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Taryn Hatcher  is a NBC Sports Reporter for Philadelphia and has been in this career for the past 6 years. She went to Rutgers University where she studied Journalism and Mass Media Studies from 2011-2014. She started interning for the Philadelphia Flyers in the fall of 2013. In July she wanted to get her foot through the door, Taryn went to Honolulu Hawaii just to live there and become a reporter for Hawaii News Now. NBC Sports Philadelphia  said she always had a childhood dream to report for the Flyers, Sixers, Eagles, and Phillies.  As Philly is a pretty big market she decided to come back. Being a woman reporter in sports she is someone I had looked up to. Now that she has been in Philly for awhile she was reported for the all teams but is now reporting on the Phillies. Philadelphia Today praises her for all that she has done for this city, and gives us some insight on how she grew up.  She likes to have fun with her job like in August 2022 she dressed up and worked as a phillies ball girl. Taryn also she got to sit with flyers goal tender, Carter Hart’s mother, where they did an interview  at the start of the game. 

NBC Sports Philly did a Q&A about all the things that incorporated philly. Taryn Talked about her favorite philly sports memories, she shared how she used to always go to Flyers games with her family when Wells Fargo Center used to be called the Spectrum. When Taryn was in college she used to work at a pretty famous spot in Philly, Chickies & Pete’s. Even though Taryn grew up in South Jersey, she was still pretty familiar with Philadelphia and proves that. In my opinion she was a perfect fit in Philadelphia, her sports reporting shows her hard work and knowledge on the beautiful city. In Jersey Man Magazine Taryn did a story called “Talkin’ with Taryn” where she answered questions and talked about her experience. They did hit the topic about Philly fans and Taryn stated “It’s a passionate family. When they don’t do what we want, we get a little disappointed. But the love is so undeniable that you feel like it’s okay to be critical sometimes.” This was so well said, even though she has always been a fan from a reporter's view it can still be different. 

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On February 14th, 2025 some may be celebrating Valentine's Day while Philadelphia was celebrating the win of the Philadelphia Eagles Super Bowl Championship! I woke up at 7 am that day to get myself ready to take on the streets of Philly. One of the places to be was right near the Art Museum where the parade would be stopping so that the players could say their speeches. My friends and I had pushed through a bunch of people to get the perfect spot. It was a lot of standing, but with good people and good music, you didn't even think about it. I saw a little boy who was sitting on his fathers shoulders with a blow horn, everyone LOVED him.

As the parade finally began everyone started to get excited. Beer cans were being thrown for the players to catch, people were capturing photos, and none stop cheering of E-A-G-L-E-S! I got plenty of pictures and videos but my favorite one was of our offensive tackle Jordan Mailata! I included the picture on the left to show example of just how many people I was surrounded by, because there was more than one million people celebrating in Philadelphia that day. The picture on the right was a group of friends that sat on top of a U-haul truck for a great view.

Once the parade was over my group had started walking over to the city for a ride home. Let me say I have NEVER seen so much green. People really showed up for this day, people were still cheering even hours after the parade was over. The city didn't calm down till around 6pm where they were also trying to open the city back up. What is unique about these fans is that they will travel no matter what it takes. Before I even went out to Philly we stopped at my friend's Uncle's house. Her Uncle had a buddy who traveled from New York that day with just a backpack cooler and his belongings. Now New York may not be as far but getting on a train and making it to the city before 10am on parade day was pretty impressive. It is very rare for championships to come around, for us it took another 7 years. But this was the best thing I ever experienced from the City of Philadelphia, and I would 100% do it again.

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Greetings from Clearwater, Florida!

The temperature is 73 degrees which is some beautiful weather for baseball. The Philadelphia Phillies just kicked off their preseason Saturday February 22nd as they played the Detroit Tigers. Fans traveled down to the Sunshine state to watch their favorite baseball team play. Till the end of march Baycare Park is the Phillies new home. Stayed tuned for some more updates, and Play Ball!

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Being involved with sports, people think of conspiracies all the time. This past Super bowl, i've seen plenty of people say things about the Super bowl logo and how that can tell the outcome of the game. Years in the past we had Super Bowl LVII's colors be green and red, later when the stage was set the Eagles took on the Chiefs for the first time. Then this years logo colors were it was red and green. Some also may say that which ever color is the majority is the team that loses, which in this case red was the majority and KC took the lose against the eagles with the score being 40-22!

An Induction to the World of Conspiracy

Hello everyone, for my first post I would like just to start with some basics. What makes a conspiracy theory a conspiracy theory? How do they begin? How do they spread and why are people so fast to believe them?

What makes a conspiracy a conspiracy theory?

To answer that first let's look at the definition. According to The Oxford Dictionary, conspiracy is the action of conspiring, a combination of persons for an evil or unlawful purpose. Most conspiracies follow a similar formula: historical context, claim, evidence, and analysis. Historical context refers to a certain time's social, political, economic, and cultural environment to help better understand the conditions in which a theory developed. The claim of a conspiracy theory is the overall idea that the conspiracy is trying to get you to believe. The claim is backed by evidence. This is where it gets a little dicey. In his book A Culture of Conspiracy,  Micheal Barkun uses the word unfalsifiable. Evidence for a conspiracy is often unfalsifiable. This means that the “evidence” that theorists use and believe is not exactly credible and attempts to debunk is just all part of the conspiracy’s cover-up. In many instances, the evidence used to support theories includes secret knowledge or falls into confirmation bias and circular reasoning which makes it hard to prove or debunk that evidence at all. Lastly analysis, how does the presented “evidence” support a theory’s claim. Conspiracies are just like any argument you need a claim, evidence, and analysis.

How did they begin?

Often a conspiracy theory will start to develop in the bad times. The stress, anxiety, and anger that society is feeling often leads them to find their own truth and find someone to blame. An example of this is to help you understand is The International Jew conspiracy. During the early parts of the 1900 when the world wars were taking place The Protocols of the Elders of Zion was first published in Imperial Russia in 1903. This would become a pillar for Nazi Germany to lean on as evidence during their regime. After World War I, Europe was down, especially Germany. If you ever paid attention in history class this should all sound familiar to you. Anyway, Germany was mad and angry, they were looking for someone to blame. So, they blamed the German Left, which was composed of socialists, communists, and Jews. They blamed the German left for the surrender and the conditions of The Treaty of Versailles. This along with the already growing antisemitism in Germany eventually led to the events of the Holocaust. This is just a short summary, and we’ll talk more about The International Jew conspiracy in a later post, but I hope you got an understanding of an example of the type of environment that best allows for conspiracies to grow.

How do they spread and why are people so fast to believe them?

As mentioned earlier, Micheal Barkun- the author of A Culture of Conspiracy- associates conspiracy theories and folklore.  He writes that Conspiracy is much like urban legends in the sense that they are told as if they are true and the story is plausible, unlike fairy tales which are seen more as myths. In the past Conspiracy traveled by word of mouth just as folklore often was but now with the advancements of media, conspiracies are much easier and faster to spread than ever before, that’s why you see more and more people believing in them.  But well, what do I know?

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From Broad to Bourbon Street

After Super Bowl LIX, Philadelphia sports fans stormed the streets of New Orleans for a celebration after the Eagles won their second Super Bowl. For the first time ever Bourbon Street had to have their poles greased knowing what the result would be like if the eagles won the super bowl.

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Meet me on broad Street

A philly sports fan? Well they’re just crazy!  Unfortunately many people think we are nasty humans that just love to torture opposing teams fans, but other people may see a fan base that will go the extra mile for their team. Now I may be biased, but Philly sports fans are die hard! Sometimes it may be painful to be a fan when our teams lose, but when we win it’s a WIN! In 2017,  Eagles fans stood out in the cold on New Year's Eve to watch a game against the Dallas Cowboys.  This game did not go in Philadelphia’s favor, but this was the game that took us to the NFC playoffs, and later the Superbowl! After a big game, fans take themselves to the streets of Philadelphia where they later end up on Broad Street, this is a place where celebration begins.

This year on February 9th, the Eagles participated in their 4th Super Bowl down the bayou in New Orleans. Playing the Kansas City Chiefs, who were competing for their 3rd superbowl in a row, the Eagles were prepared to dominate. With the score of 40-22 the Philadelphia Eagles were now WORLD CHAMPIONS! You can only imagine what the city looked like, NBC 10 reporter Johnny Archer said “The most passionate fans in the country by far.” News stations all over were able to capture the flock of green, it was a very special moment for the city. Another thing Philly fans are infamous for is climbing the street poles.The Mayor of Philadelphia, Cherelle Parker told fans “Do not climb light poles, or anything else!” Fans of course had their comments towards that, but they proceeded to do it anyway. This time fans went the extra mile to even steal the light poles  and pass them through crowds! As we take a further dive into this blog we will begin to talk about other Philly teams, their wins, and players' reactions about Philly sports fans.

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What Broad Street looks like from a fan perspective after the Eagles won the NFC championship!

(Image by Jillian Fitzpatrick).