On December 5, 2008, the blog Fire Glen Miller was born.  As an inheritor of the provocative turn of phrase employed by websites such as Fire Ron Zook and Fire Joe Morgan they stirred up controversy.  Now, a little over two months into their blog life, they've truly made it to the big time, an interview with The Buzz.

Join us after the jump as we discuss the Red and Blue crew, Penn Athletics and of course, Glen Miller.

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When Fran Dunphy left Penn in the Spring of 2006, a number of candidates were mentioned as possible replacements: Dave Wohl, Billy Taylor, Fran O’Hanlon, Glen Miller and Steve Donahue. Ultimately, a great deal of the consternation regarding Glen Miller revolves around Steve Donahue’s recent run of success as Cornell’s coach. But did Penn make a foolish decision in 2006? Is there any obvious statistical answer as to why Miller was chosen rather than Donahue? Obviously, if the reasons were a great interview and the vast potential seen in Miller by the powers that be, a statistical explanation will be impossible to further, but let’s take a look. All these statistics have been culled from the Penn and Cornell athletic department web sites and we’re going to pretend we’ve travelled back in time to 2006 and only have those statistics available to us.

Career records

Glen Miller (13 Years 188-157)

Steve Donahue (6 years 58-105)

Though it’s difficult to compare sample sizes this different, it seems abundantly clear that Miller, at least to this point in his career, had experienced a great deal more success than Donahue. Though his record does count his time at Connecticut College, where in his final season with the Camels he lead them to a 28-1 mark and Donahue’s whole career as a head coach was at Cornell. So let’s just compare the records of the two men within the Ivy League and, to create even more equality, let’s use just the first six years of each man’s record.

Ivy Records, First Six Years

Glen Miller (48-36)

Steve Donahue (31-53)

Again, the records seem to speak for themselves. Most impressively, Miller in his fourth year at Brown went to the NIT. In those first six years within the Ancient Eight, Miller averaged eight wins per year to Donahue’s five and one-sixth wins per year. Miller’s teams averaged a finish closer to fourth place than third and Donahue’s averaged a finish closer to fifth than fourth. But all this might mean is that Miller was about one place better than Donahue at beating the teams they both played. How did the two men fare against each other?

Series between Miller and Donahue

2000-01 Brown 2-0

2001-02 Brown 2-0

2002-03 Brown 2-0

2003-04 Split 1-1

2004-05 Cornell 2-0

2005-06 Split 1-1

Near the end of the series it is possible to see Donahue approaching and perhaps overtaking Miller, but overall, before taking the coaching job at Penn, Glen Miller held an 8-4 record against Steve Donahue and the Big Red.

While these are some fairly rudimentary statistics and, admittedly, they do not tell the whole story — for example, they do not take in to account factors such as what players were currently on the roster when the coaches arrived at their respective schools, what the relative levels of alumni and athletic department support were like or any of a myriad of other factors — it’s fairly easy to see, at least numerically, why, in 2006, Glen Miller seemed to be a stronger choice than Steve Donahue in replacing Fran Dunphy.

Three facts that are necessary to understand me before we enter this relatively straight-forward named post:

1. I love lists. I will read any arbitrary group of things as long as it’s in numeric order—“The 16 Worst Plastic Surgeries,” “The 4 Handsomest Daily Pennsylvanian Sports Editors,” whatever –for several years I felt as though VH1’s programming was meant exclusively for me.

2. I hold deep seated biases. Oftentimes, I choose these biases on a whim. In presenting these biases to you, the blog reading public, I want to express that they are solely my personal flights of fancy and do not  represent the DP.

3. I love interacting with commenters. Constructive criticisms, deconstructive put downs, construction suggestions, whatever, please interact with me. Like most bloggers, I am lonely.

But before we get to the list, for anyone interested in what Penn’s opponents’ newspapers are saying this weekend, here’s the game preview from the Cornell Daily Sun. The money quote in the piece comes from Cornell Coach Steve Donahue saying, about Penn: “They’re still a young team. They’re one of the most talented teams we’ll play in the league, if not the most talented.”

The Columbia Spectator does not have a game preview up yet, but I found this article about a potential progressive semi-professionalizing of college sports interesting.

All that being said, here are the institutions I’m encouraging you to root for this weekend.

     1. The Princeton Tigers Men’s Basketball team:

Yes, yes, I know this is heresy. I’m the Benedict Arnold of the Buzz. But something has felt consistently wrong without Princeton in the upper echelon of Ivy League basketball. A 4-0, first place Tigers team could generate the sort of excitement for the League that has been lacking everywhere except for Ithaca.

     2. The Continuation of Phi Slamma Eggleston (I wish I had coined this term)

Ever since the La Salle game, Jack Eggleston has picked up—and immediately thrown down, two handed—the mantle as the preeminent Penn in-game dunker. It’s starting not to feel like a game unless the rim is abused by Eggleston. Additionally, rumor has it that last weekend in Hanover Cam Lewis, The Slammin’ Gauguin, joined the elite PSE fraternity attacking Dartmouth’s rims with aplomb. It would be nice to see that translate to a portrait worthy dunk or two on Jeff Foote and Jason Miller.

Ed Note: For the next week -- and possibly longer if the readers don't run him out of town  -- Noah Becker, a senior History major from Wayne, Pa., will be providing some guest blog posts. So without further ado, here is his first one, a look at whether or not a Penn-Cornell basketball rivalry exists.

This post is adorable and flattering. But c’mon Cornell, you already have a sports rival, a real sports rival with a full Wikipedia entry (where else do you think I get my knowledge?). This rival has both an awesomely smelly tradition and full scale administration crackdowns for rowdy fan behavior. In fact, it meets most of the standards that classify a Level Three Hatfield-McCoy Rivalry. Not all of these levels must be met in order to qualify as a mere Level One Friendly Rival, nor do they have to be met in any specific order. But, unfortunately for the Hill People of New York, Penn-Cornell meets none of them.

1. Sustained equality of ability

This criterion is met only in the sense that both Penn and Cornell have been playing basketball against each other and thus both teams had the theoretical ability to play said sport. Otherwise, Penn thoroughly dominates the series. Since a 74-56 Quakers win on Feb. 7, 1969 -- which I use since Saturday's Cornell at Penn game will mark the 40th anniversary of what I'm sure was a rousing match -- Penn is 66-13 against the Big Red. Amazingly, if Cornell won every single game for the next 20 years -- and of course, in a future that dystopian, 2+2 would equal 5 and freshman writing seminars would be taught in Newspeak -- on Feb. 7, 2029, the Quakers would still have a double digit advantage in wins in the series in the last 60 years.

2. Proximity or Class Warfare

Location (Louisville v. Kentucky, Arizona v. Arizona State, Kansas v. Missouri) or a disparity regarding the schools’ relative controls of the means of production—i.e. the “Haves” against the “Have-Nots”—(Harvard v. Cornell in hockey, Little Cowboys v. Little Giants, Notre Dame v. Anyone) play major roles in fostering intense rivalries. In fact, the best rivalries contain elements of both (Duke v. UNC, Villanova v. St. Joe’s, Pre-2004 Yankees v. Pre-2004 Red Sox).

As anyone who’s ever traveled to Ithaca can tell you, it’s not close and a characterization of Penn as an old, Ivory Tower institution rings false. Sure, historically Penn’s picked on the other Ivy League basketball teams, and it was founded before Cornell, but when constructing the evil, plutocratic, Ivy League-educated, blue-blooded villain for literature or film, the elite status conferred by Harvard, Yale or Princeton makes for a more convincing snob.

3. Undeniable, uncontrollable mutual feelings of loathing

Fans of both teams in the rivalry must believe their rival to have a truly despicable, untenable aspect that causes a deep antipathy. The modern king of this is Bill Belichick whose rivalry with the NFL -- by this I mean the league and everyone who populates it -- drove him to a sort of Shakespearean madness which included running up the score on poor, defenseless coaching legend Joe Gibbs. This category while intentionally ambiguous is generally populated by the nationally disdained (Duke Basketball, Notre Dame Football, Dallas Cowboys, New York Yankees).

Meanwhile, what is there to loathe about Cornell? Steve Donahue is a former Penn assistant coach, their best players, Louis Dale, Jeff Footer and Ryan Wittman, seem generally unobjectionable and many of the best jokes in The Office revolve around the Big Red.

So what is their relationship to Penn if not a rival? It seems more like the relationship between a younger brother and his older, cooler sibling with Cornell getting picked on, trying to emulate Penn -- by hiring Donahue, and desperately trying to measure up to Penn by telling them about the “rivalry” between them. It’s cute and flattering that Cornell wants a rivalry, but it’s just not true.