Saturday on 33rd street, the Penn football team lost and the Penn basketball team won. But for some, those results may have seemed secondary to a couple of grand returns to the University.
Let’s start with a very special homecoming at Franklin Field for one of the greatest football players of all-time: Chuck Bednarik C’49.
During halftime of Penn’s 48-38 season-ending loss to Cornell, a seven-foot bronze statue of Bednarik was unveiled in a ceremony that included former Pennsylvania Governor Ed Rendell C’65, Hon’00, former Philadelphia Eagles coach Dick Vermeil and some of Bednarik’s old teammates from Penn and the Eagles.
The 86-year-old Bednarik, an NFL Hall of Famer who won championships with the Eagles in 1949 and 1960 after an All-American career at Penn, enjoyed the festivities, hugging his one-time teammates, singing about going to heaven and even talking to the seven-foot version of himself (see above photo).
It’s hard to fully state just how good the man known as “Concrete Charlie” was, so I’ll let another illustrious Penn graduate do the honors. Here’s a quick video of Rendell introducing Bednarik to the Franklin Field crowd followed by the official unveiling of the statue, which will soon find a permanent home inside the stadium.
A few hours later, on a smaller scale, former Penn point guard Andy Toole C’03 returned to the Palestra for the first time as a head coach. The youngest coach in Division I, Toole runs the basketball program at Robert Morris University outside of Pittsburgh.
The reunion didn’t end as well as he might have hoped as Penn handed Toole’s Colonials their first defeat of the season. But before the game, I got a chance to talk to the player who led the Quakers to back-to-back NCAA tournaments in 2002 and 2003.
Here’s a little bit of what he had to say:
On his emotions on coaching at the Palestra, rather than playing: “Obviously it’s a little different. I’ll be sitting on what seems to be the wrong bench from my past experiences here. But it’s great to be back. It’s great for our players to be able to play in a place like the Palestra and against a great program like Penn. Penn has the type of success we want our program to have.”
On some of his best Palestra memories: “Even the first time I stepped in here to watch a game on senior night in 2000 when they played Princeton, I realized this was the place I wanted to play college basketball. Beating Villanova here my junior year. The Yale game my junior year, which was basically a sellout. Clinching the Ivy championship vs. Cornell my senior year. Playing Princeton here. All the Big 5 games. We had a great game against Temple here where we won by one with a tip-in at the buzzer late. So all of those games were special. There were maybe only one or two I’d like to forget; other than that, they’re all great memories.”
Toole coaching his team Saturday
On whether his team knew much about his playing days at Penn: “They know I played here. Some of the Philly guys know a little more about the Palestra. I told them they’ll be playing against guys like me – and they consider me annoying and relentless. They know from shooting around or free throw contests or horse and coaching, I can be pretty annoying. I think that helped paint a picture of what they’d see [against Penn].
On his feelings toward the Penn basketball program today: “I hope they have as much success as possible. I think Jerome [Allen] is doing a great job. I think he’s doing it the right way, and he has a great staff in place. I want all the guys to have similar memories and successes that I had and the guys before me had. I root like crazy for them.”
On coaching against another former Penn guard in Jerome Allen: “I can’t say that’s happened much before. There are a few of us hanging around. There’s Fran McCaffery [at Iowa]. There’s Matt Langel [at Colgate]. Maybe it will become more of a tradition. The whole thing is pretty neat.”
On his thought’s of Penn’s current standout guard, Zack Rosen: “I knew Zack in high school and I’ve watched his career. I have such respect for the way he works and his dedication to the game and his commitment to Penn basketball. I’d love to see him have the opportunity to play in the NCAA tournament because he’s obviously put in the work to make that happen. And I hope it happens for him. He deserves it and the program deserves it.”
Here’s more on both Bednarik’s statue and Toole’s return.
