Soft Pretzel Logic

The Philadelphia sports landscape is about to become a bit more crowded.

And a lot louder.

As Inquirer staff writer Jeff Gammage wrote yesterday, Major League Soccer will officially give Philadelphia the league's 16th franchise at a 2 p.m. press conference this afternoon. The ceremony will be held at the Wharf at Rivertown, 2501 Seaport Drive in Chester. You can get directions and more information here.

There is also a new Philly.com soccer page in our Sports section. It includes a lot of the recent Inquirer and Daily News stories on the Chester stadium development, as well as links to scores and news from leagues around the world. I hope you like it; I must admit to having a bit of a vested interest in the page, as I built the thing myself.

One of the stories you'll find there is this great piece this great piece by my College HoopsCast colleague Mike Jensen. Mike has covered soccer for the Inquirer for a long time, and his story paints a richly detailed portrait of the state of MLS in 2008.

It also includes interviews with Bobby Convey and Peter Vermes, two Philadelphia-area natives who have played in MLS as well as with the U.S. national team.

In Thursday's Inquirer, Gammage profiles former U.S. national team player Walter Bahr, who played on the 1950 World Cup team and will be in attendance at today's ceremony.

The Inquirer's business desk is involved as well, with CEO-to-be Nick Sakiewicz the feature interviewee on Wednesday's episode of Philadelphia Business Today. Those of you who have followed MLS through its 12-year history probably know Sakiewicz's name quite well. He ran the Tampa Bay Mutiny from 1996 to 1999 and then moved to the New York/New Jersey MetroStars, which he ran from 2000 to 2005.

I think Sakiewicz made some fair points in that interview, as did Gammage in his interview with host Mike Armstrong. But Sakiewicz's less-than-stellar record as a GM is also well-known to American soccer fans. The Meadowlands franchise has never even made the MLS Cup final, while the Mutiny struggled to draw fans at the Buccaneers' stadium before going out of business in 2001. We'll see what he does here.

Regardless, the Sons of Ben -- the supporters club that famously was founded knowing it had no team to actually root for -- are to be congratulated on having their push to get a team here finally pay off. We'll see if their longstanding efforts to have fans name the team will also pay off.

Personally, I'm ecstatic about this news, even though I can't make the ceremony because I'm traveling to cover Penn's basketball games this weekend for the Inquirer.

But the arrival of soccer also poses a considerable dilemma for me.

You might remember that over the summer, I dipped a toe into soccer blogging on here. Ever since I started this blog, I hoped that I would add soccer to the list of subjects covered on here along with college sports and track and field.

I've followed MLS for a long time, not just as an outside observer but also as someone who covered the sport before moving to Philadelphia. With a team finally coming here, perhaps I'll be able to do so again.

I worry, though, that I'll be spreading myself too thin. I'm fairly sure there's some crossover between the college basketball and Penn Relays fans, but I don't know if there's crossover between college basketball and soccer.

I'd like to think there can be. If any of you have ever been to a professional soccer game, whether in the U.S. or another country, you know that college basketball is pretty much the only American sport that can rival soccer for atmosphere.

College basketball is the one sport we have that has soccer-style organized fan sections, with chants and songs and so forth.

So I ask you:

Can this:

and this:

go together?

We'll find out soon enough.