On my return to Germany, I had important business to attend – the Penn/Brown football game this past Saturday, which also served as Penn’s homecoming. Nick, Maria, and I met my Dad and his friend Mike at the game. Dad and Nick, who have recently been out to South Bend for a Notre Dame game, were generally unimpressed with the turnout and the spectacle. It would not have been possible at Notre Dame to take pictures of this kind of desolation in the stadium:

Franklin Field at Penn seats about 75,000 people. They probably get the place pretty full for the Relays and maybe Commencement, but was there ever a time when Penn football drew crowds that big?

Anyway, the stadium has picked up a shiny new high-def scoreboard since the last time I was there:

Nick and Maria, who genuinely seem to get along pretty well, enjoyed some sibling togetherness:

Note my Dad sporting his Notre Dame windbreaker and a Brown hat. Hard to believe such a stunning display of disloyalty would go unpunished in a Philly stadium:

Penn ended up thumping Brown pretty good, so it wasn’t much of a game by the end. We did have very good seats, though:

Basketball season is right around the corner, so hopefully we’ll catch the same matchup in a different sport, this time in the cozier confines of The Palestra.