Soft Pretzel Logic

I invite you to prove me wrong, but looking at tonight's schedule of games only makes today more miserable than it was already going to be for me.

So in order to distract myself from the fact that I'm single and working a very long shift today, I turn to blogging -- and to something else I've been thinking about a lot lately.

I am sure that many of you are, like me, fans of ESPN's College GameDay. Well, we know that the show has been to Cameron Indoor Stadium, Allen Fieldhouse, the Carrier Dome, Rupp Arena, the Dean Smith Center, Freedom Hall, and now this year Pauley Pavillion. They've even been to mid-majors Gonzaga and Southern Illinois.

Well, I say that we need to make Dick Vitale, Digger Phelps and company come to the Palestra next year. With St. Joe's playing all its games on 33rd Street next season, there won't be a better time to bring that kind of national attention to the Big 5 for quite a while.

You wouldn't have to just focus on the Hawks, though. I bet that with some coordination between the schools, you could get fans of all six teams in the building for the morning show. It would be like nothing College GameDay has ever seen -- possibly including their wild football trips.

How about this for a February Saturday of hoops:

11 a.m., ESPN: Morning show with fans of all six schools

12 p.m., ESPN2 or ESNU: Cornell at Penn (it will definitely be the best Ivy game next season, and possibly for a few years to come)

2 p.m., ESPN2 or ESPNU (or CSTV): Any A-10 team at La Salle

4 p.m., ESPNU: Any CAA team vs. Drexel

6 p.m., ESPN: Syracuse or Georgetown vs. Villanova at the Wachovia Center

8 p.m., ESPN: Night show

9 p.m., ESPN: Temple at St. Joe's

It would take a level of cooperation perhaps never before seen between the schools, the Big 5, the Ivy League, the Atlantic 10 and the Big East.

The first step would be to get the Penn game moved from 7 p.m. to noon, which would be an issue because of the short turnaround from the night before for both teams. Princeton is close enough to Philadelphia that it might not be too bad for the Big Red, but the Ivy League sticks pretty tightly to the 7 p.m. tipoff schedule.

The second step would be to get all the home games lined up on the same day, which would mainly fall on the Atlantic 10 because of the number of teams involved. I would think the Big East and CAA would have the least work to do.

The third step, and perhaps the biggest, would be to give ESPN the space it needs. The morning show will be fine on the floor, but the Palestra's close quarters won't make it too easy to set up a studio for the evening show.

Then again, the UCLA show used a few directors' chairs and a mounted logo in the middle and that didn't seem to take up too much space. The balcony behind the west basket should be big enough for that.

It's all just a daydream for now, of course. I've floated this idea to a few people I know in the region and at ESPN, but none of them really have the pull to get it done.

I haven't got anything better to do today, though, so I throw it out there for you to discuss among yourselves.