Penn football season began in tragedy, ended in triumph

For Al Bagnoli and his Penn football team, the 2010 season was bookended by tragedy and triumph.

Two weeks after they concluded a 9-1 season with a second straight Ivy League championship, a second straight unbeaten record in the league, the only question left unanswered is what other postseason recognition awaits them.

Already Bagnoli has been named a finalist for the Eddie Robinson Award, given to the NCAA's outstanding Division I Football Bowl Subdivision coach. That is to be announced Jan. 6.

Sophomore quarterback Billy Ragone was a finalist for Ivy player of the year that was shared Monday by players from Dartmouth and Harvard, and 20 Quakers were named all-Ivy.

But sadly, for all of them and certainly for all those beyond the program, the indelible memory of the 2010 season will be of two losses that happened five months before it even began.

"All championships are special. They're hard to get," Bagnoli said as, in between recruiting trips, he sat in his Weightman Hall office last week. "But this one is going to stand out. Maybe not for the right reasons, but it's going to stand out."

On April 8, Dan Stafferi, a Penn assistant for 33 years and one of the program's most devoted loyalists, died of bladder cancer. Eighteen days later, the body of Owen Thomas, who would have been a captain in 2010, his senior year, was found in his off-campus apartment. He had hanged himself.

Somehow, in the months that followed, dealing with doubt and sorrow as determinedly as X's and O's, this Penn team managed to climb out of its despair and become just the third team in Ivy history to win back-to-back titles with unbeaten league marks.

But this one, as Bagnoli noted, was different. Stafferi's death, at 85, wasn't completely unexpected. The loss of Thomas, a strapping and energetic 6-foot-2, 240-pound defensive end, was. A rising senior, a captain-elect, a Wharton School student, perhaps the team's most outgoing and popular member, his sudden passing briefly paralyzed the program.

"How did we feel when we heard about Owen?" said Joe D'Orazio, a senior offensive lineman, pausing to choose his words carefully. "There are no words to describe it."

When the news came, a veteran-laden team had already begun preparing for 2010. Suddenly, what had been a focused group was stranded between grief and disbelief.

How would they respond? Would they disintegrate into their emotions? Would they come together more profoundly? Bagnoli wasn't sure.