New Penn coach Ray Priore acknowledges ‘following a legend’

ON YESTERDAY'S annual preseason Ivy League coaches conference call, Al Bagnoli said the mid-October Penn-Columbia game in New York "will certainly . . . have a weird dynamic to it."

That's one way of pointing out the obvious.

Bagnoli was Penn football for the last 23 seasons, a run that included nine titles. He stepped down after last season, which enabled Ray Priore to finally step in. The same Priore who's been at Penn since 1987, coaching linebackers, defensive ends, special teams and defensive backs. He also was the Quakers' recruiting coordinator, defensive coordinator (since 1999) and associate head coach (since 2006).

In February, Bagnoli took the job at Columbia, which has lost its last 21 games and hasn't been relevant in forever. The Lions also have lost 18 in a row to Penn, the longest active annual streak in FCS.

Last season, the Quakers went 2-8, yet still beat the Lions, 31-7.

For whatever it means, Penn has been picked to finish sixth in the preseason media poll, just ahead of Columbia. The last time the Quakers weren't in the top four was 1992, when they were coming off a 2-8 season.

As Bagnoli is so fond of saying, it should be interesting.

"Columbia made a statement that football is important," said Harvard's Tim Murphy, whose team is the choice to threepeat.

That doesn't mean Penn is giving up the sport.

"I've always said coach Bagnoli followed a long history here," Priore duly noted. "There was Ed Zubrow [two titles], and Jerry Berndt [four] before that. Penn wins because of what we have established through the times. We are the people who just sort of shepherd the program.

"It was easy being a co-pilot for so many years. Now that you've got the wheel in your hands, it's about making those right decisions. The key thing for me to build around is surrounding yourself with great people. I think I've done that with this staff. When you win, you get people to believe . . .

"I'm following a legend. But it's sort of like a rock band. When you've been together so long, sometimes when you bring in a different guitarist, it helps the thing out. I think new energy sparks new enthusiasm. How can we make things better? I know where we are. How do you take the next step? We've had a tremendous amount of success. How do we move the needle? Everybody in the competitive environment wants to keep pushing themselves."

The Quakers, who return 16 starters, had an inordinate amount of injuries, many at criticial positions, last season. Not an excuse, but maybe part of the explanation.

"I think we're a real hungry team," Priore insisted. "We are not happy with [last season]. A large portion of this team stayed on campus this summer, working together. We had not done that in previous years, for various reasons. If was great to see the kids bond.

"If you get guys to believe in each other, good things can happen."

Columbia, which won its only football title in 1961, has had three winning seasons in the last half-century, none since 1996. So the expectations are what?

"It's always exciting to kind of start a new chapter," said Bagnoli, who might start Florida transfer Skyler Mornhinweg [St. Joseph's Prep] at quarterback. "To me, it's just a question of time before we get this thing up and running. Hopefully, we can make Columbia football a real good story moving forward.

"I told people that change ultimately would be good for both schools. Ray will kind of rebrand Penn in his image. I think that will be a positive. I've had the good fortune of being in two world-class cities and two world-class institutions. We have a blueprint that we can kind of carry over here. It's another wonderful opportunity."

But . . .

"I still have a few Freudian slips, to be honest," Bagnoli acknowledged. "[Penn] was ingrained in me for 23 years. I still have to remember to say Columbia now."

Yo, Oct. 17 is only two months away.