Against a Penn team playing for coach Al Bagnoli's final game at home, Harvard will attempt to clinch a share of the Ivy title.

Swinging.

With a bang.

Of style.

Like a lamb.

On a limb.

I could go on, but you get the jist. There are a lot of ways to “go out…” Almost all of them would be preferable to the departure Penn coach Al Bagnoli has lined up Saturday when he leads the Quakers into Franklin Field for the final time.

This is Bagnoli’s 23rd season and by far his worst on the field. Penn is 1-7, 1-4 in Ivy play, on pace for Bagnoli’s worst record by far except for 1997, when the team had to forfeit all but one of its wins after an eligibility scandal.

It would be easy to make fun of Bagnoli’s plight if it just wasn’t so darn sad. I might mockingly compare him to an Emperor watching the sacking of Rome while mentioning that his quarterback has been brought down 23 times, second in the Ivy League. I could go cinematic and say Jerry Thompson in Citizen Kane could have been talking about Bagnoli when he said Charles Kane “was a man who got everything he wanted, and then lost it”—except for the fact that Bagnoli has not fallen once but lost seven times in eight games. I could talk about Shaquille O’Neal’s Celtics years and make a joke about Bagnoli somehow managing to be a bigger disappointment than the Big Disappointment.

I really could. But I can’t. All I want to say is, “I’m sorry,” but not yet.

The only Ivy coach to win nine league titles, post consecutive undefeated league seasons (he did it thrice), or win .714 percent of his conference games should not have to lead a 1-7 team in his final go-round. After doing so much right, Bagnoli let William Hung sing his swan song. What was supposed to be a celebratory parade has become a funeral procession.

And it’s only going to get worse this weekend.

Enter Harvard (8-0, 5-0). The Crimson’s 23.4 average margin of victory is 10 points larger than any other Ivy team’s. Its defense ranks first in the FCS in points allowed. Its turnover margin is twice as good as anyone else’s in the conference. And it’s hungry.

The last time Harvard went down to Philadelphia, the Quakers out-muscled the Crimson, 30-21, to earn an Ivy title. It was the last in a run of quasi-championship games as one of the two schools won the league for six straight years and in 11 out of 13 seasons.

Harvard players still bring that mentality to the rivalry, and they are ready to show their dominance Saturday.

This game should have more meaning than that, too. It should be a seminal passing-of-the-torch moment from the league’s current elder statesmen to its next.