By Euclid 419er

Winslow/AP

In my four years at Syracuse, I went to two…count ‘em, two lacrosse games. Despite the fact that Syracuse reached the Final Four each year I was there, made three championship game appearances and brought home the hardware twice, I only went to two games. God only knows what I was doing while Ryan and then Mike Powell were setting records. Ignoring these glory years of SU lacrosse is one of my great regrets from college. Well, that and graduating.

I am a Wisconsin native and the Badger State is not exactly a lacrosse hotbed. Regardless of the fact that one of our larger cities is actually called La Crosse, I think Model U.N. may have generated more interest. Most of our knowledge of lacrosse was limited to what we saw in American Pie, and in that movie the jock gave it up for glee club. Not the sport’s greatest p.r. moment.

Image credit: Gregg DeGuire/WireImage.com; American Pie: Universal

That dreamy Oz put lax aside in order to croon with Mena Suvari.

But as the sting of Syracuse basketball’s Big East Tournament loss to Georgetown lingers, the fact that it stings so much is telling as to why I never really got into lax (that’s what people who know about lacrosse call it – lax). Syracuse didn’t just lose a tough game in the tournament. We lost to Georgetown, our arch rival, our most loathsome conference foe. As the final buzzer sounded, the image of the jubilant Hoyas melded with John Thompson declaring Manley Field House officially closed and Patrick Ewing throwing a punch (and missing) at Pearl Washington. The rivalry’s history traces back to the founding of the Big East. Would the two schools be bitter rivals if they played each other every year but were not in the same league? Possibly. But the battle for league supremacy fuels it. Neither school wants to look up at the rankings and see the other looking down and laughing.

In the spring semester of my freshman year, I tried getting into lacrosse. Really, I did. But when one’s interest in college athletics was molded by football and basketball, can one really get psyched up for a showdown with Princeton or John’s Hopkins? That is why I welcome the inaugural season of Big East lacrosse. And there is no better way to start it, and no better timing, than with Saturday’s 2:00 face-off with Georgetown at the Carrier Dome.

The Post-Standard piece on the inaugural season gave good insight. I agree with Syracuse Coach John Desko that the new seven-team league made up of Syracuse, Georgetown, Notre Dame, Providence Rutgers, St. John’s and Villanova is good for the sport. And I think co-captain, Joel White sums it up well:

“I think it does many things,” he said. “The automatic qualifier is great just in case you have a slip-up like we did a couple years ago. But at the same time I just think it’s great for the sport, actually having the Big East Conference, one of the biggest conferences around, to have that to build on.”

Some purists view the move with disdain and I’m sure many liken their opposition to that of Notre Dame football fans’ opinion of joining the Big Ten and the apocalypse that would surely follow. I respect that. Again, my knowledge of Syracuse’s lacrosse tradition is only slightly better than my knowledge of Russian literature. But when I stepped onto the Syracuse campus for the first time, I did know I was supposed to hate Georgetown, Villanova and St. John’s. My animosity did not extend to the Blue Jays. And while some regularly scheduled opponents like UMass and Colgate have made way for conference foes, the big rivalries will be maintained and new ones will grow:

Desko said that in hindsight the decision was easy. He has been able to keep traditional rivals such as Virginia, Johns Hopkins, Princeton, Cornell and Hobart on the slate while adding Notre Dame, which is a top-10 team this season.

One of the reasons I oppose Syracuse bolting the Big East for the “greener” pastures of the Big Ten is because I’m a Big East guy – I like the schools, I like the rivalries and I like that Syracuse is the cornerstone:

Without Syracuse and its multitude of national championships, there would be no Big East men’s lacrosse conference.

I think the Carrier Dome is ready for a few more banners.