The University of Pennsylvania decided late last week that its football team would look awfully silly doing weekly solos on television. So the Quakers folded back into the fold (the National Collegiate Athletic Association), ended their six-week revolt against the new N.C.A.A. television program, and were restored to good (?) standing.

All of which proves that you can't beat the system by yourself.

What nebulous degree of respectability may have been regained by this action is of little consequence to the Quakers. The Red and Blue had played the prostitute among the virtuous habitants of the Eastern Collegiate Athletic Conference for so long that not its reputation, but that of the N.C.A.A. was at stake. Purely and simply. Penn, to cut down the athletic deficit beanstalk gambled on the support of other blatantly and unhypocritically Big Time schools, gambled on the weakness of the N.C.A.A.--and lost.

The fun and games started in Dallas at the N.C.A.A.'s annual January meeting, when the organization's directors decided that Something Must Be Done about football gate receipts, which pay the way of virtually every collegiate athletic association in the country. A committee was formed, chaired by Tom Hamilton of Pitt, to study the real and present danger of television.

It took all winter. Finally, in early spring Yale's athletic director, Bob Hall, as spokesman for the television committee, stated the problem: televising of a big game in a district kept people away in droves from small school contests--and the solution: a trial period of limited telecasts and total blackouts in all districts of the country.

Better to Have Money

The ideal end result would be a limited-telecast situation in which all colleges playing in one section would receive a share of the high television-intake of the Big Game. Until the trial period withered away, however, no college could be televised more than twice--once at home and once away--and 60 percent of the TV profit would go to the University of Chicago's National Opinion Research Center to pay for a study of the nation-wide effects of the trial.

Most of the large colleges, those to whom television was already a financial blessing, smouldered, but smiled and went along. Penn, however, had already decided that it would rather play Notre Dame than Yale or Princeton, that television and free enterprise were wonderful things--that, in short, rich or poor, it's always better to have money.

On June 7, Penn President Harold Stassen called N.C.A.A. President Hugh Willet, a Southern California professor, and informed him that because of the illegality (allegedly an anti-trust violation) of the new program and the "need for another year of observation of television's full impact on college football," Penn had no intention of heeding the Association's ruling.

The Quakers, unworried, dug themselves in for the immediate, and expected, barrage of abuse. Hall lashed at Stassen's manifest disregard for the common interest and welfare of all the other colleges in the nation." In succession, Columbia, Cornell, California, and Yale balked at signing football contracts, and Dartmouth threatened to cancel the scheduled game of October 6. Commissioner Asa Bushnell of the E.C.A.C. (an N.C.A.A. subordinate) threatened to toss the Quakers but of Conference leagues in other sports.

Ace in the Hole

Penn Director of Athletics Frank Murray sat back and added fuel to his "anti-trust" fire by calling the boycott "a conspiracy in restraint of trade," conveniently overlooking the fact that the N.C.A.A. had enlisted the cooperation of the TV industry in its program. Murray was still not worried. He had an ace in the hole.

Whether or not there had been any previous agreement between Murray and Frank Leahy, the Penn D.A. obviously felt confident that Notre Dame (one of the very rare colleges whose athletic associations were in the black) would play the game his way. And when the Fighting Irish, probably the most popular football team in America, fell into line, the others would follow.

Indeed, on June 9 Notre Dame's president, Father John J. Cavanaugh, officially "postponed" his college's decision on whether or not to submit to the N.C.A.A. program. Notre Dame stayed on the fence, and Association officials began to sweat.

Pride Goeth Before . .

Penn was jubilant. Three days later it renewed its weekly-televising contract with the American Broadcasting Company. Quaker officials boldly called for a Department of Justice anti-trust investigation of the "TV conspiracy."

An anti-trust opinion could have been rendered within a few days. But the Justice Department sat on the case. No one wanted to bring a group of universities into court. And in the stalling and sweating and waiting time the Quakers' luck ran out. Notre Dame decided that Penn was gaining nothing but a bad reputation. At the end of June, Notre Dame announced that it would be most happy to cooperate with the N.C.A.A.

. . . A Fall Without TV

Pennsylvania found itself an athletic leper, and a pretty lonesome one. The college continued a token struggle for a few more weeks, but the outcome was obvious. The Quakers decided last Thursday to capitulate to the N.C.A.A. in preference to joining the National Professional Football League.

Sort of a shame. They might have done well in it.