Fifty years later, Koval still isn't sure how the administration justified firing a coach after he'd won a championship. Conventional wisdom says the Penn brass told Sebo before that 1959 season he was finished, win, lose or draw like DaVinci.
Sebo stayed, won the championship, got a standing ovation at the banquet. Tickets cost $8.50, which tells you all you need to know about how times have changed. "Ben-Hur" was the biggest movie that year. Bobby Darin warbled "Mack the Knife." The Daily News cost a nickel.
A brief pause for some history. In 1953, Penn was filling Franklin Field playing powerhouses like Penn State, Ohio State, Michigan, Army, Navy and Notre Dame. By 1959, adhering to Ivy League standards, no spring practice, no scholarships, no phys-ed majors and only Navy still on the nonleague schedule.
Shazam, that '59 Penn team tied Navy, 22-22. Not without controversy. The Quakers faced a fourth-and-4 at the Navy 6 and opted for the game-tying field goal, rather than gamble on a game-winning touchdown.
"Momentum had shifted," is the way Barney Berlinger Jr. recalled the circumstances. "We were hanging on by our fingernails."
"We didn't want to lose," Joe Doyle said.
So Koval trotted out there to hold for kicker Ed Shaw. "To this day he tells people I looked up at him," Koval said, chuckling, "and told him, 'You better not miss.' "
The next week, Penn was blanked by Harvard. The inevitable letdown? "I can't remember," Koval said with a sigh. "I can't remember anything about that game. I went back to pass, got hit. Went back to the huddle, called a play, went up to the line of scrimmage, and that was it. I had a concussion."
The medical staff told him to check into the hospital for testing. He wandered, instead, into Student Health and was kept overnight at the university hospital, while a frantic search ensued.
