Weightman Hall

It’s the journey, not the hardware

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With the 2017-18 Ivy hoops season coming upon us, I wish to share with you my one encounter with the Ivy League football championship trophy.

In 1982 I was doing post-graduate work on campus in a subject that will remain classified. (However, I will tell you that it was replete with the “three Ms”—math, molecules and, therefore, misery.) It was also the year that Penn football vaulted from doormat status to Ivy League champion. Up until this time, the football team was so incredibly bad. I once watched an opening kickoff squib a mere seven yards.

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Lenses on Penn basketball’s expenses

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There has been much talk in the past several years, particularly this season, about how much or little support Penn Athletics has received from the university.

It must be noted that the problem for Penn Athletics isn’t the inability to spend. According to data from the Office of Postsecondary Education, Penn’s annual expenses since 2004 – the start of Amy Gutmann’s presidency at Penn – average out to 30,644,364, the highest average in expenses in the Ivy League in that span:

Average Annual Athletics Expenses Since 2004

  1. Penn 30,644,364
  2. Yale 27,483,608
  3. Princeton 19,230,050
  4. Harvard 18,707,094
  5. Columbia 18,703,370
  6. Dartmouth 18,673,655
  7. Cornell 18,589,023
  8. Brown 15,175,837

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