The Century in Sports, continued

1960s: Decade of Defeats

One of the soothing aspects of sports is that for the most part they exist in their own little vacuum, oblivious to, and unaffected by, the turmoil in the world outside the white lines. That changed during the 1960s, as the athletic department found itself beset with crises from within and without.

Penn President Gaylord P. Harnwell Hon’53 summed up the state of Penn athletics in a 1964 letter reprinted in the Gazette: “There are those, of whom I am frank to admit I am one, who believe that in recent years not all of our athletic achievements have kept pace with the rich traditions of the past. Our total efforts should produce our fair share of victories.” The slump to which Harnwell referred was genuine: from the fall of 1955 to the spring of 1964, Penn’s teams won 334 games and lost 512, an underwhelming winning percentage of 39 percent.

A committee recommended improving facilities, consolidating the athletic and physical-education departments under one director, and lifting the ban on spring football practice. “We should enter every contest with a team that is capable of playing on a par with its opponent and with a reasonable expectation of winning,” the Gazette quoted from the report in February 1965. “Only if we greatly improve our facilities, the participation of our students, and the morale of the whole University family can we hope to obtain this modest goal.”

The wins did not come fast enough to save the job of athletic director Jerry Ford, who was asked to resign in 1967, reportedly after confronting University officials about rumors of Penn’s football team conducting spring practice, and of a slush fund being used to pay for athletes’ tutoring, both in violation of Ivy League rules. Dr. Harry Fields, assistant to the president for athletic affairs, admitted some rules had been broken but termed the violations “innocuous.” To replace Ford, Penn went outside the Ivy League to hire former UConn assistant athletic director Fred Shabel. In contrast to Ford, who was seen as a zealous defender of Ivy rules and regulations, Shabel brought a more business-like attitude to the job, telling the Gazette in November 1967 that what was needed was “massive organization, massive selling, massive public relations, and massive heart.”

By decade’s end, the new approach had begun to pay off. Penn’s teams had a 64 percent winning percentage (72-41) in 1968-69, a figure that rose to 70 percent if the 1-11 men’s ice-hockey team, resurrected the year before and destined for extinction within 10 years, was discounted.

Penn vs. the NCAA

As Penn’s results on the field improved incrementally through the mid-’60s, the University and the rest of the Ivy League ran afoul of the NCAA in 1966 over, of all things, academic standards. The Ivy schools refused to cleave to the NCAA’s rule that all student-athletes must have a 1.6 grade-point average (out of 4.0) to be eligible to compete. As Penn’s Ford said at the time, “How could the Ivies accept legislation that assumed a distinction between ‘student-athletes’ and the rest of the student body?” In February 1966, the Gazette’s Frank Dolson pointed out, “Here was a law passed for the purpose of forcing low-standard schools to raise their academic level that might result in penalties being imposed upon a league noted for its high standards.”

The punishment came swiftly. Penn’s Ivy-champion men’s basketball team was banned from the NCAA Tournament, declared academically ineligible, “to compete with the High IQ boys from Syracuse in a tournament eventually captured by the Mental Giants of Texas Western,” as Dolson wrote sarcastically in April. Twelve years later, in a letter to the Gazette, Stan Pawlak C’66, a member of that team, wrote that “my disappointment has turned into a degree of bitterness” over the decision by Ford, “who simply wanted to make an unnecessary stand on the issue.”

Coach George Munger Ed'33 (above) never had a losing season at Penn, until his last in 1953. After going winless in 1954 and 1955, Penn finally ended the drought against Dartmouth in 1956. Under Coach Jerry Berndt, the football team dominated once again in the 1980s, winning five ivy titles in a row. Bottom left: the Quakerettes—not technically cheerleaders, who were still all male, but members of the band—cheering nonetheless in 1968.

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