April 04-10, 2003
Now I’ve never been a big basketball fan. Or a fan of any college sports, really. But when Syracuse won the 2003 NCAA Men’s Basketball National Championship, you couldn’t help but be excited.
You all know that I’ve had my problems with Syracuse. In fact, when we played the U. of Missouri in basketball early in the season, I said to myself that I was going to pull for Mizzou, since they accepted me to their broadcast journalism program. But when game time rolled around, I couldn’t bring myself to root against the Orange. My Orange.
Still, as much as hoped the best for us, I didn’t believe at first. I mean, we started the season unranked and our best player was just a freshman. During one game early in the tournament, we were down significantly in the first half. It really looked like we were done. But we fought back.
The farther we went, the more everyone started to believe. Soon, we were in the Final Four. The campus really got behind the team. Even though the last two games were in New Orleans, around 8,000 fans packed the Carrier Dome to watch the National Semifinal game on TV back in Syracuse. After we won that, two nights later almost 11,000 fans were back to watch the Championship Game on TV.
Now, I’ve been fortunate enough to attend a few pretty big sporting events. A minor league hockey all-star game, 2 minor league baseball all-star games, an NHL playoff game, the last regular season game in the historic Hersheypark arena, and the Belmont Stakes when War Emblem made his run for the triple crown. But nothing even remotely came close to the atmosphere in the Carrier Dome those two nights, and it’s difficult to imagine that anything could ever equal that. The energy was so intense that it was almost palpable. And when we won, well, I guess you had to be there. It was just so very Syracuse. Despite a fairly heavy early-April snow, thousands of students turned all of Marshall Street into a virtual mosh pit. But unlike some cities, things stayed safe. Very little damage was done, and only my roommmate and a handful of other people were arrested. It was all in fun. And my econ class was cancelled the next day!
Click here to read my original blog update winning the National Championship
Filed under: College, Life, Posts with Pictures, Reminiscing, Sports, Syracuse, Website Highlights
