Item: Enough grief, please, from upstate New York “fans” on moving marquee opponent football games to New Jersey.
It would clearly be one argument if fans from across upstate – both the Albany to Buffalo and Watertown down to Binghamton corridors continued to turn out in the numbers last seen when Donovan McNabb was on campus (1995-98).
However, with attendance basically 10,000 less than those glory years of crowds close to Dome capacity (49,262), why shouldn’t the university take a reported multi-million dollar guarantee to conduct a football version of the hoop team playing at Madison Square Garden and call it “New York’s College Classic”?
» Related: Syracuse to enjoy home field advantage at MetLife Stadium
The players (college students) don’t mind a relatively short trip to play in a NFL facility. The huge alumni base in the metropolitan area gets a “home” game in a top-notch building with plenty of amenities, especially the loyal followers who regularly trek hours upstate for each Dome game. It makes a huge impression on impressionable recruits, and the money is just too good to pass up.
With Penn State once, and Notre Dame twice over the next four seasons already on the Met Life docket, and with at least ten other games against likely big-time programs still to come over parts of the next three decades, this is the genesis of what will practically become an annual college football prescience for the Orange program in the New York market.
Until the Dome is regularly sold out for football, and even then it may not matter, it’s important for the future of the program to play (and defeat) name teams on a big stage such as Met Life Stadium.
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