The second annual Ice Jam will be held Thursday, October 27th at Conte Forum. For those of you who missed last year's events, here is a basic recap.

One of Gene DeFilippo's newest ideas to attract students to his athletic programs was last year's Ice Jam. BC's own version of Midnight Madness festivities, Ice Jam was certainly interesting. Both basketball teams and hockey teams were involved with skits and introductions along with speeches from coaches Jerry York and Steve Donahue. They also had tons of prizes (including a month lease for the BC logo'd BMW), along with skills competitions. I wasn't there, so I don't know how students felt about it, but it looked kind of disjointed from the feed I watched online.

For me the crowning moment of the first Ice Jam was the concert by Rob Van Winkle, aka Vanilla Ice. Relevant in 1991, Vanilla Ice has done literally nothing since he last showed up in Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: The Secret of the Ooze.  See video below for 4 minutes of rap awesomeness.

How the BC Marketing department decided on Vanilla Ice is beyond me. It showed recruits, we are BC and we are hip to everything modern and cool. Whatever it was a good laugh for me. Maybe this year they could get Skee-lo, MC Hammer, or Coolio, that would definitely raise the profile of the 2nd Ice Jam

All joking aside, Ice Jam sounds like it could be fun this year. Lots of prizes, and I think it will be really great to learn some of the new basketball players. And believe me there is a lot of them.  Can I suggest a game that could be wildly popular? Throw Frank Spaziani and Gene DeFilippo in a dunk tank and charge $5 a ball to try and knock them in. I'd be there.