I just got back from Center City, where Philadelphia Mayor John Street held a press conference with members of the United States Olympic Committee touting the city’s bid to host the 2016 Summer Olympics.

As far as projecting an image of this city goes, they could not have picked a better backdrop: the heart of LOVE Park, a tree-lined Ben Franklin Parkway and the Philadelphia Museum of Art on an overcast but warm spring afternoon. But there are plenty of questions to deal with, chief among them whether the city has the infrastructure and political will to host the world’s biggest sporting event.

Two of the people charged with answering those questions have close Penn connections: President Amy Gutmann and Comcast Executive Vice President David L. Cohen, a Penn trustee. Both were present and seated in the front row during the press conference, as they are members of the local bid committee.

“I think that Penn would obviously play a role not only from a facility perspective but also from the perspective of leadership, civic leadership and idea leadership around the Olympic Games,” Cohen said.

It is great exposure for Penn to be involved in the bid, and you can be sure that many of Penn’s sports facilities will host Olympic events — especially whatever new ones come in the Postal Lands development. And you can bet that there will be a lot of talk about redeveloping Franklin Field as an Olympic-quality track and field venue.

“We’ll be a partner in this whole Philadelphia effort, and so we’ll be a part of what makes us be able to put together a full package for the Olympics,” Gutmann said.

Penn fencing coach Dave Micahnik, a three-time Olympian, was there as well, and was very excited about the prospect of the Games coming here.

“The thing about having the Olympics — it changes the city,” he said. “You become an Olympic city, a place that’s remembered forever as being somewhat special.”

Stay tuned — not just for more information in Friday’s DP, but as the bid process continues in the months and years to come.

Congratulations are certainly due to 2001 Brown graduate Cory Gibbs, who was selected to the 23-man United States World Cup soccer team. He’s the first Ivy League graduate to make the U.S. team since it re-emerged on the international scene in 1990, when it qualified for its first World Cup in 40 years.

Now those of you who follow soccer closely are well aware that the roster announcement came out on Tuesday. Why, then, did it take me so long to make this post?

Because no one I talked to knew whether Gibbs actually was the first Ivy League to make the U.S. World Cup squad in the modern era. I sent an email to perhaps the most influential person in American soccer, Columbia University economics professor and newly elected U.S. Soccer Federation president Sunil Gulati, and he suspected it was true but wasn’t sure. I called the U.S. Soccer Federation and no one there knew. I wrote to some other sportswriters I’ve met with Ivy League connections and none of them knew.

I called the Ivy League office and they didn’t know, which I think reflects rather badly on them because this is pretty important, especially given the global reach of the Ivy League’s academic reputation and Gibbs’ stature with the U.S. team. This is the world’s game, after all.

I finally got the answer I was looking for by going through all the rosters from the 1990, 1994, 1998 and 2002 teams, and searching for where all the players went to college. It didn’t take too long, but it’s not the sort of information that soccer’s governing bodies keep track of because the rest of the world doesn’t care about college sports the way Americans do.

I did manage to find a few other Ivy League connections to the world’s premier sporting event along the way:

– Former Columbia football coach Aldo Donelli, who led the Lions to their only Ancient Eight title in the sport in 1961, was the only American player to score a goal in the 1934 World Cup in Italy, although he went to college at Duquesne.

– Former U.S. goalkeeper Juergen Sommer, who was on the 1994 World Cup team, used to be an assistant coach at Harvard. Bruce Murray, a forward on the 1990 team (the first American team to qualify for the World Cup in 40 years), is an assistant coach with the Crimson now.

– On the current team, head coach Bruce Arena is a 1973 Cornell graduate. One of his assistants on the 2002 team, Dave Sarachan, was the head coach of the Big Red from 1989 to 1997 after graduating from Cornell in 1976.

The World Cup kicks off in Germany on June 9; the first game for Gibbs and the United States is against the Czech Republic is June 12.

I have a confession to make: I snuck into the Palestra yesterday. Okay, so I had some help doing it, and I was there for a decent reason, to pick up something I left there by accident a few days ago. But when my business was done, I decided to linger for a few minutes and think about all the time I’ve spent there over the last four years.

I hope every Penn fan gets the chance at some point to be in the Palestra when it’s empty. Sure, it’s special when there’s a full house and the fans are going crazy, but the meaning of the place really comes through when there aren’t any other people around.

Because, as longtime custodian Dan Harrell will tell anyone who asks him, the building is never truly unoccupied. I used to not really believe in ghosts, and for the most part I still don’t. When it comes to the Palestra, though, I agree with Harrell that there’s something in the rafters watching over the players and fans below.

As I stood there yesterday looking up, I couldn’t help but remember some of the big plays and big games I’ve seen over the two seasons in which I’ve had the privilege of covering the Big 5 for the DP. Three moments stand out above all the rest, occasions which symbolize the special nature of games in “college basketball’s most historic gym.”

The first came at the end of the 2004 Big 5 classic game between Temple and Villanova. The game was a stereotypical City Series clash, with rugged defense and poor shooting for both sides, exemplified by Villanova’s 3-of-17 first half from beyond the arc. With 1:10 to go in the second half, the score was tied at 50-50.

As Temple’s Mardy Collins drove to the basket, Villanova’s defense collapsed on him. But that left Dustin Salisbery wide open on the left side of the arc, and Collins dished to Salisbery for a wide-open three. When the ball went through the net, the Temple fans roared as if they were at an Italian soccer game, where the scarcity of goals makes reactions even more frenzied. It seemed so strange for the Owls to be on the verge of beating the far more talented Wildcats, and yet it was also somehow entirely predictable.

The second moment came just over two months later when Villanova squared off against Saint Joseph’s in the annual Holy War grudge match. While the aforementioned Temple-Villanova game was rightly hawked as the top Big 5 game that season, ‘Nova-St. Joe’s simply blows all the other City Series rivalries out of the water. It has all the elements: Atlantic 10 vs. Big East, mostly local student body vs. more geographically diverse student body, city vs. suburbs (even though a significant part of the St. Joe’s campus is on the other side of City Avenue), and lots of people who know people at the other school.

Yet when the two teams get together at the Palestra, it seems as much like a family reunion as a sibling rivalry. That was never more on display than at the beginning of the second half, when the full house was using college basketball as a distraction from the Eagles’ loss in the Super Bowl a day earlier. Amid the din, public address announcer John McAdams announced that a set of car keys had been turned in to the scorers table, and would the owner please come pick them up.

A game on national television between two teams which at that point had reasonable dreams of the NCAA Tournament, and here was an announcement about a lost set of car keys?

It was a perfect Palestra moment. It wouldn’t happen at one of the NBA-style palaces that many big-time teams play in across the country, much less the actual NBA arena that Villanova calls its second home. But it made complete sense.

The third moment came at this past season’s Holy War. The house was split right down the middle, as if a can of red paint had been thrown on one end and a can of blue paint had been thrown on the other end. And it was once again absolutely deafening — even the normally wine-and-cheese Villanova fans were really into it. There were points at which the “Let’s go St. Joe’s” and “Let’s go Nova” chants were in such a perfect rhythm that everyone was chanting “Let’s go” at the exact same time, and the rest was just an unintelligible mass of sound.

But even with all the shouting, there was one question that nobody had an answer to. With McAdams’ passing last summer and Rich Kahn only announcing Penn games and the Big 5 classic, who would be behind the public address? For most of the pregame warmups, there weren’t any announcements. Then the answer came a few minutes before tipoff, when the unmistakable voice of former Big 5 Executive Secretary and current Phillies PA man Dan Baker boomed out over the speakers.

“The Philadelphia Big 5 is selling merchandise on the concourse of the Palestra,” he said.

I’ve never heard the Palestra as quiet as it was at that moment. Of course, it got louder real fast.

“Tonight’s contest, ladies and gentlemen, marks just the fourth time in Philadelphia Big 5 history that two undefeated teams will meet one another to determine the Big 5 champion,” he said, as the crescendo grew. “The winner of tonight’s game will be crowned not only the winner of the 2005-2006 Big 5 title, but will be able to say they won the Big 5 championship for its 50th anniversary season.”

Even the objective among us had goosebumps.

I will close with one more anecdote, which was the first time I realized just what the Palestra is about. It was way back during my freshman year, at the first Penn-Princeton game I ever attended. The first points of the game were scored on a slam dunk by Ugonna Onyekwe. Even now, after those Holy Wars and all the other big games I’ve teen to, I swear that I have never heard the Palestra louder than it was at that moment.

And I thought of all this when the place was empty.

The big game on campus today — the only game, in fact — was the Penn tennis team’s playoff match against Brown to determine which of the Ivy League’s co-champions would get an automatic berth to the NCAA Tournament. Though it took place in the relatively out-of-the-way Levy Tennis Pavilion (which is actually quite a nice venue, if you’ve never been), there was plenty of buzz in the building.

Penn lost two of the three doubles matches, and was thus down a point in the first-to-four-points format entering the singles matches. So with Penn up 3-2, all the fans (and there were a decent number, actually) headed over to the two auxiliary courts, and were stacked ten deep at times in front of the few transparent areas of the court curtain.

After Brown’s Chris Lee beat Penn’s Brandon O’Gara at No. 6, the match was tied at three wins apiece, and as the players shook hands Quakers freshman No. 5 Justin Fox was down 6-4, 5-3 to Bears senior Luke Tedaldi.

Fox battled back to 5-4, then made it a straight-up duel for survival in the next game. Something like four deuces went by, then Fox went down a point again.

The Brown players waited on the next court over, crouched like sring-loaded missiles in an action figure’s gun. After a few exchanges from the baselines, Fox hit a forehand into the net. The match was over, and the Bears sprinted to Tedaldi’s side to celebrate a 4-3 win. It was the same score by which Penn beat Brown 22 days ago, and Brown’s second win over Penn this season.

“Everyone was really motivated for this match,” Bekker said. “One or two points could decide the whole match.”

Both teams’ names will be engraved on the elegant trophy that was on display at the front desk of Levy Pavilion during the match. Penn might still get an at-large bid to the Tournament, with Bekker quoting odds of that happening at “50-50, maybe.”

It’s still a better chance than the losing team would have in an Ivy League basketball playoff, given that it’s never happened and probably won’t for quite a while. But it should come as no surprise that a conference with the Ivy League’s demographics merits an at-large bid in a sport played most often in country clubs.

And considering that the Quakers won at least a share of the Ivy League title for the first time in 35 years, even to be on the bubble is quite some progress.

“We’ve turned this program around,” coach Mark Riley said. “Now we need to take this little bit of a bitter taste into next year to help us be better.”

It might also serve Penn well if its name gets called in the selection show Wednesday evening.

From the moment he sat down in the press room today, Tyree Washington made it clear that he had not forgotten about last year’s 4×400-meter relay — especially the last 150 or so meters — in the USA vs. the World competition.

“For me, it was just a matter of redemption,” he said. “It was a matter of revenge.”

There was no baton drop this time. Although the race was close for a while, especially heading into the anchor leg, in the end it wasn’t close. Washington’s USA Blue, anchored by Wallace Spearmon, crossed the line first in 3:00.09, and USA Red was right behind in 3:00.13. Jamaica came in fourth, behind a World All-Stars team that included 2004 Olympic gold medalist in the 400m hurdles Felix Sanchez of the Dominican Republic.

As the leadoff man, Washington came to the starting blocks with his competitive juices fully flowing.

“I want to break your back — it’s nothing personal against you, but I want to break your back,” he said. “I don’t care if my mother’s out there, it makes no difference to me.”

USA Blue’s anchor was Wallace Spearmon, no stranger to Franklin Field after four years running for Arkansas. He described his first trip as a pro as “a whole different atmosphere.”

“In college, you might have two or three guys who are great and you might have another guy who’s just decent,” he said. “But being put out there with four great guys on the same team and another four great guys from other countries, it’s just the best of the best.”

For the fourth time in the seven-year history of the USA vs. the World competition, the United States swept the top spots in all the sprint competitions. I say sprint competitions specifically because for the first time, there was a USA vs. the World men’s distance medley relay, which Kenya A came back to win by .07 seconds over USA Blue. USA Blue’s anchor was Bernard Lagat, who won a silver and a bronze medal in Athens just months after becoming an American citizen.

In the women’s sprint medley relay, Lauryn Williams brought the house down for a second time with a blistering 200-meter leadoff leg. USA Blue set a new world record in the event with its final time of 3:37.16, beating last year’s record time of 3:37.42.

The USA Blue men’s 4×100 team, by the way, had its victory reinstated after an appeal, as a four-judge panel decided no violation had occured.

The biggest rout of the day came in the women’s 4×400m relay, as USA Blue beat second place Jamaica by more than three seconds. Sanya Richards ran a 49.8 second anchor leg, the only person in that race to crack the 50-second barrier.

Richard said the weather, which really was spectacular all three days, gave her a boost.

“It makes a huge difference, especially mentally,” she said. “You can visualize the race and run it exactly how you see it in your mind.”

So that wraps up our coverage of the 112th Penn Relays Carnival on The Buzz. Thanks for reading along, and we’ll see you back at the track next year.

Courtney Jaworski had no doubt that his team belonged in the men’s 4×800-meter Championship of America race. But a collision after John Guzman handed the baton to Bryan Scotland for the second leg left the Quakers way behind the pack.

They ended up in 12th place out of the 13, with a final time of seven minutes, 32.61 seconds.

“Mentally it’s hard, physically it’s hard to do that and then get your body back up afterwards,” said Jaworski, who ran the anchor leg. “If that didn’t happen, I think we would have been in there, but once that happened it was realy hard to get up to speed mentally.”

Oral Roberts won the race in 7:18.74, giving the Golden Eagles their first Championship of America in their first ever trip to the Penn Relays. Villanova finished second in 7:19.06.

The news wasn’t all bad for Jaworski, though. As one of the Penn track team’s senior captains, he was honored in a ceremony in the infield earlier this afternoon. Getting that kind of recognition in front of today’s announced crowd of 49,771 — the second largest Saturday crowd ever, and there were plenty of empty seats in the upper deck — is a nice treat.

So too is the weather, which has been spectacularly rain-free for all three days of the relays. Jaworski picked a good year to be a senior.

By their own admission, the runners on the Penn women’s 4×800 team weren’t supposed to be in the Championship of America race.

Gwen Harris, however, thought otherwise.

“Our best relay of the whole championships is this one,” she said.

The coach was right. Penn came in fifth, and for the third time in two days Harris was exultant on the infield.

The first occasion was for Thursday’s distance medley relay, in which the Quakers also placed fifth. And like that race, the four runners in the 4×800 — Tina Morrison, Dana McCurdy, Jesse Carlin and anchor Stacy Kim — had never run together before.

McCurdy put Penn into third place at one point, and Carlin and Kim were able to stay there for quite a while. But Kim got passed coming around the last turn of the final lap, so Stanford took third and Georgetown took fourth. Texas won the race in 8:31.60, just 0.23 seconds ahead of Tennessee. Penn’s final time was 8:40.36.

“It was really exciting,” Morrison said. “We didn’t know what to expect, but I think everybody just went out there like they were out for blood.”

Carlin certainly did. She’s usually a 400m runner, but today ran two laps around the track instead of one.

“It’s so much harder, but it’s the same strategy,” she said. “I just go out as fast as I can and hold on, see who has the most guns — you’re dying at the end, but the day you don’t die, you’re going to do amazing.”

Kim, who doesn’t normally run the 800 meter distance either, admitted that she was “really nervous” as Carlin approaced with the baton.

But she and her teammates certainly gave it their all.

“It’s the Penn Relays, but it’s also still our home court,” Morrison said. “Out of all the times to do something, this is it.”

Now here’s a good way to wake people up on a Saturday morning: get four Jamaican teams in a high school 4×400m relay. Three such races just took places right in a row.

In the first race, St. Jago came in first in 3 minutes, 14.36 seconds, including a botched handoff between third-leg runner Sheldon Wilkinson and anchor Jerome Robinson that probably cost a good half-second. Wearing the green and gold colors of the Jamaican flag, St. Jago brought the house down with its come-from-behind win. Robinson just blew everyone away in the final leg.

The second race features Jamaican champions Camperdown and powerhouse Holmwood Tech. But it was an American school — and one well known to Penn fans, no less — that stole the show. DeMatha Catholic of Hyattsville, Md., alma mater of Steve Danley, pulled out the victory in 3:14.79, including a 46.5 second anchor leg from Jeremy Samuels. Camperdown finished second in 3:15.28 and Holmwood Tech was third in 3:16.42.

Even with the loss, the Jamaican flags are out in abundance, especially in the east end of the stands. The “whoop” corner at the last turn has been particularly busy with all these comebacks.

And here’s a good result for Jamaica: a sweep of the top four spots in race 219. Kingston College blew everyone away with a time of 3:11.85, Mannings was second in 3:15.92, Ardenne third in 3:18.62, and last year’s champions, Wolmer’s Boys’, was fourth in 3:20.92.

It’s the start of the final day of the 112th Penn Relays, and people are jamming into the stands early to see all the big races. The highlights will come from the USA vs. the World relays, in which America’s best runners — including superstars Justin Gatlin and Lauryn Williams — will run against the best from other nations.

Jamaica will get all the attention of course, especially because world record holder Asafa Powell is racing in the 100m sprint. That race is scheduled to start at 3:45, and you might just hear it in the high rises when the crowd roars Powell on. Unfortunately, he won’t run against Gatlin, his biggest rival, because Powell won’t be in any relays and Gatlin won’t be in the sprint.

As for a dark horse, look out for Great Britain in the 4×100-meter relay because of Mark Lewis-Francis. He was a member of the team that won the gold medal at the 2004 Olympics in a thrilling finish over the United States.

Other big races today include the college men’s 4×100m, 4×200m and 4×400m Championships of America, and both the male and female 4×800 Championships. The high school boys 4×100m championship might as well be renamed the Championship of Jamaica, because six of the eight teams in the field are Jamaican.

Finally, the first race of the day was the men’s Olympic Development 10km racewalk. Matt Boyles of Miami Valley Track Club came out on top in 42 minutes, 37.06 seconds. It took place at 7 a.m. this morning, and no, I wasn’t awake yet at that hour.

At first, Penn men’s track Charlie Powell was pretty vanilla when asked for his thoughts on the Heps 4×400-meter relay.

“We knew we had a chance at it and we knew we were going to be one of the top three teams,” he said. “We always go in there trying to win.”

Then he was asked whether there’s a rivalry between Penn and Princeton in track the way there is in other sports.

“Is there a rivalry between the Yankees and Boston Red Sox?” he replied. “It’s the most unbelievable rivalry in track and field.”

While I suspect the Southeastern Conference delegation at Franklin Field might have something to say on the subject, Powell’s answer is all the proof you need of how much this race mattered.