Welcome to Soft Pretzel Logic, Philly.com's new college sports blog. We all know that Philadelphia is one of the best college basketball towns in the country, and now there's a new place to come to get all the information and insight you could want about your favorite teams.
My goal on here is to try to bring some new perspective and depth to the local college sports scene. We all know that the Eagles and the other pro teams deservedly get so much of the space in the print pages of the Inquirer and Daily News every day. So I'll be looking to supplement the stories you see in the newspapers each morning, and to give you a few of my own opinions as well.
I guess you'd like to know a bit about me. I moved to Philadelphia in 2002, and started covering the local college basketball scene in 2003 for the Daily Pennsylvanian, Penn's student newspaper. Since then, I've covered all of the City Six teams -- on both the men's and women's sides. I've been writing for Mel Greenberg's women's basketball weblog as well, covering the local scene and a bit of the WNBA.
Now before you accuse me of favoring a particular team over the others, let me get that out of the way by saying I'm not going to do it. All the Big 5 teams will get their fair share of coverage, and yes, Drexel will too (and deservedly so). If I'm a fan of anything, it's the idea of the Big 5 -- that all of the region's teams get along well enough to play each other and work together off the court for such great causes as Coaches vs. Cancer.
When I got to Philly, I hadn't even heard of the Palestra or the Big 5. I remember watching that famous St. Joe's-Temple double-overtime game in 2002 on TV, but I didn't really get what I was about to walk into. But from the moment I experienced my first Big 5 game, I was hooked -- and I've been truly fortunate to get to know a lot of the people involved in the City Series ever since.
So what kind of coverage will you get on here? A lot of stuff, hopefully. You'll get a wrap-up of the day's local and national college sports news, for starters. You'll get some statistical analysis on our local teams using the data put together by such gurus as Ken Pomeroy and Jeff Sagarin. Of course, you'll get my take on ESPN's famed Bracketology column -- not least because I know Joe Lunardi reads this blog. And you'll be the first to know when new episodes of the the Inquirer's College HoopsCast, which I host with Mike Jensen of the Inquirer, hit the web each week.
Down the road, I hope to introduce you to some of the behind-the-scenes people who make the Big 5 the great tradition that it is. And if things go really well, I'll be liveblogging some of the big games and events in college sports over the next few months.
And finally, you might be wondering how this blog got its name. Well, if you've been to the Palestra, you know that soft pretzels are a staple foodstuff for almost any Big 5 fan. So consider "Soft Pretzel Logic" a little tribute to the gastronomic side of City Series basketball history.
