In five years under Jerry Berndt, the University of Pennsylvania football program has become the most revered in the Ivy League.

So it is difficult to imagine that Jerry Berndt ever suffered through a losing season with the Quakers, And it's even harder to imagine that the 47-year-old head coach ever suffered through a nine-game losing skein.

But that's precisely what happened in 1981, when Berndt inherited a Penn program that had been 1-18 in the two previous seasons.

"I expected things to be tough that first season," says Berndt, whose 1981 squad sported a 1-9 record that included a humiliating nine-game losing streak. "But I had confidence that we could be competitive in three years."

It took only two.

In his second year in Philadelphia, Berndt led a team picked to finish last in the league to the Ivy championship, the first at Penn since 1959. The Quakers--whose seven victories that season were two more than Penn had accumulated in the previous four years--were college football's big surprise of 1982.

The litany of firsts that season was as long as a football field: Harvard and Yale had not been beaten in a decade; Dartmouth had not been shut out in Hanover, N.H. since 1947; and Penn had not won seven games in any of the previous 23 seasons.

"Obviously," the soft-spoken, mild-mannered Berndt says, "we were ahead of schedule."

So far ahead of schedule, in fact, that the 1983 Penn team--the first to include Berndt recruits--tied for the title for the second straight year. After the season, the Quakers could reflect that it had been almost four decades since they had won as many games in two seasons (13).

And a year ago, Berndt's talentladen squad left the league behind, ramming through opponents the way its coach used to ram through opponents at Bowling Green in the early 1960s.

Not since 1929 had the Quakers (8-1) won as many games in a single year, and no coach in the last 60 years at Penn had won as many games (22) in his first four seasons.

Dramatic

Clearly, something has changed at Penn in the last five years. And clearly, that something was Jerry Berndt.

"If it had been just a one-year thing, maybe you could have attributed that to an outstanding group of athletes," says Harvard Captain Brent Wilkinson, whose squad is preparing for a title showdown this Saturday with Penn. "But with such a dramatic turnaround you've got to give the credit to Jerry Berndt.

"You don't become a great program with only good athletes," Wilkinson adds.

Penn Captain Tom Gilmore echoes those sentiments. "I don't think that all of a sudden a lot of good recruits hit Penn," he says. "Coach Berndt is definitely the difference."

Those familiar with Berndt cite a unique blend of intensity and compassion in the Toledo, Ohio native's style to explain his success.

Some of his players say Berndt, who brought wide-open football with him from DePaux University, is an intensely driven coach with a lack of patience for mistakes.

Others look to his unparalleled preparation and burning desire to win to explain the success of Penn's 18th head football coach.

"He is always in control of the situation," Gilmore says. "He always knows what he wants to do. He prepares for every possible situation and as a result, we're prepared for every possible situation."

The other key to Berndt's success, observers say, has been his commitment to his players. And that, along with a strong reputation in the Midwest, has enabled the offensive guru to attract better football players to Philadelphia.

Berndt brought to Penn "a tremendous commitment to the people who work and play for him," says Dino Folino, Penn's defensive coordinator. Folino credits Berndt's sensitivity to his players' abilities and needs as one of the reasons the Quakers' program turned around so quickly.

Penn junior Rich Comizio says Berndt's honesty has enabled the silver-haired coach to establish a rapport with his players that has been crucial to the Quakers' success.

"When he recruits, he really tells you how he feels about you," Comizio says. "He seems like less of a coach and more of a friend."

Even Berndt, who diverts all the credit for the Quakers' success to his assistant coaches, admits that the atmosphere has changed around Franklin Field.

"There used to be a ho-hum attitude here," he says. "But I think we've changed that."