Live blog: Penn at Brown football

PROVIDENCE, R.I. - Greetings from an unseasonably warm Brown Stadium, where as you can see the fall foliage is out in full splendor.

Before I get to today's game, be sure to check out Joe Juliano's College Football Report. It has the full rundown of all today's big games.

Regardless of what level the football team you root for plays at, you always want to win a championship by taking care of your own business. Any time you lose a game, it increases the amount you have to rely on your team's rivals losing too.

As cliched as that sounds, the Penn football team knows it is right in the middle of that situation today. The Quakers haven't beaten Brown since 2004, and that's one of the biggest reasons why they haven't won the Ivy League since the year before that.

Penn's Ivy League schedule never changes. They face Dartmouth, Columbia, Yale, Brown, Princeton, Harvard and Cornell every year, only alternating venues.

So the Quakers haven't been 4-0 in conference play in five years either. The league champion is almost always undefeated or has one loss, which has forced Penn to beat perennial powers Harvard to have any chance of being in the race. And they've only done that once since 2003.

We've already seen signs from this Penn team that it is better than its recent predecessors, especially on defense. But they'll have to prove their mettle today against a Brown offense that can really rack up the yards.

The Bears rank seventh in I-AA in passing offense and 17th in total offense, while Penn ranks 10th in pass defense and third in total defense.

So there's the matchup. This game is not on television, so I'll bring you live updates through the afternoon. We can also talk about Penn State, Temple, the Phillies or whatever other games you're watching.