Philly's stake

Sporting News, The, Jan 23, 1995 by Michael Bradley

Like many native Philadelphia sports fans, I would prefer college basketball remain in a state of suspended animation, with double-headers every Wednesday and Saturday at the storied Palestra, and the Big Five championship remaining the ultimate goal of every city team. Ours is a world of streamers thrown after each game's opening basket and of clever roll-out signs; of sparring mascots and cacophonous pep bands. Every game, of course, is a buzzer-beater, and every crowd is a study in bedlam. It is tradition and nostalgia. And we love it.

It is also a fantasy world, no more a part of today's bigmoney college basketball scene than the four-corners offense or the UCLA dynasty. The NCAA and CBS have produced 1.75 billion reasons why coaches and players have to focus on the national scene. Television seduces high school players with visions of the big time, where giant domes and yammering analysts hold sway. You can't even throw streamers onto the court anymore without drawing a technical. Reality has infringed on Philadelphia's unique basketball world, and things can never be the same.

Six Division I schools lie within a 13-mile area in and around Philadelphia. They are La Salle, Penn, St. Joseph's, Temple, Villanova and Drexel. This season, all six have legitimate shots at the NCAA Tournament -- an unprecedented, remarkable feat for any city. But some of us natives can't accept the way college basketball has changed our world. All we care about is the past. All we care about is the Big Five.

The Big Five was formed in 1955 by the aforementioned schools minus Drexel as a parochial alliance to enhance interest in (and make some money on) Philadelphia basketball. (Because of its relative youth in the college basketball universe, Drexel was left out and has remained on the city's basketball fringe.) The idea would be that each team would play each other in a round-robin format throughout the season in games known as the City Series at Penn's venerable arena, the Palestra.

Today, the Big Five has become a symbol of the city's hardwood glory days and a source of a curious athletic myopia. Imagine the excitement of packing five heated rivals into one metropolitan area and pitting them against one another every season. There was nothing like it in the country. But as it celebrates its 40th year, the Big Five is a shadow of its former self, a victim of college basketball's burgeoning popularity and giant checkbook. There are no more Palestra twinbills. The teams don't all play each other anymore. And while the rest of the college basketball world revels in the game's growth, we Philadelphians yearn for the past.

"You need to be a purist-type of basketball fan to really understand the tradition, history and rivalry of Philadelphia college basketball," St. Joseph's Coach John Griffin says.

This season's Villanova-St. Joseph's game at the Palestra was a brief attempt to resurrect the glory days. For two hours, we could imagine the Big Five in its full, round-robin glory, not the current diluted climate, in which teams have played only two intramural games a year since 1991. Scalpers prowled the sidewalks around the Palestra. Parking was a nightmare. A string band played in full Mummers regalia. Soft pretzel sales boomed. And the rest of the basketball world didn't matter. It was a microcosm of Philadelphia's parochial mind-set. Forget the Big Picture. This was about neighborhoods. Friend against friend. Brother against brother. Hawks against Wildcats.

OK, so it wasn't quite perfect. It was a Sunday matinee, not the nightcap of a Saturday-evening twinbill. And in the old days, the teams would have split the tickets evently. This was a St. Joe's home game (the school had moved the game from its 3,200-seat Field-house to create a bigger event -- and make more money), and true to the heated rivalry between the two schools, the Hawks had allotted Villanova only 500 of the 8,722 available tickets. "They would have done the same thing to us," St. Joseph's supporters argued. They were right. When the Wildcats play host to Penn on February 22 in their antiseptic duPont Pavilion, they'll give the Quakers 250 of the 6,500 seats.

Still, the fans were willing to overlook the blemishes, and so were the media. Along press row, wags didn't talk about game strategy or which team would win. Most everyone was overjoyed to be in the sold-out Palestra for a Big Five matchup. The players and students, most of whom were weaned on March Madness, not Big Five hysteria, had a different perspective. This was a big non-conference game -- and nothing more. But we traditionalists were so hungry for a return to the old days that the details were dismissed.

In an era when the sport is known more for its enormous growth, spectacle and money, college basketball in Philadelphia remains an oasis. The six Division I schools provide a small reminder of what the game was like before the NCAA Tournament took over and rendered the regular season little more than a dress rehearsal for the television spectacle of the Final Four.