Celebrating legacy of City Series

Tomorrow, the Palestra will once again be heaven for college basketball fans. All six of Philadelphia's Division I schools are set to square off in a tripleheader billed as "The Big 5 Classic," and area coaches can barely contain their excitement.

"I think for anybody that's grown up in this area, and understands what this means, it's going to be a very special day," St. Joseph's coach Phil Martelli said. "Not only in terms of this season, but also for the history of college basketball in this city."

"I think it's great," said Drexel coach Bruiser Flint, whose Dragons take on the La Salle Explorers in tomorrow's 1 p.m. opener. "I think it's great for the city and great for college basketball."

After the Drexel-La Salle game, the Penn men's basketball team will take on St. Joe's. In the nightcap, Temple and Villanova will square off in a game slated to be broadcast on ESPN.

In many ways, this slate of games can and should be seen as a celebration of the rejuvenation of the Big 5. Its saga is a long and complicated one.

"Mine," said Bob Paul, C '39, when asked whose idea the Big 5 was. "And how it came about was we were doing nothing with our doubleheaders."

Paul -- Penn's Director of Sports Information, at the time -- got together with Penn Athletic Director Jerry Ford and Quakers business manager John Rossiter and worked out a round-robin format, where each team in the city played every other team once. At the end of the season, a City Champion was crowned.

As popular as it became, and for all the nostalgia it would elicit decades later, the Big 5 wasn't what anyone would call an initial success.

"The crowds weren't that great, and of course, our alma mater [Penn] was terrible," Paul said. "The only big sellout we had was when a team called Kentucky came in to play Temple. I was absolutely shocked that more people didn't come out more often."

Paul left Penn before the Big 5 came into its own, but it did, in a big way. By the '60s, the Big 5 was synonymous with raucous, packed houses and big-time doubleheaders.

"I think it has a lot to do with the equal number of seats the schools get at the Palestra," Big 5 executive director Paul Rubincam said. "You've got two schools yelling at each other, two bands playing at each other and the cheerleaders from each school. It's part of the magic of Big 5 basketball."

Rubincam, a former Penn Athletic Director, became head of the Big 5 in 1996, on the heels of Dan Baker's 15-year tenure. Baker oversaw changes that some viewed as the near-death of the Big 5.

Baker, who now does radio play-by-play for Drexel basketball, is a Philly guy who grew up with the Big 5. He watched the games on TV in the '50s and made his first trip to the Palestra in 1961. Baker took the helm of the Big 5 in 1981.

"I felt it was my duty to preserve this great tradition, and there were some very good years," Baker said. "Villanova won the national championship in 1985, and of course that was a critical year for the Big 5, because Villanova approached us, and [President] Father Driscoll wanted the right to play their City Series games at their home court."

Temple's president, Peter Liacouras, also wanted the Owls to play more of their home games at their own McGonigle Hall. Because of this pressure, Baker and the athletic directors worked out an unprecedented 10-year contract. Villanova and Temple would be allowed to play some of their City Series games at home, and the round-robin format -- which Baker saw as the lifeblood of the Big 5 -- would remain intact.

"But, some purists still weren't happy because the City Series was no longer being held at the Palestra," Baker said. "The Palestra was then and still remains the best place to watch a Big 5 game in this city."

Only a few years into the contract, the question of playing all the games at the Palestra would seem trivial compared to what Villanova's new president wanted.

"Father Dobin replaced Driscoll," Baker said. "He came to me and said that Villanova could no longer play all of the City Series games. At this point we were only halfway through the 10-year agreement."

Villanova threatened to walk away from the series entirely if its demands were not granted.

"Here I was," Baker said. "A guy who had grown up loving the Big 5 and this beautiful tradition, and here we were maybe at the precipice. What we came up with was the half Round Robin [where each team played just two of the four other Big 5 teams every season]."

Baker felt that if he could keep all the teams at least nominally involved in the Big 5, and if a central, separate office could be maintained, then just maybe the full round robin would at some point be reinstated.

He was right. For the second straight season, every team in the Big 5 will play every other team at least once.

"I think a lot of it is that we have five athletic directors who are so much on the same page," Rubincam said. "All these guys are committed to the Big 5, and it's sort of an attempt to recreate the heyday of the '60s and '70s."

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