GameDay visit puts Penn in elite company
The Quakers are only the 27th school to have GameDay on campus for football and basketball, and the first non-BCS school.
TOMORROW'S visit to the Palestra from ESPN's "College GameDay" crew got a little cooler with this nugget.
The University of Pennsylvania will become the 27th school to host "GameDay" on its campus for both football and basketball. ESPN came in for a football game in 2002
But Penn will be the first non-BCS school to pull off this double-dip. Penn almost surely is also the first school to host "GameDay" while not actually playing in an ESPN game. Temple and La Salle will play at the Palestra starting at noon (ESPN2). Penn is hosting St. Joe's at 7 p.m. (no TV), but the ESPN guys will be back in Connecticut previewing Louisville at UConn.
Should be a fun atmosphere at the old building tomorrow morning. Shame Yo-Yo won't be here to enjoy it.
The 27 schools that have hosted ESPN GameDay for football and basketball:
Arizona
Boston College
Clemson
Florida
Florida State
Kansas State
Kentucky
LSU
Michigan
Michigan State
Missouri
North Carolina
North Carolina State
Ohio State
Oklahoma
Oklahoma State
Penn
Pittsburgh
Purdue
Tennessee
Texas
UCLA
Vanderbilt
Virginia Tech
Washington
West Virginia
Wisconsin
Heady stuff
There will be plenty of critics deriding Major League Baseball's inevitable decision to ban home-plate collisions. Just another example of our country softening, they'll say.
Maybe, but then you hear Joe Torre, a former All-Star catcher and baseball's executive VP for baseball operations, give his side of the story. Among the input he received was from Cardinals manager Mike Matheny, also a former catcher.
"We've had minor league injuries," Torre said. "I've had letters from parents about what happened to their youngsters . . . We all know [Matheny] had to give up the playing, part of it because of the concussions, the number he sustained. There's an 18-month period of his life that he can't recollect. You have to pay attention to that."