I know, I know, few care about college sports like gymnastics, track, golf, soccer, tennis, etc., but this is another MAC team on the big stage in its sport, the first time a MAC tam has ever advanced to the NCAA finals.

From USA Today:

Quote:Kent State thought its role this weekend would be as co-host for the NCAA women's gymnastics championships in Cleveland.

Thanks to a performance as exhilarating as it was historic, the Golden Flashes will be doing much more than handing out programs when the competition begins Friday.

Kent State earned its first trip to the national championships in the program's 47-year history when it finished second to Michigan in the Ann Arbor Regional. The Golden Flashes grabbed one of the 12 spots in the semifinals and became the first No. 6 seed and the first school from the Mid-American Conference to advance out of regionals.

The rest of the USA Today story above tells the dramatic way KSU advanced.

I don't think most of the non-rev fans are as vocal as the football or hoops only crowd but we are out there. Great to hear about the MAC hosting another NCAA-next year BG gets the women's hoops, UT has a X-country NCAA regional and of course UT hosted the NCAA Golf Championships a couple years back. Congrats to Kent on making the show!

No! Popularity = legitimacy! If ESPN doesn't seem it worthy, it sucks.

Actually ESPN has had college gymnastics before. Plus I think I remember a commercial saying ESPNU was going to have all the winter sports championships shown on it. So I guess ESPN deems it worthy so it must not suck (though honestly having been at a lot of meets and competitions I know that I hate watching gymnastics but if Kent is in it who knows).

I think this one is going to be shown on delay on CBS in a few weeks. Showing a gymnastics event live would be rough TV with multiple events happening simultaneously. Even in the Olympics, they show a lot of it after they can edit it, or when they are live, they can switch to other Olympic events as needed to cover the dead time.

How can you not be a fan of this?