By Tim Robertson
Juicy turkey, succulent vegetables, sweet cranberry sauce, buttery mashed potatoes and grandma's freshly baked pumpkin pie. Curling up in a larger bed than the one at Hofstra without a roommate and taking showers without sandals. Now that's a Thanksgiving break most of the 14,000 University students and faculty enjoyed last week, but an unfortunate handful missed out on the rare family time.
The women's basketball team hiked the 500 miles to Maine on Thanksgiving Eve to play in the Dead River Company Classic hosted by the University of Maine. For the players, coaches, managers and a few others, they couldn't spend the ultimate national holiday with family.
Instead the team feasted at a popular restaurant 20 miles south of UMaine, a place called Dysarts. Now, this place has some of the best home cooked food anywhere. It is eating at home, but just away from home. And the pie there... OK, back to the topic at hand.
Most New Yorkers would refer to a joint like Dysart's as a diner, but they'd be mistaken. Dysarts is a truck stop to go to witness true Mainers. Dysart's is a place where the men with long beards and yellow teeth where red flannel shirts, overalls and hiking boots as their Sunday best. The accents are thick and their words leave out a few letters from the alphabet. It's an interesting place, to say the least.
The point is that it wasn't worth it for the team to travel 1000 miles in a couple days, miss Thanksgiving with family and friends for a couple games that they could've scheduled a different weekend.
It doesn't take a rocket surgeon to figure out why these games are played over holidays. More people sit home and watch sports more over Thanksgiving weekend than any other time of year. With all due respect, however, more people probably went to Dysart's on Saturday night than the Hofstra-Harvard finale.
The other reason teams play in the tournaments is that sponsors pay big money to throw their name on them, and by going, the program receives a hefty check. But should this be at the expense of the student-athletes?
Some may argue that these players that sacrifice their religious observances and national holidays do so willingly, and, most of the time, receive full tuition as compensation, and therefore shouldn't complain. But they should cry foul.
Most college students have an opportunity to see their friends and family for Thanksgiving, but these ones don't. Most of the University athletes won't have an opportunity to go home for the winter break either. Others come back weeks early in August, and more stay on campus while the rest of the college population drinks tequila in Mexico for spring break.
The men's basketball team scheduled a tournament at the Garden beginning Dec. 28. What are the chances that the players who celebrate Christmas will get time to go home for the holiday? I'll admit I don't know coach Pecora's practice schedule, but they probably aren't allowed to spend more than a couple days sleeping in their own beds, while the rest of the University gets six weeks.
It's not just the 20-something-year-olds that don't get to take trips down memory lane with high school friends. I strongly doubt that coaches want to spend time away from their aging parents, children and spouses. Coaches do so enough throughout the year with recruiting and road trips, so why, despite their six-figure salaries, should they miss priceless holidays at home?
I've argued in the past that some things are more important than sports. Time with family and friends, as we all grow older, is one of them - even for student-athletes.