If you are a die-hard sports fan, you’ve come to the right place.
But first, let’s clarify a few things. If you came to BU looking for top-25 college basketball or sold-out football stadiums (or football stadiums of any kind), then you may be sorely disappointed and should take a walk down Comm. Ave. to that other school that will remain nameless.
You may have never seen scarlet and white on national TV, and you just may have picked UConn over BU in your NCAA women’s basketball pool last March (I know that was a tough choice for me). You may still be wondering how a cute little Terrier is supposed to intimidate opponents or searching in vain for the Terriers in Sports Illustrated’s preseason football Top 25.
But after you spend a few hours screaming your head off in Section 8, sit back and imagine how intimidated those opposing goalies must feel.
To make a long story short, BU can be a great school for a sports fan. Sure there’s no football on Saturdays or NCAA Final Four hopes. But there are plenty of America East Championships, a few painted faces and more Beanpot trophies than anyone would care to count.
There’s a National High School Player of the Year manning the net for the men’s soccer team, a No. 4 NHL draft pick patrolling the blue line at Walter Brown Arena and a man that can run a cross country course in the time it takes you to wait for a Warren Towers elevator.
And if all of that doesn’t get you going, there’s always the Sox, Patriots, Celtics, Bruins, Revolution, Eagles, Crimson, Huskies and Breakers.
Does that do anything for ya?
You now live in a town where sports are not a hobby, an interest or even a pastime. Boston sports are a religion. These people take their sports very, very seriously.
How seriously? Just walk around and listen for the first person that seems to have missed the day in kindergarten when they taught the letter ‘r.’ Then walk up to them, point across the street, and say, ‘Look! There’s Bill Buckner!’
It will be the only time you see cars stop for pedestrians on Comm. Ave. And that’s only because the drivers will get out to help with the chase.
I have sat in the FleetCenter for a Celtics playoff game and been booed out of the FleetCenter after said playoff game with my Allen Iverson jersey hidden beneath a jacket. I have heard ‘Yankees Suck!’ chants at a Devil Rays-Red Sox game and been involved in a ‘BC Sucks!’ chant at a BU-Merrimack game. I have seen light posts topple and buses nearly flip over in the middle of Kenmore Square, all because the Patriots won some big football game.
In the next few weeks, if you look out your dorm room window to the corner or Yawkey Way and Brookline Avenue; you will be able to see the hearts of every Bostonian crumble as their beloved Red Sox again fall short of the hated Yankees. Or they could make the playoffs. Stranger things have happened.
Go to Fenway Park and learn once and for all that ESPN, the Boston Globe and every baseball card you’ve ever owned don’t know how to spell the name of the best player the Red Sox have to offer.
It’s Nomah Gahciaparrah. Get it right.
The point in all of this rambling is that the sports fanatic inside you need not worry if you’re feeling like I once did that perhaps you would have been better off in State College, Pennsylvania, South Bend, Indiana or Chapel Hill, N.C.
Your sports fix will be fulfilled in your new hometown, and then some. Whether you’re screaming in Section 8, pounding your feet on ‘The Roof’ or sitting on top of the Green Monster, Boston will give you enough sports entertainment that you will have to share it with your friends.
And if you are sitting on the Green Monster and have an extra ticket, you know where to find me.
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