👋 Good morning! The people love ZB.

As always, you can reach me at [email protected]

We will get back to regularly scheduled programming tomorrow. The Phillies apparently lost a baseball game yesterday. The Eagles and Tanner McKee apparently are playing a football game tonight (which we will have full coverage of, in the newsletter and at PHLY). And the Sixers apparently are bringing the black jerseys back. Thank you to them for that mid-August leak, I know what my A-block with Derek will be later today. Might even be our B-block, too.

Quick, who is the first non-Iverson or Mutombo player you think of when the black jerseys are brought up?

(Tie: Matt Harpring and Kenny Thomas)

OK, let’s get it back on track here…

It was a wildly successful Osprey’s (which you can view tomorrow on YouTube and listen to wherever you get your podcasts), in which the writing and creativity of Bo Wulf and production mastery of Julia Hoff shined through, and most importantly, the good people of Philadelphia took back their beloved Hard Rock. Some things really are bigger than sports.

But I just want to focus on one man and one man only…

Our guy Zach Berman is leaving PHLY to pursue another opportunity, one that I assume he will announce in the coming days. We are excited for him, but also sad to see Zach go. He was a huge part of the first two years of PHLY, and more importantly than that, an A+ friend and teammate.

ZB has been a fixture on the Eagles beat for a long time now, so I always felt that having him at the company brought us a level of credibility. Our branch of ALLCITY skews a little more towards journalists/writers, and Zach has been reporting on the Birds at a high level for a long time. He continued to do so for the last two seasons of Eagles football, one trainwreck and one triumph.

And yet, at least in my view, Zach never gave himself enough credit for how good he became at podcasting. And I would know better than anyone not named Bo, Julia, Fran or Jamie, since I pinch-hit a bunch on that show the last two years (flex). Zach provided a great counter-balance to Bo, but also went with the flow and started to talk about himself/nonsense while remaining authentic. When you do an hour of podcasting every single day, it cannot be all football. Zach (begrudgingly, at times) understood that, and was also really good at the non-football stuff.

During Zach’s speech, after Bo made him uncomfortable for the 20th time of the night (not even close to a record), ZB talked about how much he appreciated all of the Sickos. And that, in my estimation, is the coolest part of the podcasting biz. While always trying to grow the show, you develop a core audience who listen frequently, know all of the inside jokes (and sometimes create them on their own), and make you part of their routine. These people listen for all different reasons, whether they are simply diehard Eagles fans looking for information, need something to listen to while exercising (flex) or want to spend an hour getting away from whatever is going on in their lives. This audience is comprised of Birds fans, but at some point, they also start to at least partially listen for you.

That connection was my favorite part of last night (besides the Jeffrey Lurie “I Dreamed a Dream” song, that was killer). I think Zach saw the connection he made with people, both in the YouTube chat that runs on our shows but also at live events like last night. We will miss him, but my guess is that he will not be a stranger.

And if you Sickos and Diehards are wondering, we announced Bo’s new co-host at last night’s show, a super talented person that is gonna do great. I assume that announcement will be on the Osprey’s broadcast tomorrow. Regardless of when the cat is out of the bag, the show goes on.

Oh, one last thing: Shoutout to the Hall of Presidents, positionless football, Larry Kehres, Freddie Mercury and all of those great food cities out there.

And in honor of our guy, I will not say I love you, but that I will do better tomorrow.

(Seriously, tomorrow will be a normal newsletter. It was a long night.)

Let's make it a good one.

Rich Hofmann
Daily Newsletter Editor
PHLY SPORTS