There is an interesting history here re: the lobbying. When the announcement was made in mid-November about the site change from Columbus to Philadelphia, seven schools were immediately given berths in the sixteen team event - Cal-Berkley, Utah, Notre Dame, Navy, Army, Penn State & Temple (?????????- why? - because they are in Philly - no - they are not a rugby power). The organizers said the remaining nine teams would be named in two weeks. BGSU immediately fired off a six page single spaced letter detailing why the Falcons should be included. It detailed what BGSU brought to the Columbus event both on as well as off the field.
That letter apparently raised a stink within their organization. No further announcement at all was forthcoming until mid-January. At that point Rugby Magazine announced that :
a. North Carolina, Arizona, Boston College and LSU had been added (shades of college football bowl practices - the Arizona coach said they had agreed to purchase 300 tickets at a cost of $10.5 K. I can only assume the others made that same deal)
b. the winner of the Las Vegas Invitational scheduled for just three weeks later on Feb. 10-11 would get an automatic berth in the Philly event.
c. The remaining four berths would be named following the Las Vegas tournament.
BGSU immediately entered the tournament (a budget buster for us) and cranked up our training. Despite not being able to practice a single minute outside (we were able to rent the BGSU Fieldhouse and play a series of scrimmages with a senior men's team from Chicago) we went 4 - 1, beating Cal Poly, Texas Tech, Santa Barbara and Yale before losing to tournament champion Central Washington (climate differences meant CWU came to LV having already played three games). The tournament bracketing was curious to say the least. Despite not being big on the NCAA football radar, Santa Barbara & Cal Poly are both big-time in rugby. Yet those two and BG were all in the same four team group with Texas Tech. Kutztown & Delaware, a couple of D II schools that happen to be down the street from Philly, were spread apart in different brackets. Texas - so highly touted in the Rugby Magazine article I sited (
http://www.rugbymag.com/news/sevens/col ... -poll.aspx ) beat a travel-lagged Creighton twice, Santa Barbara Community College and St. Joes of PA (a D II team) - none of them on the BCS, NCAA or rugby radar.
Immediately on returning and concerned about the way things had gone in LV- we contacted NBC and told them that I and a player's parent were willing to put up the 10.5K needed to buy into the Philly event via the ticket guarantee. To date we have not heard back.
This is when the voting poll came up by Rugby Magazine. It is interesting to note that before the site got hacked - BGSU had a plurality with 26%. Even more interesting was the number of states in which BGSU was the leading vote getter - 25 states - the entire center of the country. Had this been the Electoral College - it would have been a landslide win for BGSU. The passion and following for the BGSU rugby program across the country should have been obvious. (see the map at:
http://www.micropoll.com/a/mpresult/1066285-397639 )
I have been asked by several people - who do they contact to try help BGSU out. Below is both USA Sevens mailing address as well as their email "contact us" website address. While we certainly would appreciate any passionate defense of our program - please remember to be respectful in any comments. The entire BGSU athletic program has to or will have to deal with NBC TV at some point, not just the rugby team. USA Sevens is the company that owns the rights to the Philadelphia championship event - though as I said before - NBC is apparently calling the "who gets in" shots. All we can do is prevail on USA Sevens to make our case to NBC.
USA Sevens, LLC
c/o Dan Lyle
33 Kings Highway # 1
Orangeburg, NY 10962-1802
http://www.usasevens.com/contact-us.aspx
