The Cornell to the Big 10 Debate Continues...

It is now obvious that we are all really missing our beloved Ivy League Basketball...

In the down time of the offseason, we tossed out the idea of "Cornell and the Big 10 potentially... a perfect marriage." Well, it seems like the debate has spread across Ivy blogs. First the Daily Pennsylvanian mocked us, then the Ivy Gate Blog ridiculed the idea as well. Now the Daily Pennsylvanian points out that some of UPenn's alums want the Quakers to join the ACC!

The D.P. writes:

As a follow up to my post yesterday about Cornell joining the Big Ten, Ivy Gate has their own take on the matter. I strongly advise you to take a look at some of the links in that article.

I should add that on the basketball-u boards, a similar discussion of Penn joining the ACC is happening, though most commentators realize that’s not going to happen. Instead, there’s interesting talk about a (hypothetical) conference of solid academic institutions that also have strong athletics (Penn, Duke, Northwestern, Georgetown etc…).

FGM, meanwhile, believes Penn should join the SEC.

The Fire Glen Miller post referenced above is quoted in full down below:

Penn Is Perfect For The SEC

Sometimes Ivy fans like toying with the notion of their school joining another athletic conference, if only to imagine their teams in an alternate universe of scholarship athletes, huge stadiums, subpar academics, recruiting scandals, and "hostesses". Currently, Penn fans are playfully toying with the fantasy of moving the Quakers into the ACC, where the academics are supposedly comparably strong with the Ivy (I assume FSU is being omitted from the discussion). However, some in Ithaca are getting too big for their britches and seriously lobbying for Cornell to move into the Big Ten. Has Cornell's two (WOW!) recent basketball championships and dominance in such big-revenue sports as lacrosse and track got them slightly high? Yes. But at least they're thinking positively. What's next? Princeton to the Big East? Dartmouth to the Pac-10?

It's time for me to jump into this fanciful discussion with a bit of serious talk. I truly believe Penn belongs in the SEC.

Yes, the home of big-time football, frats, illiteracy, and herpes-infested campuses!

I'm from Georgia and a Georgia Bulldogs fan, so please fault me for favoritism. But the following are the similarities between Penn and the average SEC school...

- A large football stadium. Some expansion will be needed to bring Franklin Field (capacity: 52,593) back to its old 78,000 pre-Ivy capacity to compare to the SEC mammoths.

- A longtime football coach who hasn't won anything of late. We have Al Bagnoli, and the SEC has...oh wait...they just fired him, him, and him.

- Bigtime football! To draw these similarities, I'm actually referring to the Quakers' 1923 season yearbook, and not last year's. Imagine our current group trying to bring down Tebow. That's comedy.

- Large student populations. Penn (19,816) vs. Vanderbilt (12,093).

- Giant frat houses. Us vs. them.

- Down-on-its-luck basketball program. I don't think we can talk about program destruction on the scale of Billy Gillespie.

- Hot cheerleaders. Wait. No. "Pale and plump"...meet Crystal.

- Unwanted stepchild schools. Harvard, Yale, and Princeton don't think they need Penn. The rest of the SEC doesn't think they need Mississippi State.

- Our music scenes. UGA's got R.E.M. and the B-52s. We've got John Legend...and Penn Masala.

- The rotting downtown cores next to our campuses. We have Philadelphia. South Carolina has Columbia (far worse). Yes, all Columbia has is one Waffle House. And yes, the sign in front says "Cheesesteak Factory."

- Our shared utter disregard for ice hockey. Cornell can take their elite hockey team and suck it.

- Our shared utter disregard for all sports not titled football and basketball.

- Snobby alumni. Northern WASPs meet Southern gentlemen.

- Equally self-entitled students. Our JAPs have nothing on spoiled Southern plantation babies.

- Need. Penn needs the SEC to bring up their athletic program cred. The SEC needs Penn's academics to balance out LSU.

See Penn and the SEC were made for each other! And before you start talking geographical distance, remember that LSU is just as far in the boonies as we are. All we need is for our administration to care a little more about sports than finding our U.S. News ranking, and our SEC application is as good as a shoo-in!

Did I have fun writing the above stupid article? Yes. Did you have fun reading my senselessness? I hope. But I'm certainly excited for college football again. In March.

Got any more similarities? Add them!