Going to college in a city whose team is terrible is a godsend

Growing up in or around a city where the professional sports teams are consistently competitive can be a thrilling experience for anyone. As a kid, watching your team compete for a ring every year can inspire you to want to be just like some of your hometown heroes.

I grew up near Boston, so I think it’s safe to say I had it pretty lucky in terms of sports cities. For me, it’s a weird year when none of our four pro teams get to a championship game. That sounds pretentious, but after witnessing 9 championships since the time I turned 5 years old, it’s all I really know.

Watching the Red Sox battle the Yankees to get to the World Series ignited my competitive side and love for sports. In school we went weeks straight with no homework thanks to Tom, Bill, and the Pats going on that winning streak. Then, a few years later when I got into basketball, watching Paul Pierce & company go toe-to-toe with Kobe and Lebron every summer got me hooked on the NBA.

As a Boston die-hard, one of my biggest reservations about moving to a different city for school was not being able to go to Celtics’ games whenever I wanted. On top of that, regional TV stations would make it almost impossible to see my team on TV, save for the occasional nationally televised game. I figured, however, that the internet could help alleviate the lack of Celtics coverage in Philly. So, nowadays my TV is always tuned to NBA games or NBATV, r/NBA is my most visited subreddit, and I watch questionably legal live streams of Celtics’ games on a nightly basis.

To make matters worse, though, I would be going to Philadelphia – home of National Basketball’s current laughing stock franchise; the 76ers. The Sixers took “tanking” (intentionally losing to get higher draft picks, and presumably, better players) to a level that was never before seen. For the last few seasons they have continually traded away their best veteran players in favor of young, unproven prospects and more draft picks, resulting in some of the worst seasons the NBA has ever seen. While teams like Golden State and San Antonio are pushing the boundaries of all-time greatness, the Sixers have been setting all the wrong records lately.

So here I was; moving from the most successful sports city of the last decade to the city with the least competitive professional basketball team of all-time. I was worried. I wondered if I’d fall out of love with the game after being here for four years, but I decided to come to Temple anyway. This was my favorite school that I’d visited by a large margin – even despite the city it was in – and I wasn’t going to let basketball get between me and my education.

As it turns out, I couldn’t be more wrong about what would happen to my NBA fandom once I arrived. You see, what ends up happening when a team sucks historically bad is that just about everyone loses interest in the team. Everyone, that is, besides the true NBA junkies. People stop wanting to go to games, so in order to try and fill the area a team will lower ticket prices drastically.

In Boston, going to a game was an event. I made it out to two Celtics’ games and two Red Sox games in my 18 years of living there. Any decent ticket was hundreds of dollars, and we never had tons of extra money to blow on a one-night outing. If it was a highly anticipated game; forget about it. Going to one of those games could cost as much as a car payment. Sure, it was awesome when we did get to go, but damn I wish it were more affordable. To go to a game like a Celtics-Lakers match-up in Pierce and Kobe’s primes would’ve been life changing.

Now compare that experience to Philly and it’s easy to see why I’ve grown to actually prefer living in a place where the NBA team is awful. I’ve been to more NBA games in my three years here than I was able to go to in my 18 years back home. And, I think I’ve spent less money combined on these 5 games than I did for one Celtics’ game in Boston.

For instance, back in January I went to a Sixers game; it was against my Celtics and I spent less than $50 for two tickets. Also, this game happened during the giant blizzard, so next to nobody went, turning my upper level tickets into seats in the 10th row. Tickets in Boston right now, against another really bad team (the Pelicans), in the 10th row? Take a guess at how much they are. Spoiler Alert: if you said over $200, you’re right! And, because it was in the blizzard, the Sixers offered two free tickets for each person that went, and you could choose almost any game to redeem the offer for. So guess what? I went to the next Celtics game for $0 and sat in the 14th row. I spent 1/4 the cost of one Celtics game and still saw the Celtics play, twice.

So yeah, not being able to see the Celtics at the TD Garden sorta sucks, but for an NBA fanatic on a college budget nothing really beats going to school in the home-city of a terrible team.

And I guess meeting some NBA players doesn’t hurt either.