Guest Blog: Jack Eggleston from across the pond

Editor's note: Last week we introduced buzz contributor Bradford Blackmon, a 2011 Penn football graduated and former Red and Blue captain. This week we are once again extremely excited to introduce another new contributor who will be a familiar face to many: Jack Eggleston. Also a 2011 grad and former captain for Penn basketball, Jack is joining us all the way from Leverkusen, Germany, where he plays for the Bayer Giants, a third-division pro basketball team. He'll be blogging occasionally about his experiences abroad and his young professional career. We can't confirm or deny whether Senior Sports Editor Cal Silcox actually does write love poems about Stephen Strasburg.

My theory is that Young Silcox has contracted an early case of Senioritis. Disillusioned with his work at the DP, Cal wants to spend the rest of his senior year at Penn drinking heavily, chasing girls, and writing love poems to Stephen Strasburg. All he had to do was suggest to me that a few people might be interested to hear what I've been up to and he found his replacement. I hope to be checking in every once in a while to give a little insight into the exclusive and thoroughly exciting world of third division German basketball. I'm no Paul Shirley but I'll do my best to mix it up from the typical Penn sports coverage you read here.

Other than the language, the biggest change in my life in Germany is my relationship with time. Like most Penn students, I always thought there were never enough hours in the day to do all that I needed to do. Each day felt like a battle between academic, athletic and social. Rest was the runt of the litter, who never stood a chance. For the past month and a half, nothing could be further from the truth. Time has gone from a scarce resource to an abundant one. Instead of trying to decide which things I wouldn't be able to get done in a day, I have to figure out what to do all day.

The one thing that hasn't changed is how I mark the passage of time: by games. Much to my chagrin, all of the marking to this point has come with L's. Cal deserves some of the blame for writing that obvious jinx of an article at the end of last season calling me an "iron man." After missing one practice in four years at Penn, I only practiced three times in the first month of my pro career. I suffered a partially torn ankle ligament in our second preseason game, and three games into the regular season I'm still not back to full strength.More than anything, an injury makes time grind to a halt. Every day is a countdown to the time you can get back out there. If I was going nuts after two weeks, I can only imagine how guys like Andreas Schreiber, Darren Smith, and Larry Loughery felt missing multiple seasons.

Despite being in another continent and six hours ahead, I do my best to keep up with people back in the states. Recently one of my close friends tried to talk me out of this whole basketball as a career choice idea. He said, "Don't you think you're just putting your life on pause? Nothing you're doing right now is building toward anything else down the road." I hesitated for a little bit. In a way he's exactly right. Playing basketball isn't going to help get me a real job. And traveling back and forth between the U.S. and Europe isn't conducive to maintaining any sort of relationship that would start a family.

But being surrounded by the fast-paced Penn lifestyle for too long has forced my friend to fall prey to the popular fallacy that life is short. It's not. Coach Allen used to say that he had minutes in his pockets, and whoever wanted to play had to come grab them. Over here I have hours and hours in my pockets and nobody around to take them from me. I'm happy to have my life on pause and as long as people are willing to pay me to keep it that way, I'd be a fool to say no.