Early Day for Sports Fans…
This New York Times article is about a non-conference basketball game between St. Peter’s University and Monmouth University. Both in New Jersey, Monmouth University is 5 minutes from my house. These two teams hardly get coverage locally and usually never on a national scale, but ESPN’s Twenty- Four Hour College Hoops Tip-Off provided an exciting opportunity for the players and fans of these two teams. The game began at 6:05 am and ended at 7:55 am but this early time didn’t stop the universities’ fans from going, the article said that a quarter of the people in attendance were fans from Monmouth University who made the hour-long trip in the morning from West Long Branch to Jersey City for the game. This type of coverage on a national scale, especially for teams who don’t normally receive it, is so exciting that the players probably did not even care that the game was so early. Though most of this article highlights the fact that the game was early and tried to make a correlation to the shots missed by the teams, most student-athletes wake up and are practicing or conditioning at this time anyway. The early time may be tough for normal college students to wake up but not for most athletes who have double work out sessions. The hype and excitement probably helped the players more than hurt them. The article also tired to make it seem like the early time of the game would prevent student’s and student-athletes from going to class, and this as well really wouldn’t be any different for the student athletes than any other day except for the emotionally draining aspect of having a game rather than practice. On any given week day morning at 6 am if one came into the Joe Rodgers pool in the Boyden gym the swim teams would be in the water practicing until 8:30 am and then go to class and try to function as a normal student for the rest of the day. So though the article tries to make this early game seem like a burden, I think it was really just a great opportunity for these players and fans to get some national coverage.
