College football bowl thread: Days of Signs and Roses

Nah, that's the difference between one Washington TD and two.

You know, I'll give UW plenty of credit for keeping it a game as long as they did. I didn't really expect them to. As far as I can see, the Huskies and the Ducks are right about where Penn State is, looking up at the Big Two and disposing of the rest of the conference until something changes.

 

I Can't Believe It's Not Named After Butter!

 

This is tremendously dorky, but when I went to Boston, I tried to get to all four arenas of the Beanpot schools in one day. Conte Forum (BC) was the only one I actually got into, as it was the summer of 2021 and Boston in general was still fairly locked down. BU's new arena was a COVID testing site (but I did get a chance to check out nearby Nickerson/Braves Field). Northeastern's, which is one of the oldest arenas in North America, was just locked (it was July after all), and Harvard was definitely locked down.

 

I never got over the check out Nickerson/Braves Field in all my years here until a couple years ago when my son (a HS tennis player) played a match vs. BU Academy. Their home courts were on the BU campus basically where 3B would have been. The old home plate location is painted on the Nickerson Field turf and the facade of the 1B side entrance is still there.

 

As I recall, BC hoops used to draw some decent crowds to the Garden during the heyday of the Big East. They didn't jam pack the joint, but they busted into five digits if the matchups were good.

 

They would sell it out for the Ewing Georgetown teams (natch), St. John's and Providence when Pitino was there.
PS: One of the funniest things I ever saw on the job was one December when Dean Smith and North Carolina came up to play BC. After the game, Dean said all the right things about playing in a historic building and such, but his incredulous gaze as he surveyed the old heap spoke a much louder "what a dump. You mean the Celtics play in this hole?"

 

This seems weird as hell, because they don't even have anything on their website about it - lead (and only) story posted in the sports section today is about a new writer being hired. He didn't go, and it doesn't seem like their two main sports guys went either. It looks like it is for a freelance or unpaid contributor that's paying his own way, and simply using them to get a credential for the game, but maybe I'm mistaken.

 

Michigan has a bunch of players from Massachusetts and Connecticut (but none from Rhode Island), so I wonder if they hired someone to cover it for that reason? Or if the Providence Journal has a bunch of affiliated papers in the region and they hired someone to do a few features under that umbrella?

I did think, though, that the NY6 and CFP bowl games were very restrictive on who gets a credential? I remember when Mississippi State and Ole Miss were in the hunt in 2014, we started making contingency plans for if they made it to the Playoff and it seemed like a pretty high bar to clear. I think we looked at it in 2019 as well, with LSU in the Sugar Bowl, and it was the same way. You had to have covered a certain percentage of games, or be one of the regular beat writers, etc. Statewide media from the participating schools might get a pass, but it was clear they were trying to keep the riff-raff away.

 

Since the fall I've been a DMN subscriber (and have been thrilled with what's actually in the paper as compared to what I'd been getting from the Fort Worth Star-Telegram) ... the main story in our paper this morning was from AP. (Had it been the Star-Telegram, there'd have been no story at all.)

 

I assume that's a print deadline issue -- Mac Engel was there and I'm sure you can imagine which angle he took on it

 

When I was doing the Fort Worth paper 3 years ago, it had the latest print deadline of any McClatchy paper.

10 p.m. ET.

 

You never met me then.

BC has screwed the pooch for the last 30 years. Bad coaches, good coaches leaving. Lacking a local talent pool for basketball and football hurts, also.

BC has good women's teams.