Ask people who know me well, and they'll tell you that I don't put a lot of effort into how I dress, especially when I have class before 1 p.m.
And Tuesday was no exception; I threw on a pair of jeans and a red T-shirt and went off to my classes.
While I was walking home from my second class, two guys -- who I wouldn't have exactly considered the world's best-dressed individuals -- called me out for my attire.
One of them said something to the effect of, "How could you go out wearing that?" and the other, something similar.
Guess that's what happens when you pull the wrong red shirt out of your drawer.
I was wearing my Saint Joseph's basketball shirt that I bought to sneak into the SJU student section earlier in my college career. Plain red, simple white text, looks like it cost about a buck and a half to make.
So when I ran into those two guys -- Penn basketball assistants-in-limbo Dave Duke and Matt Langel -- I gave them a simple answer:
"I'm a Big 5 fan."
That answer seemed to be just fine for them, and that's the moral of the story.
That's the best part of the college basketball scene in Philadelphia. When Temple's not playing, Owls fans root for Drexel. When La Salle isn't playing, Explorers fans (I've heard they really do exist) root for Penn.
And when St. Joe's is not playing ... well, never mind, they'd root against Villanova even if the fate of the Catholic religion rested on it.
Last year, I began covering Big 5 games. And for the previous three, I've been watching the matchups from the cheap seats -- which, when I look back, has become a not-so-cheap habit.
Nor has my habit of being a Big 5 collector. To date, my growing collection ranges from cheap student-section T-shirts from three of the schools to a Temple "Tribute to Tradition" poster and a Kerry Kittles Villanova jersey circa 1995.
Philadelphia college basketball is a unique situation in the sports world. When was the last time you heard somebody say he was a Yankees fan and a Mets fan?
In fact, it's unique to Philadelphia, even within the wider world of college basketball. Nobody would last a second in Raleigh saying that he was a Duke fan and a North Carolina fan.
While the Big 5 is not a conference, its place is still unique. No Temple or St. Joe's fan goes around saying he's an Atlantic 10 fan. (I once met somebody who said he was a Conference USA fan, but that's the last time I ever took him seriously).
And the best part is that, while it's difficult to find fans willing to root for their rivals, it's just as hard to find fans who root against their rivals as strongly as when they're on opposite sides of the Palestra.
For those two hours, no topic is off limit for rollouts and no voice box is intact when the game is over.
Then the next day, or the next month, everyone's on the same team again.
Being on the same team is fighting cancer through the initiatives of the Big 5 coaches. It's shedding Temple's cherry and white for blue and white when Villanova's in the Elite Eight.
So, as a Penn student, there is no shame in wearing a St. Joe's shirt.
And, by the way, Coach Duke and Coach Langel: I can criticize your dress, too.
Trice looks sharper in his suit than the two of you combined.
Zachary Levine is a junior mathematics major from Delmar, N.Y., and former Sports Editor of The Daily Pennsylvanian. His e-mail address is zlevine@sas.upenn.edu.
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