Hey everyone,
I've been a long-time lurker, infrequent poster for a number of years. Thankfully Jake created this thread, which makes me happy! I ended up finding you guys in about ~2005-2006 or so. I was originally reading the Syracuse.com forums, then was reading a poster named Ditka mentioning that they were going to make a website and to come and post, etc. I do remember RealCuseFans, which I think became CuseOrange.com (as
MGP) mentioned. I then started reading on the Scout forums. Thought it was the greatest thing since sliced bread and still do. I've posted this in a different thread where someone lost their father, which I did as well. My father passed away when I was 11 years old. He absolutely loved Syracuse athletics in general and I can remember watching Syracuse basketball and Football since as early as I have memories. My love for Syracuse athletics is absolutely from him, but I'm also born, raised, and still living in Syracuse. The forums have given me a ridiculous amount of laughs and I've learned a lot about the history of Syracuse sports reading throughout the years. Just to cover some of my favorite highlights that this forum has given me, I'll tell a story. Please excuse the length of this post, but this first story means a lot to me:
Somehow, in 2013, I was interested in going to the final Big East Tournament as it had always been a dream of mine to go to the Big East Tournament, so this was the last chance! (At least as the official Big East). So, I posted on the forum and sure enough, Joyce reached out to me and ended up selling me two full session books. Having read and 'known' Joyce (and other people on the forums, their stories of her, etc) for years, trusting her enough to mail her a check for ~$1,000 seemed like second-nature to me. Sure enough, I received those books of tickets and it felt like I had just won the lottery. The crazy thing is, I was a junior at ESF (chemistry major) and we were on spring break. I could have gotten student tickets to the Syracuse sessions, but I wanted to go to every game (I guess I didn't go to every game since I missed the Tuesday night games where Seton Hall and Rutgers won).
Day 1: Wednesday morning comes and since we were down at my now wife's parents house during spring break, I took the MTA down from Beacon, NY (Elijah) into Grand Central Terminal and walked over to MSG. I had been to MSG before for St. John's games, but this had a whole different feel to me, just from the excitement. As I got to my seat(s), I met the nicest guy ever, a guy named Dave. After talking to him for a few minutes, it quickly became apparent that Dave was a seasoned veteran of the forum (although ever-frustrated by how wild the previous renditions were, he stopped reading/participating). Turns out, Dave is Bees' brother. Dave quickly became my best friend and had the greatest time hanging out and talking to him for the next four days. During this same time, Joyce came up and talked to us. She was pretty much the nicest person ever. I gave her a hug and thanked her for being nice enough to sell me the two books of tickets. I remember shortly after the game that, Forza posted that Joyce was talking to a guy in a goofy hat (which was me).
Day 2: Thursday morning - same thing, I get on the train in Beacon and head down. Get to MSG and watch the Providence and Cincinnati game, then the Syracuse vs. Pittsburgh game. I had an extra book of tickets, so I was trying to make sure someone used them, etc.
JDemo ended up being able to use the Pittsburgh game ticket that day, which made me happy. After the game, we went to Blarney Rock (which I had never really heard about), but it was the greatest time ever basically. Dave introduced me to pretty much a who's-who of Syracuse forums. I met Jake, Tom, Joyce again, Eric (
nycfan) and numerous other people. I felt like I was meeting celebrities. We were also playing Georgetown tomorrow night (Friday) in the our last matchup as members of the Big East. If this doesn't get you excited, I don't know what will.
Day 3, PART 1: Friday morning - As my now wife wasn't able to go to the Georgetown game,
JDemo was our guy again! I waited a while to go down to NYC, but ended up getting there near 2 pm or so and met up with Dave and we went to the Blarney. We hung out with everyone again, Jake, Tom, Mark, etc. I remember there being such a buzz. It was really incredible. Definitely in my top 3-4 games that I've ever felt that amount of energy pre-game. The game, as everyone knows was absolutely incredible. It was kind of slower, sluggish game. But the energy was still incredible. We ended up going into overtime, which is where C.J.'s dunk occurred. This was such an electric play, but it was absolutely pivotal as well. We were up two, that dunk put us up four. There's not much that can be said that wasn't already said, but holy Jesus, what a game and time this was. The only thing that I kind of missed was missing Sean, Jay, and Bill calling the game on ESPN. I would never in a million years regret going to the game though.
Day 3, PART 2: Since Tom wasn't sitting with us, he ended up coming up and hanging out with Dave, Jake, Mark, and Joe. Since Tom is the nicest guy, he ended up smuggling us down behind the Notre Dame bench. I think these were
billorange44's tickets (
sutomcat ??). Anyhow, the security guard/usher let Tom, Dave, and myself down to the seats. This was largely because of Tom looking like he knew what he was doing. This was pretty cool. I have never had any sort of fancy seats, and we were literally right behind ND's bench. Unfortunately ND lost and Louisville won and went on to play us the next day. I think we ended up going to Blarney afterwards as well here. I really cannot remember. Here's the full game if anyone wants to watch:
Day 4: Take the train, get to NYC! This time, with Angelina (my wife). We went to the Blarney and Angelina met all of the celebrities. She wasn't as stoked as I had been, but they welcomed her as she was one of their own. Since Angelina was here this day, poor JDemo was left out. He may have been there somewhere, but even if he wasn't, he was there in spirit. The buzz around MSG was awesome. Not as amazing as the Georgetown game, but pretty awesome. The game started and we couldn't have played better. I remember when we went up by 16 - we were going crazy and Garden was so loud. I remember Dave yelling and hitting me, telling me that "This is our year!!!!" It sure seemed that way. As everyone probably remembers, that game quickly fell apart. We had looked like world slayers and then we looked like little sisters of the poor out there the last 15 minutes. Louisville played lights out in the second half. Their press looked like Arkansas out there.
Regardless of all of this, it was an amazing time. Best time I've ever had in any capacity in anything sporting related. Cannot believe how thankful I was for
cto for allowing me to not only go at an affordable price (face value of the books), but to allow me to sit next, and meet all of these people who were amazing.
Numerous other highlights over the past ~17 years:
-BlueCurtain's take on players having a hard time transitioning from playing on college courts to pro courts. Still joke about this sometimes, but unfortunately no one understands my joke.
-Bjorn's whole saga on Nerlens Noel
-OttoInGrotto's nickname thread. Still some of the funniest stuff on here.
-All of Jake, Dasher, Bees, and now all of our other insiders posting information that is amazingly valuable to me and my obsession of Syracuse athletics.
-All of the contributions that everyone makes to this online Syracuse community (and in-person community).
Having said all of that, since this will get way more traffic than the Travel forum does, if anyone has some advice on moving to Florida, please respond to my thread over there!!
Thanks a lot for reading this everyone. Hopefully as you can tell, Syracuse athletics means a lot to me.
-Joe