By Michelle Price
UCBJ Managing Editor
COOKEVILLE – Tech’s football matchup with Kennesaw State on Thursday, Sept. 6 will air on ESPNU bringing a national audience to Cookeville for the first time since 2006. The start time is scheduled at 6 p.m.
“This is a time to not only showcase our campus but our community as well,” said TTU President Phil Oldham. “This is great for the campus obviously because you get to see a lot of visual scenes of the campus on national tv, but typically when ESPN comes to do a game the announcers will highlight local restaurants and highlights within the community.
“Most of the on-air announcers love to talk about what they ate. They will say ‘Oh man, I found this incredible restaurant in Cookeville’ so we’ll see what we can do to encourage them to do some of that. It’s really a great thing for everybody.”
Tech is celebrating the home opener as Communiversity Night at Tucker Stadium. Events will start with the annual Running of the Freshmen as the new freshmen students lead the Golden Eagles through the Tech Marching Band onto the field.
Tech will use the home opener to officially introduce the crowd to new Head Coach Dewayne Alexander. Alexander may be new to Tech as head coach, but he’s definitely not new to coaching as he enters his 30thyear in the profession.
Tech will also officially christen its new video board in that game as well. Added during the summer, the Daktronics board measures approximately 100 feet wide by 50 feet tall with a main video panel at 81 feet wide and 30 feet high, making it the third largest on-campus board in the FCS, trailing Stephen F. Austin (81’x37′) and Sam Houston State (80’x33′).
Tickets for the game are still available by calling (931) 372-3940, at the Hooper Eblen Center ticket office or at TTUSports.com.
UCBJ will give away three pairs of tickets to the game. The first three emails received at news@ucbjournal.com will win.
