The Tip-Off

Rightly or wrongly, various books and films meant I carried some expectations of college sport to America: Remember the Titans, The Waterboy and even Forrest Gump are just three movies that allude to the sheer scale and hysteria of it all.

But in my first two months at St. John's there's been none of the fanfare that's supposed to accompany college sports. The soccer is of a high standard, but it's worlds away from the thousands of people you see filling (American) football stadiums at southern schools.

The only indicator of something similar lay in the impressive Lou Carnessecca Arena, where a seemingly endless trophy cabinet chronicled the university's successful history in college basketball. The arena itself is named after the school's greatest coach, whose teams reached the post-season in every one of his 24 years in charge.

As we entered October, the build-up to the 2014 season began, culminating in the 'Tip-off' on Friday night: festivities held in the Lou Carnessecca Arena to introduce the men's and women's teams and celebrate the season getting underway.

The mammoth lines that accumulated to get tickets for the event on Friday morning confirmed what the trophy cabinet suggested: this is a basketball school.

That night, over five thousand St. John's students filled the Arena for one of the most ridiculously extravagant school events I've ever been a part of. When you consider that Leicester barely manages to attract those numbers to the rugby at Welford Road (the showpiece event in its sporting calendar), I struggled to get my head around the fact that this many people showed up to a pre-season event in America.

Upon each seat in the venue was a free t-shirt, the third one I've received in less than two months of being here. I'm fairly sure that the school could reduce its $50,000-a-year tuition fees by a third if it simply halved the amount of clothing it seems to giveaway on a weekly basis.

But that was only the beginning. As part of the celebrations, a member of the crowd won an iPad whilst cross-country flights and a $20,000 car are other prizes being offered over the course of the season. At Leicester the most you get for free is a half-chicken from Nando's, and even that involves you having to buy a meal in the first place.

We were also treated to a burrito-eating competition more bizarre than Santiago Vergini's own-goal for Sunderland this weekend, in which some poor soul shovelled handfuls of god-knows-what into their mouth in front of five thousand people. But that was just a warm-up to the main event.

As smoke filled the court for added drama, each player from the men's and women's team was introduced in turn, each to a rapturous reception. In England there are tongue-in-cheek references to BNOCs (Big Names on Campus), but those on the basketball team here are bonafide campus celebrities - to the point where rumours circulate about cars being offered as incentives for the top players to go to school here. It's a completely alien world to the British student.

As if enough cash hadn't been spent already, the evening was capped by a performance from French Montana (although he probably cost less to book than the iPad, let's face it). He insists that he's not "worried about nothing" which was good for him because during that debacle I was seriously worried about my ears.