It is hard to believe that after the dot-com boom of the late nineties, which saw the number of Internet Web sites grow faster than the line at Abner’s after the Penn men’s basketball team scores over 100 points, there were still certain topics in the world that did not have adequate Web coverage. But in October 2000, Jake Wilson C’99 had to scour the Web to find information on Ivy League basketball that was more extensive than the paragraph or so each school received in national college basketball preview magazines. The Scranton, Iowa, native thirsted for information on Penn and its opponents heading into the new season—objective information, not the more promotional pieces put out by the schools and the league themselves.
To get his fix, and give other Ivy fans theirs, he created ivybasketball.com.
The former English major, who had no prior Web-design experience, launched the site from his home in Boston.
Through its first few months, the site had about 35 visitors a day, but now the self-proclaimed “home for Ivy hoops information” has swelled to 4,000-5,000 unique users and over 15,000 page hits a day. Features include up-to-the-minute team information and an in-house message board for fans across the world to discuss anything from Penn coach Fran Dunphy’s substitution patterns to the attendance at the latest Dartmouth-Cornell game.
During Penn’s disappointing 2000-01 season, the message board turned into a massive group-therapy session for many Penn fans, while allowing the pesky Princeton Tiger faithful a place to needle those suffering Quaker supporters.
Building on that momentum Wilson revamped the site design, added content, and built a staff. Andy Glockner C’94, a former first-team All-Ivy kicker for the Penn football team, was a frequent site user and newly aspiring journalist after eight years in investment banking and consulting in New York. Glockner contacted Wilson last January to offer his assistance. Among other duties Glockner writes a weekly “14 Game Tournament” column chronicling the race for the Ivy title, and helps Wilson compile information from around the league for the site’s “Inside the Ivy” weekly feature. Glockner also helped launch “Verbatim,” a popular site feature in which various coaches and players across the league are interviewed in great detail.
And then a funny thing happened. The 2001-02 Ivy men’s basketball season was perhaps the most competitive and captivating Ivy season ever, putting Penn in a three-way playoff with Princeton and Yale for the NCAA Tournament bid (which ended with Penn smashing Yale to earn the NCAA berth). Fan interest went through the roof. Wilson started receiving e-mails from coaches, players, players’ parents, and potential recruits, thanking him for the site.
“It is very rewarding when the people you are writing about are interested in what you are writing,” Glockner said.
The key, according to Wilson, is the evenhanded, unbiased coverage that the site gives to all eight Ivy men’s basketball programs. “We do try to keep criticism constructive, but we don’t sugarcoat anything.”
Which is what keeps Ivy fans coming back for more.
—Dan Feldman C’94
