Jensen: The year Penn boycotted the NCAA tournament

Imagine if this happened today. The Penn Quakers win the Ivy League men's basketball title, find out their NCAA draw, begin practicing for March Madness - then announce they are declining the invitation, protesting how the NCAA is imposing academic standards on the league.

It happened - 50 years ago.

Stan Pawlak still can't believe it. Pawlak was the top scorer on that team. He doesn't expect people to remember. Certainly not the current players. A couple of weeks ago, Pawlak looked over at the century-old Penn basketball team photos on the wall of the Palestra press room. Pawlak said he didn't know the names of any of those guys. His point: To current Penn players, he's one of those guys, a half-century removed from them. Except he has stayed close to the Quakers program, still working as Penn's radio analyst.

And he's their link to a crazy piece of history.

The whole story was laid out recently in a richly detailed piece in the Penn Gazette, the school's alumni magazine. The short version is that the Ivies chose their principles over the interests of Penn's program, and Penn's president and athletic director went along with it.

Who was the NCAA to tell the Ivies that incoming players must have a 1.6 grade point average to compete? Never mind that Ivy standards were far higher. This couldn't stand. The NCAA could keep its tournament.

The players didn't get a vote.

"There was no discussion at all from the school," Pawlak said, only from Penn's coach, Jack McCloskey. "From him, we knew what was going on. I don't think we ever believed, until we beat Princeton and won the league, that we weren't going to play. We had a practice for Syracuse.

"There was a black cloud over the practice. We kind of knew what the result would be. My memory has faded a little bit. At the end of practice or near the end, they announced it. That was it. We went on our way."

Pawlak remembers going to track practice the next day. He was a captain. On to the next sport.

The public reaction was varying and included columns in The Inquirer cheering the Ivies for their principles.

Imagine this today. "The way the tournament has blown up, it's impossible," Pawlak said.

Pawlak has no doubt the decision caused McCloskey to leave Penn after that season for Wake Forest.

He also remembers how the missing team did not cause the NCAA to change policy. "Certainly Princeton went the next year, too," Pawlak said.

So the whole thing was a futile protest, regardless of the worth of the issue. In a funny way, Pawlak said, they might be remembered more for not going than if they'd gone.