34th Street Magazine's "Toast" is a semi-weekly newsletter with the latest on Penn's campus culture and arts scene. Delivered Monday-Wednesday-Friday.
Free.
When I went home for Thanksgiving break a few weeks ago, I engaged in all of the holiday-season small-talk with family that one might expect.
Yes, I was enjoying life at school.
When Penn football marched on to the field in Bethlehem Pennsylvania on Sept. 19th, it did not resemble Ray Priore’s team that was crowned Ivy League champions on Saturday.
After Penn football’s week two victory against fourth-ranked Villanova, my colleague Colin Henderson made a bold statement: The Quakers' win was no fluke.
Five games into the season, with the Red and Blue sitting at 2-3 heading into Friday’s game against Yale, I still didn’t know what to make of that statement.
As a first year coach, there is reason to be nervous about a lot of things. But delivering a successful snap to the quarterback isn't necessarily one of them.
Anyone who says numbers never lie didn’t watch Penn’s offense last season.
A year ago, then-sophomore quarterback Alek Torgerson was near the top of not only the Ivy League, but the entire Football Championship Subdivision in multiple passing categories.
In the lexicon of collegiate coaches, “expectations” has become somewhat of a taboo subject.
As an illustrative example, think about the approach of Penn’s famously process-oriented track and cross country coach, Steve Dolan.
It’s a running joke that sports interviews are decidedly uninformative. At best, they involve a string of very sincere platitudes. At worst, they are with Jerome Allen.
“No.”
Penn women’s soccer coach Darren Ambrose didn’t have much to say to me when I asked him what changed in the second half of his team’s 8-0 win over NJIT, the first game I ever covered (they only scored three goals in the final 45 minutes).