Award Winning Sportswriters Talk Philly College Hoops

Dick Weiss is a Hall of Fame sports columnist who worked for the Philadelphia Daily News as a sportswriter covering college basketball and the NBA and was the national college columnist for New York Daily News for more than 40 years, from 1973 through 2013. He has covered 45 NCAA Final Fours, 35 national championship games in college football and has co-authored 12 books on basketball Hall of Famers Rick Pitino, John Calipari, Dick Vitale and Theresa Grentz, co-writing the last two with his wife Joan Williamson. He has also written a tribute book to Mike Krzyzewski

Joe Juliano did a little bit of everything for the Inquirer, focusing most recently on Penn State football and Villanova basketball. He wrote about golf and handled the paper’s Penn Relays coverage, and there was a stint covering the Sixers from 2003 to 2007. He came to the Inquirer after ten years at United Press International, where he spent his last seven years as their Philadelphia Sports Editor. He also worked in UPI bureaus located in Miami and Trenton.

Dick Jerardi is an award winning sports writer as well as a radio/television host and commentator, and is arguably best known for covering the sport of Horse Racing. Though his work as a journalist at The Philadelphia Daily News, Dick has covered every Triple Crown race since 1987 (he is a five-time winner of the Red Smith Award for Kentucky Derby coverage). Dick Jerardi famously chronicled the remarkable Smarty Jones during the Triple Crown chase of 2004 s the Thoroughbred won the Kentucky Derby and Preakness Stakes for trainer John Servis. Since 2011 Jerardi has been an on-air analyst for the live television broadcasts of The Pennsylvania Derby from Parx Racing, most recently for NBC Spots Philadelphia. Many fans know of Dick Jerardi’s work from the long running Let’s Go Racing TV program where he works alongside fellow Parx Hall of Fame members Keith Jones and producer Bruce Casella. Dick also continues to provide color commentary for the live broadcasts of Penn State basketball.

Mike Kern came to the Philadelphia Daily News almost right out of college, started as part-time clerk, graduated to full-time clerk, promoted to sports writer on February 1, 1982, when the Bulletin folded and the Daily News started covering suburban high school sports. That was his beat for five or six years. He began covering the colleges at that point. In 1991, he also took over the golf beat. He has been the national college football writer since 1993. Mike has won numerous national writing awards for golf and basketball, for stories on Tiger Woods and John Chaney, mostly. Kern was the Pennsylvania Sports Writer of the Year in 2003 and became a member of Lincoln's Wall of Honor that same year. Mike was president of the Philadelphia Sports Writers Association for two years. Mike Kern covered legendary Temple coach John Chaney for 10 years.

 Joe Lunardi is the resident Bracketologist for ESPN. He invented Bracketology and has been projecting the NCAA Tournament field for ESPN since its inception. Each year, Lunardi breaks down the Tournament hopefuls, provides year-round team analysis, and offers real-time, in-season bracket updates of potential seedings and pairings. His frequent appearances from the “Bracket Bunker” have become a staple of college basketball telecasts across ESPN networks. Prior to joining ESPN full-time, Lunardi spent more than 30 years as head of communications and marketing for his alma mater, Saint Joseph’s University. Lunardi was raised on Saint Joseph’s and Philadelphia Big 5 basketball, writing for the Philadelphia Bulletin and Delaware County (Pa.) Daily Times before becoming a long-time editor with the Blue Ribbon College Basketball Yearbook.