I’m camping at a lake in Vermont’s Northeast Kingdom this week and, through the wonders of “scheduled” BGA Daily posting while I’m off grid, thought to give you a brief look behind the curtain at what I’ve found covering games at each of Dartmouth’s 2022 road opponents.
At Columbia
For anyone catching a game at the congested northern tip of Manhattan the key is finding parking.
The good news if you are in the media is you don’t have to pay good money for a spot in a parking garage or play musical cars trying to grab the last available spot on the street a few blocks away. Columbia provides passes for the media in a lot belonging to a medical center across the street, under the elevated subway and a block or so north of the stadium.
Getting onto the stadium property is more difficult than at any other Ivy because the personnel at the gate want to go through every nook and cranny of the media’s bags. Given that it’s New York City, I guess I understand but seriously, with Yankee Stadium just four miles away I’m not sure Wien Stadium has much to worry about.
Still, with a laptop, camera, batteries for both, a voice recorder of some sort, headphones, spare batteries and all manner of plugs and charging cords, my computer bag does actually resemble something that looks dangerous. I’ve tried the, “I wouldn’t be here if I didn’t have to be,” line, but that has never dissuaded the inspectors from going through my bag.
The press box at Columbia was one of the first “modern” models but it isn’t overly large and can fill up. I still chuckle at the memory of the Dartmouth radio team once having to set up in a wind-blown tent on the roof of the box during a tsunami.
Dartmouth’s box has the stat crew on a different floor from the working press. Not so at Columbia where in the past you would hear some true New Yorkese as members of the stat crew occasionally argued – loudly – about how to assess penalty yardage or where a punt return began.
The best part of covering a game at Columbia, apart from the wonderful New York pastries set on a table before kickoff, is the view of Spuyten Duvil (Google it ;-) and the Hudson River that visiting fans never see from the low-slung stands on the west side of the stadium. It's worth climbing up before the game to take a look.
