decent margin at the end of the day. But they let the other team score first, they were losing at halftime, and it was all too clear that, while one of these new gunslingers might blossom into the answer, things are going to be different without Alek Torgersen around, at least for now. Penn sprint football beat Caldwell, a team playing its first-ever CSFL game, by a score of 69-6. The heavyweights' performance against a DII squad should have been equally convincing, and it wasn't.
And now the Red and Blue must tangle with a Lehigh squad that beat Penn each of the last two seasons, when the Quakers were talented enough to call themselves Ivy League champions.
Of course, Lehigh lost to Yale last week, badly. The Quakers now have a game under their belt, and will be taking this game far more seriously than they did the last one, no matter what clichés you may have heard about every game being the same. Penn could very well win on Saturday.
And Will Snow could very well make good decisions on Thursday.
I just can't say I EXPECT those things to happen.
Prediction: Lehigh 35, Penn 21
Check out below for everybody's nicknames, picks and beautiful headshots!
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