Thursday it became official… Boston College and Georgia Tech are playing in Ireland to open the 2016 Football Season. The full news release can be found at the ACC.com.
Honestly I’ve never been a huge fan of these sort of games. You are playing in locale that you aren’t going to recruit from, and trying to grow a conference brand overseas doesn’t seem to have a lot of potential to me.
I don’t quite understand the Pac 12’s fascination with playing basketball games in Asia either.
Attempting globalization of american collegiate sports conferences, just feels like such a stretch.
That said, there are some benefits. For the student athletes of Boston College and Georgia Tech, this is a tremendous opportunity to see another culture, another country. What college student wouldn’t appreciate that?
Also there has been a fair amount of publicity for the game already. All of the major sports news outlets have reported on the scheduling of this game. When was the last time that happened more than a year in advance for a Georgia TechBoston College game?
The game will appear nationally on ESPN2, and that’s never a bad thing. Could there be a young Irish kid who gets to know the Boston CollegeGeorgia Tech programs and joins one day? Adam Gotsis is from Australia, and has developed into an All-ACC player for the Yellow Jackets.
Ireland will likely get a boost in tourism as well. Who has anything against Ireland? The publicity certainly doesn’t hurt either. Are there any financial benefits to moving the game to Ireland?
Possibly but those terms weren’t released. When Penn State and Central Florida played in Ireland they were reportedly paid more than $1 Million Dollars. Normally you’d have to schedule an OOC game for such a payment, though it’s not unheard of. Years ago Duke moved a home game to Jacksonville, Fla to play Florida State and were paid over $1 Million.
Personally I don’t want to see these type games become the norm, but there are some benefits to it. Doing it once every few years doesn’t hurt.
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