MEYER: Identity and Boston University Athletics

The following column is the fifth in a series of columns written by former Daily Free Press sports editors. Today’s column is written by Craig Meyer, who was sports editor during the Fall 2011 semester.

As I sit here doing what I’ve done so many times before – writing a column, albeit one that’s been on hiatus for some time now – it’s weird to think about the circumstances in which I’m putting it together.

In two weeks, I’ll be done with taking classes in college. In less than a month, I’ll be a college graduate, all set to pack up and leave the place that I’ve called my home for the last four years.

Thus far, this may seem like cliché and overly-emotional rambling – the senior about to graduate who still hasn’t grasped what’s happening right now, that it’s all about to be over. It’s understandable to think, believe me.

But there’s an additional dilemma for me, one that doesn’t impact most of my graduating class because, frankly, not too many people cared about them – and that is my relationship with the school’s athletic teams.

At many schools across the country, college and athletics are somewhat intertwined. Going to games and cheering on your teams is all a part of the quintessential collegiate experience. For most of my life, I figured my time in college would be just like that, but it wasn’t. It’s not that I’m complaining because I was the one who made the decision to attend Boston University, and while we don’t have tailgates and football games on Saturdays, I’ve had one of the most dynamic cities in the country right at my fingertips for the past four years.

I came in here as a fan of all the teams and was fortunate enough to get closer and more in-depth with them as a columnist and then a beat writer for this paper.

Though it came with a formidable arm’s length of journalistic integrity for the last several years, I will always have a connection with these teams. As my good friend, boss and fellow former columnist Joe Rouse wrote back in September, athletics are a way of staying in touch with your school and identifying with your alma mater.

Granted, I don’t have the wisdom or years of hindsight that Joe does, but this is a notion that I can’t help but think is true. For all the excellent memories I’ve had in college, a good number were invariably tied in with BU’s teams.

Sure, there were the Beanpots, all those times waiting in line outside of Agganis Arena for tickets, the men’s basketball team crashing the NCAA Tournament last year and, perhaps the ultimate, the men’s hockey team winning the NCAA title in the most remarkable fashion imaginable my freshman year.

But, more than anything, it’s also about the people and the relationships that have been formed, regardless of whether they were brief or prolonged.

I’ll always remember the autograph session following the 2009 Frozen Four, with hockey stars like Matt Gilroy and John McCarthy, just days removed from the crowning achievement of their careers, still happily saying, “Hey, how’s it going?” to every person among the thousands that passed through the line for a signature. It will be hard to forget having lunch with then-first-year basketball coach Pat Chambers in a booth at T. Anthony’s, talking college basketball like I was with my friends from back home, all because I sent an email to him.

But the connection also goes on a deeper, more fundamental level. For all that I’ve learned in my classes, perhaps the greatest lesson that college has provided me is that distance, indeed, makes the heart grow fonder.

I came to college with a somewhat contentious, mostly indifferent relationship with Louisville, Ky., where I grew up. But the further and longer you are away from somewhere, the closer you grow to it. Part of this, for me, came through athletics. I was always a big University of Louisville fan growing up, but when I came up here it took on a whole new meaning and level of passion and importance simply because I was no longer there.

With that distance and sense of removal, you remember all the valuable and cherished moments, like going to football games at the old Kentucky Fairgrounds with my dad or something as small as a college basketball game helping you get through the doldrums of winter every single year.

With BU, it will work in a similar way. I won’t necessarily remember walking through gale force winds on a 10-degree day, having to write eight-page papers on Paradise Lost, or routinely almost getting hit by kids running red lights on Commonwealth Avenue in Maseratis their parents bought them.

Instead, I’ll remember sitting in the third row of section 119 for my first BU-BC hockey game, spending Saturday afternoons at Nickerson Field watching whatever sport may be there and seeing BU and Stony Brook University play four overtimes in a mostly empty Case Gymnasium, perhaps the best basketball game I’ve ever seen in person. To me, that’s what defined my time at BU – for moments like that and for the people that I’ve gotten to know along the way.

And while I will, presumably from a distance, use BU teams to stay connected with the school I love, I encourage many of you underclassmen, whether you’re a senior or a soon-to-be freshman, to follow the a similar path that I did. That doesn’t mean you have to become a sports editor or even write for the paper, but try to use athletics as a way to enhance your college experience.

Go to games, regardless of the sport. Men’s hockey is the closest thing you can get to a big-time collegiate sporting environment at this school. Walk a few blocks to Case Gym to see the men’s basketball team because, for all you know, they could be a part of March Madness once again. There’s also the women’s hockey and soccer teams, which could very well be the best and most consistent teams at the school.

Try to get to know some of the athletes here, too. For the most part, they’re all kind, approachable people who – even including the men’s hockey team – don’t have the inflated egos that make them hard to talk to. At the end of the day, they’re just our classmates. . . . They’re just a little more high profile.

As I prepare to venture off into the post-graduate world – or as it’s better known among us journalism majors, unemployment – I look back at what BU has meant to me. Athletics is far from the only positive I experienced here; after all, so many of us have been lucky to receive a top education at an elite university in a thriving city.

But regardless of what I and the class of 2012 move on to do, the memories and relationships established through BU Athletics will always be there with me. After four years, BU is an indelible part of me and my identity, meaning that no matter how far I may venture, I will never be too far away.