Two months ago, when the schedule for the Tip-Off Marathon was released, I admonished the folks that decided to bury the matchup between Maryland and Georgetown.
A top three team squaring off with a top 20 team with the added intrigue being that these two programs have such a heated beef that they have refused to schedule each other for 30 years?
“This is a matchup deserves to stand on it’s own,” I wrote at the time. “College basketball is a sport that has limited intrigue while football season is still in full-swing. Burying a game like this in November simply doesn’t make sense.”
Well, if you didn’t believe me then, will you believe me now?:
@umterps this makes me want to do our show live from Xfinity after the Georgetown game. How's that sound? Good? Good. See you then....
— Scott Van Pelt (@notthefakeSVP) October 18, 2015
That’s Scott Van Pelt, a diehard Maryland fan and arguably the biggest star in sports media today.
And he wasn’t kidding:
I wasn't joking about the show on 11/17. We'll be live in Xfinity after the Maryland/Georgetown game. Do with that what you will, CP.
— Scott Van Pelt (@notthefakeSVP) October 18, 2015
“I kind of told the head guy here before our show ever started, on November 17th either I’m not doing a show, or we’re going to do the show there,” Van Pelt told Jeff Ermann of Inside Maryland Sports. “Because I will be in that building that night.”
This game is being played at the same time as the Champions Classic in Chicago, which features Duke squaring off with Kentucky and Kansas taking on Michigan State.
There aren’t five non-conference games that will have this much hype this season. Remind me again why we’re burying it in the same window as the biggest non-conference game of the year?