It’s not a new situation for Vaughn; he coached the men from 1996-2002. And heading both programs isn’t new for him either. He coached the women as well from 2000-2002, before moving to hold just the women’s job.

He takes over a men’s group that won the Ivy League Championship last year.

No other Ivy League golf program has this structure. Earlier in the summer, I spoke with coaches from other DI schools that hold the reins over both programs and they noted that the biggest challenge was coordinating both tournament schedules to avoid too many men's and women's conflicts.

Penn's schedules, released last week, have two of four tournaments at different locations on the same weekends.

From Sept. 21-22, the men will be in New York, while the women will be at Princeton that same weekend. October 6 is the women’s ECAC championship in Virginia and the men will be competing in the Delaware Invitational at Delaware Park from Oct. 6-7. In the last weekend of fall competition, both teams will be in the Lehigh Invitational.

Also announced was the hiring of former volunteer coach Chad Perman as an assistant coach for both the men’s and women’s teams.

At LMU, DeVore inherited a lackluster program and made his mark, getting the Lions to respectability in the West Coast Conference. The Penn opening was created by the departure of Mark Riley, who left for Kalamazoo College.

Like it or not, the future of Penn athletics will depend in large part on whether his replacement has a reservoir of goodwill towards the University's coaches. Here's hoping that Amy Gutmann can pick someone who won't do their best to make admitting quality athletes difficult for Steve Bilsky's underlings.

This is only an educated guess based on the facts that have emerged, but it wouldn't shock me if current women's coach Francis Vaughn were in the hunt, at least, to take over the men's team too.

That would explain why the athletic department is hiring one assistant to work for two programs. It's not as strange a move as it sounds, if both programs have the same coach. (Men's and women's swimming coach Mike Schnur's assistants, for example, all work for both teams.)

It would clear up why the job posting says the assistant has to report to the Director of Golf (Vaughn), but doesn't make any mention of the men's coach.

And it might also would tell us why, after all these years, the golf programs are finally getting an assistant. If Vaughn does end up doing two jobs, that might encourage Penn to crack open the piggy bank and pay for someone to help him out.

It would be strange in that no Ivy League school currently has the same person as its men's and women's golf coach.

But Vaughn has done it before; he held both the men's and women's jobs from 1996-2002.

And it seems even more strange for a school to be searching for an assistant coach before it's even announced the head one.

See tomorrow's DP for more analysis.

Note: Strangely, you can't see the post by browsing the NCAA's job site anymore -- you have to use the URL I linked to above.

For the new men's golf coach, add that seminal skill for five-year-olds -- sharing -- to the list.

As in, sharing a coach, which is what the new hire will be doing. Penn is looking to hire a paid golf assistant, but the assistant will split time between the men's and women's programs, while reporting to Director of Golf/women's coach Francis Vaughn.

It's the first time since at least 2001 there's been any kind of assistant coach for golf, and probably earlier than that, although I'm having trouble finding records. I think women's squash is now the only sport that competes without an assistant coach (or half of one, at least). Assistants can come and go fairly frequently though, so my guess (and Penn's athletic directory) could be off.

Call it a step forward for the golf programs, but not a huge one. At just $12,000 per year with no benefits, this new coach will be a footnote on Steve Bilsky's budget. And like many assistant positions, it's only a 9-month gig, so no guarantee the golf teams will get the same arrangement next year.

As for programs sharing coaches? As far as I know, there are only two other arrangements like that at Penn. Men's and women's fencing is one. Men's and women's swimming and diving also share, although it's probably easier for them. They have three assistant coaches, if you count diving coach Julie Van Deusen.

Speaking of vacancies, Penn's post for men's tennis head coach went up but has since been taken off. Apparently the athletic deparment has found its candidates...but who knows whether that means Penn's actually close to announcing a hire. There's also no post up for the head men's golf job, so Penn could be coming down the home stretch on that one as well.

"The ban on text messaging was suggested by the Ivy Group, citing the invasive nature of sending messages to recruits on an unlimited basis," he wrote. "How could kids study if their phones were constantly buzzing or chirping with text messages? Listening to the Ivy League schools on a matter like this is like turning the NFL into a two-hand touch league because little Jimmy got hurt playing Nerf football in the front yard."

Farrell is entitled to his opinion on texting, although I think he's wrong. There are certainly good arguments to be made on both sides.

What he's not entitled to do is insult the Ivy League's intelligence because its athletes come to school for more than playing time and don't get paid along the way.

Let's see the argument through. The Ivies are among the best lacrosse conferences in the country. The Metro Atlantic doesn't compare. According to Farrell, that means any lacrosse rule changes the MAAC suggests ought to be disregarded.

John Edwards talks about two Americas; I think it would be terrible if we had two NCAAs -- those who are listened to and those who are purposefully ignored.

First on the agenda is the text-messaging ban during recruiting that the NCAA recently adopted.

As Andrew Scurria wrote recently, the Ivy League proposed the ban. I was able to talk to some of the people involved in the proposal, and here's the low-down:

The League first proposed the ban (or an alternative severely limiting texting) last spring. It was reviewed by NCAA committees last summer, along with an alternate proposal by the NCAA Academics/Eligibility/Compliance Cabinet, which was supposed to limit the hours of the day that texting was allowed.

In January, the NCAA management council decided that only the Ivy proposal would go forward; the other one was too hard to enforce.

This is the league's reaction, courtesy of spokesperson Carolyn Campbell-McGovern:

"Our league as a whole was in favor of eliminiating text messaging or at least limiting it in some way so we’re happy that the proposal will be adopted."

But what's more interesting is that she told me that the ban was orignally proposed by the Ivy League Student-Athlete Advisory Committee (SAAC), meaning that it was students who came up with the ban.

I spoke to someone who was in on that original committee meeting, Penn softballer Julia Cheney.

She said that the biggest reason for the proposal was not out of some sort of moral outcry, but more because it was costing recruits too much money when coaches would text message them all the time.

Cheney also said that there was too much pressure to always have your phone around you and on, responding to coaches at all hours of the day, in class and at night, because athletes would feel that if they did not answer right away, the coach would lose interest.

"We felt an invasion of privacy," Cheney said. "It puts more pressure on student-athlete recruits than there needs to be."

Lastly, Cheney said that she is excited that the NCAA took a proposal by a SAAC seriously, and hopes that it sets an example for other student groups.

"That’s pretty big for us," she said.

Up next on the docket is Penn's next chances for Ivy League titles, courtesy of the two ball/bat sports.

Softball got the help it needed in its weekend off, and won the inaugural Ivy League South Division with a 14-6 record, and will play either Harvard or Dartmouth this weekend in the best-of-three Ivy League Championship Series.

The New England teams will play a make-up doubleheader today at Dartmouth, with the Crimson needing one win of three to take the title. The two teams also have a suspended game, tied 4-4 in the fifth, to make up. If Harvard wins two games, it will host Penn, if not the Quakers will host the series.

Penn's baseball team won the Gehrig Division by virtue of Princeton not quite being able to pull off a sweep of Cornell, losing Game 4 in extra innings. The Quakers are 12-8 in Ivy play, and will travel to Brown (14-6), winner of the Red Rolfe Division, for Saturday and Sunday's (if necessary) ILCS.

Finally, the men's tennis team had a little deja vu, losing a playoff to Columbia after dropping the final match of the season to the Lions. The Quakers will not get that Ivy title, and will have to wait and see if they get an NCAA Tournament bid.

Enjoy finals.