Wednesday, November 19, 2008

My ESPN debut

Yesterday was one of the best, and one of the most surreal days of my life. After weeks of anticipation, I woke up at 7am and began applying my blue and gold body paint. I quickly downed a few beers, and sprinted to the Daskalakis Athletic Center wearing nothing more than a pair of shorts and about 5 pounds of body paint. When we entered the DAC, other die hard fans ushered us to the front row behind the basket, and told us to make sure the crowd got behind us.

The atmosphere was electric. I've been to the majority of Drexel's home games, but I had never seen anything like this. Within the first 10 minutes of the first half my voice was completely gone. Throught the game, I got numerous text messages and calls from people saying that they just saw me on ESPN. Unbelievable. And as for the game itself, we couldn't have asked for better. Despite Drexel's defensive dominance, we allowed Penn to come all the way back from a 15 point deficit and tie it midway through the second half. But Drexel never looked back after that, en route to tight 66-64 victory.

At halftime, a man approached me and asked what time we woke up to apply the body paint. I was a little confused as to why this man was asking me such a question, but I reluctantly answered. I later found out that this man was an ESPN.com reporter, and he wanted to use my quote for an online article. Just hours after the game, I logged onto ESPN.com and found this. Here is a short excerpt:

A 10 a.m. start time requires a lot of adjustments. Just ask those four Drexel students behind the basket what time they had to get up to apply their blue and gold "ESPN" body paint.

"Around 6:30 a.m.," said one wearily. "6:30, 7 o'clock, sometime like that."

What a day!! I got interviewed by ESPN, painted my entire body blue and gold, lost my voice, was shown on national TV, and watched Drexel dominate Penn all before noon. This was truly a once in a lifetime experience.

3 comments:

  1. i watched the first 10 minutes of the game but didnt see you. thats awesome though, not only getting on tv, but also being quoted in an article on espn, job well done. im pretty happen drexel beat penn too.

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  2. matt o is never going to take it back

    ReplyDelete

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