It didn't dawn on me until just as I was falling asleep Saturday night that I was starting this blog amid the embers of the Eagles' elimination from the playoffs. And while I tried hard to stay optimistic -- I happen to think the Birds did much better this season than anyone could possibly have thought they would, which should get me a good bit of hate mail -- it was hard to avoid the cloud of sad resignation that came over the city on Sunday.
Or maybe that was just the gray weather.
But it sure was hard to avoid that sense of disappointment in reading the papers this morning. The Daily News started a two-day feature titled "Winter of Our Discontent," headlined by a John Smallwood column in which he laments the sad state of the Flyers and 76ers. You would think, from the way he writes, that there's nothing going on between now and the day Phillies pitchers and catchers report to Clearwater. The Inquirer is slightly more optimistic, as its headline on an exclusive interview with Chase Utley reads "Where Hope Remains Alive."
Look, I get the fact that this a pro sports town, that it pretty much always has been and probably always will be. But you just can't overlook the college basketball scene. Not when you have six Division I teams to watch. Not when three of them are in the national spotlight in some form or another this season. Not when two of them have a crop of promising young guards to rival any freshman class the Big 5 has seen in decades.
And certainly not when on any given night, any one of them can give any of its opponents a good fight no matter the other team's caliber. I've watched every one of the City Six teams this season except La Salle (which I'll see Thursday), and I haven't seen a single game this season in which those teams haven't given everything they have to try to win.
But what makes Big 5 basketball -- and indeed college basketball nationwide -- such a great thing for me is that I think college basketball is the most optimistic sport on the American landscape.
Baseball perpetually disappoints the overwhelming majority of its fans. Even Yankees fans have claimed to suffer over the last few years. So many teams come close but don't win the World Series. Of course, that makes it all the more satisfying when a perpetual loser does win it all, but that only happens every 86 years or so.
Football can be exciting, of course, and it does have the most parity. But there's so much anger in the sport, from hard tackles to fans who insist on nothing less than a Super Bowl no matter whether their team has the talent to win it or not. College football is also a great thing, but unlike college basketball, we like it more when the big teams are at their best. I rooted for Boise State as much as any mid-major basketball fan did, but it was more important to me that the right teams made it to the national championship game.
The NBA is so cut-and-dried. It's too predictable and it's too hard for teams to get rid of their salary cap burdens. Until the playoffs it can also be pretty bad basketball, and it's often played in front of half-empty arenas where the fans are more interested in their business clients than the action on the court. The NHL has almost completed its fall from the national spotlight, and Major League Soccer can't command enough attention when its tickets cost the same amount of money as a pay-per-view English Premier League game.
But college basketball is a different thing. It's the only American sport where fans actively want to watch a game in an arena that doesn't have skyboxes, flashy lights and big jumbotrons. Creaky bleachers and low lighting are good things (unless you're a photographer, I guess). So are old brick exteriors and arched steel beams supporting ceilings with windows that let natural light spill all over the floor during day games.
Most important, though, are the fans. Especially around here. Sure, they expect their team to win. But even when that's the case, they'll celebrate anyway. Big 5 fans are known nationwide for how vocally they support their teams, even on the road.
St. Joe's takes hundreds of fans to Madison Square Garden each year. Drexel did the same for last season's Preseason NIT. Villanova has had massive traveling support for its NCAA Tournament games in Nashville, Syracuse and Minnesota the last two seasons -- not to mention at the Wachovia Center for last year's first two rounds. Penn draws well in any big city it plays in because its undergraduates and alumni come from all over the country. And while La Salle and Temple might be down at the moment, even the most hardened fan knows that both schools have the right coaches in place to bring those programs back to prominence -- especially at Temple, where we all remember how the Owls packed McGonigle Hall in their prime.
I don't mean to be a cheerleader in writing this. I just want to point out to the pessimists out there that if their spirits need a lift -- though I'm not referring to Will Bunch specifically -- college basketball might just be able to provide it for them.
(And if you've read this far, yes, Todd Zolecki does mention Penn and Drexel in his Utley story. But I think my point still stands.)
