Midway through the 20th Century, the University of Pennsylvania stunned the sports world by scrapping its famous big-time football program in exchange for the academic prestige of membership in the newly created Ivy League. This astonishing choice ultimately helped catapult Penn into the ranks of the world’s great universities.
But in the short run, it brought pain and confusion to countless Penn players, coaches, administrators, and fans who were caught in the gears of this transition. Their personal stories, told here for the first time, paint a rare picture of what it was like to play college football during Penn’s most glorious years of the 1940s and during the turmoil that followed.