NILs Should Be What Makes ETSU Sports Go Big Time
The Bucs are the only big league team in town. Their stars are marketable.
In the beginning of the first semester of my senior year at University High School, there was a bit of buzz on campus that East Tennessee State had been picked by The Sporting News as the favorite to win the Southern Conference men’s basketball championship.
The prediction came somewhat out of the blue, as ETSU hadn’t made the NCAA Tournament in our lifetimes and were coming off their fifth straight losing season.
But it was enough for future Vice President Dan Quayle to reference while giving a campaign speech at Brooks Gym during the 1988 Presidential campaign, and enough for me to contemplate with a classmate prior to the start of a school day what Walnut Street, then the nightlife district of Johnson City, might be like if, say, ETSU not only made the NCAA Tournament but advanced to the Final Four.
And I realized as a Division I men’s basketball program that theoretically could win a championship the entire country would care about, the Buccaneers were really the only “big league” team in the Tri-Cities.
Now, we can discuss what the likelihood of ETSU winning a men’s basketball national championship might actually be, or what their “Big League” status is among the likes of major…
