Why College GameDay Is Coming to Your City, If You Live in Boston

Horrible choice!  Boston???  For real?  You’ve got Cal/USC and OU/Miami and you choose freakin Boston???  I know ESPN is located in Conn but seriously….bad pick…for everyone except employees of ESPN.

Are you kidding me?

Cal has been ITCHING to get College Gameday for years.

Cal fans would totally show up.

Gameday was supposed to come for the 2007 opening game vs. Tennessee (the only attractive matchup that day), but instead chose Virginia Tech vs. East Carolina because of the tragedy.

When the basketball edition of College Gameday came to Cal earlier this year, we made it be known that we would be LOUD and boisterous very early in the morning. (many students actually camped out overnight).

Please watch the following YouTube videos:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5ZbzGI80Cdc
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UqY9TJBCaTY
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IsLZz1RBEr4
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fsE0N9SeYbk

And check out these 2 other YouTube videos from Saturday’s Gameday, where they said they’d go to Berkeley next week:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dflpc_pcCDM
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=prlZxzPV8e8

Now granted, Cal got destroyed by Oregonn, and is undeserving of Gameday, but — my god! — look at the record of the Florida State/Boston College game.

It’s like rewarding ineptitude.

Ah, I’m sorry for posting the comment twice. How do I edit the URLs to properly work?

Anyways, just copy and paste the YouTube vidoes into your browser to see what Cal did to Bobby Knight.

You’re right about the 5th game in town thing… towns with teams in every pro sport generally don’t care to watch less skilled players, regardless of how enthusiastic they may be. All that Aww Shucks stuff is used up on the little kids soccer game.

I went to BC, and I don’t care about the team. If I had tickets to BC and Duxbury High School football, I’d go to DHS. The food and parking would be better, and you don’t have to have college kids barfing around you.

What do you expect from ESPN? The network has a huge pro-Boston/NY bias. Just because your team is doing well doesn’t mean they will be coming to your city (or, as they call it, "ci-tay").

Sort of a lame thing to be concerned about.  Several years ago they were at the Harvard-Yale game.  It doesn’t have to be SEC, Pac-10, Big Ten or Big 12 all the time.  There is college football played all over the country, and some of it is better than popular opinion will allow it to be.

The Boston or east-coast market also has nothing to do with it.  It’s held on college campuses for college students.  It doesn’t matter where it is as long as it’s on a campus.

They covered a Williams game to. They probably had it scheduled last year when this game seemed a lot bigger. BC was a solid team last year before all the misfortune hit in the offseason. I doubt you can plan a show of this scale three months in advance.

Cal lost its chance by being outscored by 39 points last week, sorry.
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Hippi-Kat the location is chosen from week to week. Sometimes they even have polls to let the fans decide where it should be.

Hey "Raisin’ up off the cot",

You must have been a huge tool at BC with little or no friends if you didn’t and still don’t care about the football team. Everyone I knew at BC cared about the football team and went to the games.  I just feel bad for you that you couldn’t share in the fun that was the football games and are now a bitter graduate. Don’t come on this message board and act like you are speaking on behalf of the BC community. You are part of a small SMALL percentage of people and no one should take what you say seriously. Go to your stupid Duxbury High School game and creepily stare at the cheerleaders that you wish you could have had in high school.

Also, ANDY HUTCHINS… "in front of a sparse crowd of BC fans on Saturday morning"??

You are a journalist! Do your research!

I was there in 2005 when GameDay came to BC and the crowd was FAR from sparse!  I can assure you that there will be tons of fans there and ESPN won’t be disappointed. I don’t understand how you people that are paid to report and blog are constantly talking out of your butts. You have no facts to back up your statement of saying the crowd will be sparse.

Another for "Raisin’ up off the cot",
YOU went to BC?…obviously didn’t graduate….got in because you were from Duxbury, a bastion of intellectual giants…I think not.  In case you missed it, BC football won their ACC division last two years, have beaten Notre Dame six straight, and this year at 3-1 with 4 freshman QBs, 2 sophomore running backs and an incredibly young defense without the ACC defensive player of the year.  Basketball beat North Carolina and Duke in the same season last year with spohomores, something no other team has done ever…oh yeah, without any recruits in the top 100, unlike Duke and North Carolina who have only MacDonald’s All Americans sitting on the bench.  Even Bill Curley, from Duxbury, led BC to a final four appearance beating the legendary Dean Smith and North Carolina.  Duxbury High? No college kids barfing, only high school kids smoking grass.  Good Luck.

Another for "Raisin’ up off the cot",
YOU went to BC?…obviously didn’t graduate….got in because you were from Duxbury, a bastion of intellectual giants…I think not.  In case you missed it, BC football won their ACC division last two years, have beaten Notre Dame six straight, and this year at 3-1 with 4 freshman QBs, 2 sophomore running backs and an incredibly young defense without the ACC defensive player of the year.  Basketball beat North Carolina and Duke in the same season last year with spohomores, something no other team has done ever…oh yeah, without any recruits in the top 100, unlike Duke and North Carolina who have only MacDonald’s All Americans sitting on the bench.  Even Bill Curley, from Duxbury, led BC to a final four appearance beating the legendary Dean Smith and North Carolina.  Duxbury High? No college kids barfing, only high school kids smoking grass.  Good Luck.

cmm911,

I’m no great fan of your tone — unnecessarily agitated and reactive — but I do agree with your substance. Hutchins took an unwarranted cheap shot at BC with that "sparesly attended" line. If he’d done even a tad bit of research, he’d have discovered that the 2005 GameDay was exceptionally well-attended by BC students — at least as well attended as GameDays at much larger universities. And, undoubtedly, it will be this year, too.

BC may have trouble competing in a pro-sports market but it has no problem encouraging its students to be rabidly passionate about BC football. Irrespective of the opponent, the student section is packed to capacity (2000+) week in and week out, and these same students will be converging on the GameDay set on Saturday.

And, incidentally, I second your assessment of "Raisin ’Up Off the Cot" — absolutely no way this person is a BC alum!!

Now with Stefon’s injury this game takes on a whole new look….stupid ESPN…

Southernmiss,

You are correct.  My tone may have been a little out of line, but I have trouble apologizing for it. I just get so fed up when people (especially journalists!) disparage schools like BC (a.ka. schools not named Texas, USC, Florida, Duke, UNC, etc.) with little or no facts to back their statements up. Yes, Boston has successful pro teams in the Red Sox, Patriots, and Celtics. Yes, Boston fans are passionate towards these teams.  But, that does not mean that Boston College sports teams do not have a good following or support from the Boston area. As far as college teams go, BC is it in Boston. I love when people try to tell me that Boston also has BU, Northeastern, and Harvard. Seriously, if you are a Boston resident that is also a college sports fan with no real affiliation to any of those mentioned schools, you will root for BC.

To me it almost seems like a lot of these journalists are perpetutating this problem through their lack of knowledge. It’s like one journalist proclaims, "Boston is a pro-sports town, BC has no real fans!" Another journalist hears or reads this and thinks to himself, "I guess BC has no fans…" Then they casually will reference this in one of their articles, and then something that has no real factual basis will be looked upon as fact. The only people that ever seem to knock BC on their fan base are the people that have no real clue what they are talking about. This is what frustrates me.

Lastly, for anyone claiming there is a "pro-Boston" media bias when it comes to anything BC… you are crazy.  The media are the first ones to relish in picking BC to finish last in the conference every year, and every year, like clockwork, we prove them wrong. Then you hear the chorus, "Wow, BC is really coming out of nowhere this year!" But, in all honesty, I wouldn’t have it any other way. I also wouldn’t be surprised if we end up doing the same thing this year.

BEAT THE NOLES!!

BC is a strong program thats only going to get better. I overheard some people talking well about them this weekend in T-town, never once heard a positive word about Cal.

There really does seem to be an anti-BC media bias, which I really can’t understand. They’re putting some good players in the NFL, and really do a great job coaching those boys up. Publications always seem to pick against them and they seem to just roll in another solid group of disciplined players who love to hit.

I would have loved to see them play Auburn in the Chick-Fil-A bowl a few years ago, or at least put a few good SEC teams on their schedule (LSU, S.Caro). A weak non-conference schedule makes it really easy to pick on them.

If we want parity and a playoff system in college football, teams like BC need gameday to boost the fan base and get people excited about college footabll. Show them some respect.

RTR