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Message: [QUOTE="OttoMets, post: 448022, member: 716"] I come from a diehard SU family and grew up a brisk 30-minute walk from the Dome. Before I was born, my parents traveled pretty extensively in following the team to various ECAC and NCAA games (all of which seemed to end in disappointment, save for that Providence weekend in 1975). "Wendell Alexis" and "Rony Seikaly" were probably four of the first 20 words I learned as a baby. My father taught at SU; growing up, there was nothing cooler than meeting players (getting to spend the occasional snow day sitting through one of his classes and trying not to bother a basketball player with inane questions was more fun than it sounds). We had pretty good season tickets (my father continuously had basketball tickets since his freshman year in the autumn of 1970 at Manley), and I was lucky enough to miss very few games over the years. Came of "these games actually matter" age right as the Richmond/UMass/probation era began (have memories of games before that, but they were just entertaining - nothing to get worked up about). Richmond and UMass, in particular, were my first experiences with what Bill Simmons would consider a "stomach punch" game. Got to go through 18 years of the Dome basketball experience, a sports atmosphere that I've never seen equalled anyplace else. Went away to college and got the opportunity to intern with the SID down there; wouldn't you know it, they needed an intern to travel with the basketball team and act as the SID's liaison on the road. And they thought I was doing them a favor, getting paid to travel to watch basketball games! Had a great time with that for three years. Had the pleasure of sitting directly in front of Roy Hibbert on a regional jet flight. Got to sit at the scorer's table at the Dome two times, next to legendary (too strong a term?) official scorer John Mason and legendary (absolutely not too strong a term) public address announcer Carl Eilenberg. Made my team's players and coaches a little miffed by wearing an orange button-down to the SU game during my last year. Learned a ton about basketball along the way. Relocated to Washington after college, wasn't thrilled at how difficult it was to catch SU games, didn't find the self-proclaimed "SU bar" in Adams Morgan to be at all adequate, and wasn't crazy about the personalities or quality of play on the next couple teams (though our guys really got robbed in 2007). Did find this bunch of internet folks in January of 2010 - this was a revelation. Moved to Syracuse in 2010 and have enjoyed some darn good basketball in the past three seasons (though the Dome atmosphere is...different). It's been pretty neat to have gotten the chance to view the team from a couple different perspectives. [/QUOTE]

Verification: What is a Syracuse fan's favorite color?