Last week there was a gathering of the city’s, and perhaps the country’s, best sports writers at Gourdo’s in the Fort in Taguig City. Gourdo’s seemed an appropriate enough venue for such a gathering – known as it is as an exclusive kitchen boutique that also has its own working kitchen and restaurant serving up some of the best gourmet meals in this corner of the world. Gourdo’s is both a showcase of equipment as well as a showcase of fine culinary skills. What were sports writers, folks normally subsisting on fast food and whatever is being served up in the press lounge, doing in a veritable gourmet temple? Well, they were there to discuss how to bring to the basketball public one of the most important development in Philippine basketball.

Basketball TV, the official broadcaster of the National Basketball Association in the Philippines, invited 12 of the best basketball writers in the land, including Joe Buduan of Basketbolista and Marlo Rustia of Gameface, to talk about the Power Rankings for the ongoing Philippine Collegiate Champions League or PCCL. The PCCL is the combined brainchild of Rey Gamboa, longtime coach Joe Lipa, and the support of the SBP. It is supposed to be the country’s answer to the American NCAA tournament.

As we all know there are several collegiate basketball tournaments that take place in the country – the UAAP and the NCAA are the two largest and most popular. There are others such as the NAASCU, CESAFI, NCRAA, UCAA, VAAA, SCUAA, and even the big summer tournaments like the Fil-Oil Invitational, the Fr Martin Cup and the Nike Summer League. Quite simply the best teams of each of these and other leagues nationwide will be invited and seeded to the PCCL. In the PCCL tournament the eventual champion will be hailed as the one true national champion and will also represent the country to the Universiade games in Serbia in 2009.

Suffice it to say that the PCCL might just be the first step on the long road to finally unifying the various collegiate tournaments going on all over the country. Certainly there will be difficulties and challenges, maybe even some intrigue as well as the usual rumors and loose-lipping. Still there is much to be hopeful for with the PCCL.

Every one always wonders whether or not the Metro Manila teams really are the best teams in college basketball. More to the point, they wonder whether or not the UAAP and the NCAA really does have the best teams in the country. And yet in the Fr Martin Cup Summer Finals NCRAA champion Arellano totally embarrassed NCAA powerhouse Letran. Last year NAASCU champion STI upset Far Eastern University. Plenty of the best players in the UAAP and NCAA come from the countryside and honed their games in the provincial leagues like Nonoy Baclao of Ateneo, Ken Bono formerly of Adamson and James Yap formerly of University of the East. Bono and Yap are also UAAP most valuable players.

As for the Power Rankings, well when you have so many teams competing all at the same time in the various leagues and tournaments all over the country, come one has to make sense of it all. Power Rankings – a summary of the Top 15 teams competing at any given time – are perhaps one of the easiest ways to keep track of everything going on in capsule form.

You can bet that Basketbolista will do its part to bring the latest development in the PCCL to all of our readers. After all this is history in the making, and only Basketbolista can bring this kind of history to the true hoops fan. With our best writer on the job you can bet that the Power Rankings will also be a joy to read and something every true blue hoops fanatic will want to get their hands on.