So I ended up going. My wife loves NYC. When the BB season started I expected Ohio State to be awful and thus to be playing a Wednesday or maybe Thursday game in the BTT. I didn't want to take three days off work to see a bad Ohio State team play one or two games so I wasn't going to go.
As the season progressed and Ohio State's BB team turned out MUCH better than expected I decided that maybe we could go.
A few observations:
First, I was actually fairly impressed with attendance. As it turned out I only made it inside MSG for one session (more on that later) but the place was pretty full for the late games on Friday in part because Rutgers was playing in the late game. There are also a lot of PSU fans/alums in the NYC area and during the tOSU/PSU game it was abundantly obvious that most of the red in the arena was Rutgers Scarlet not Ohio State Scarlet.
Second, I never did find the stupid sign with the distances, maybe they took it down before I got there?
Third, it was neat seeing a LOT of B1G gear all over NYC. A busload of Gopher fans were staying in the hotel that my wife and I stayed in. That was somewhat ironic (maybe sad) because by the time we met them (late Friday night) my team was out and their team had been out for more than 48 hours. We took it well and I wished some of them well when we left the hotel for the last time on Sunday around noon. We also ran into a lot of B1G gear attired fans mostly from MSU, PU, and M at various tourist spots around the City.
My trip:
We left Friday morning at 6:30. According to Google the
drive from my hometown of Medina to MSG should take just over seven hours. In theory that should have gotten us there at around 1:30 Friday afternoon. There were four games on Friday:
- UW/MSU at noon
- M/UNL at ~2:30
- tOSU/PSU at 6:30
- PU/RU at ~9pm
I figured that I would have at least some traffic issues. My plan was that if we got there early enough we might see if we could get a cheap ticket to catch M/UNL right after we arrived.
As it turned out, the weather had other ideas. We made a fuel stop just SW of Scranton PA and had lunch at around 11:30 am. Then we got back on the road and it immediately started snowing. Then it snowed some more. Then it snowed a lot more and we sat on I80 just SE of Scranton PA for about three hours.
We ended up going through the Lincoln tunnel at about 7pm. We had reserved a parking spot on ParkWhiz (great ap for parking in big cities) so we parked in Chelsea, walked to MSG, bought tickets, and went in for the games.
I liked it, and I'm less opposed to NYC now based on the experience than I was before I went. FWIW, I did go to a BTT in Chicago so I do have some basis of comparison.
Tickets:
Thank you Marq and others for your thoughts on tickets. Here was my experience:
Friday:
I got to MSG at about halftime of the tOSU/PSU game. I paid $60 each for $125 face tickets that were VERY close to the floor. We literally sat a few rows in front of Clark Kellogg and got our picture taken with him, so that was kinda neat.
Saturday:
With Ohio State out of the tournament I wasn't dead set on going. I wanted to but it was negotiable with the wife. We did some NYC tourist type stuff in the morning then had lunch at Brother Jimmy's BBQ at 31st St. and 8th Ave right across from MSG. We watched the end of MSU/M at Brother Jimmy's, then I tried to get a ticket to go in to see PSU/PU alone while the wife went off shopping. This did not work out well at all. I got a ticket for only $10, but it turned out that it had already been used. Fortunately for me, the scalper was still there when I got back so he gave me my money back but I couldn't find a ticket to get in.
Sunday:
I didn't go. If my team had made the CG I would have stayed but, as noted above, it is a seven hour drive for me so I didn't want to stay in NYC until ~630 and then get home at 2am.