New era for Penn football under Ray Priore

Ray Priore finished his first spring as Penn's head football coach Saturday, but he's still having a little trouble letting go of his old job.

"That's why I'm chewing gum," Priore said after Penn's annual Red vs. Blue spring football game at Franklin Field.

The Albany alumnus, who replaced longtime coach Al Bagnoli in December, had been Penn's defensive coordinator since 1999.

"You can tell he wants to get back out there and start coaching guys up," said quarterback Alek Torgersen. "But I think he's taking the transition pretty well. Right now as a program we're better off than we were last year."

"You don't hear his voice as much," added linebacker Nolan Biegel. "As far as the screams and all that. So that's good."

Penn finished 2-8 last year. Bagnoli was expected to take an administrative position, but instead took the head coaching job at Columbia in February.

"It was a shock," Biegel said. "It was pretty confusing, but I love the overall mind-set we're at right now. Coach 'P' has created a real family feel."

Penn visits Columbia on Oct. 17. The Quakers have won 18 straight over Columbia, the longest active annual win streak against one opponent in the FCS.

"I'm going to be fired up," said Torgerson, whose 2,689 passing yards last season were the third-most in school history. "I'm sure they'll be fired up. I'm sure Coach Bagnoli is going to give them some kind of pep talk. I'm ready to bring the fire."

Priore said he's focused on the summer, the preseason, and Lehigh, Penn's first opponent, and not Columbia. He said he talks often with Bagnoli, and they recently sat together at a wedding.

"I have all the admiration in the world for him," Priore said. "He's been awesome to me and the Penn community."

But at the spring game, actually a series of simulated situational scrimmages between the offense and defense, it was clear that the Quakers have moved on. They worked at a faster tempo. Both the offense, under former Kansas offensive coordinator John Reagan, and defense, under former Albany defensive coordinator Bob Benson, have new schemes.

Throughout the afternoon, a drone hovered noisily above the west end zone. It was an engineering student's project, and Priore did not know whether he'd look at the film it captured.

"I stayed away from it," he joked. "I thought we were under attack out here."

Welcome to the future.