FanPost

Red Sox rolling rally to "compete" with BC-VaTech Saturday

So the honorable Thomas M. Menino has announced that the victorious Boston Red Sox will hold their rolling rally through the streets of Boston and down the Charles River, starting this Saturday at 10 AM. The streets impacted by the route of the parade will be shut down from midnight Friday til 1 PM on Saturday with temporary parking bans in effect as well.

It will be very interesting to see how this impacts attendance at the game on Saturday. While from a traffic perspective, I would think it to be just a minor annoyance for some, the real question is whether or not people will not come to the game at all. I was already expecting perhaps the smallest crowd to see a home ACC contest since BC's arrival into the conference in 2005 (10/27/12 vs Maryland, 33,268), this will definitely make that a greater chance of happening.

Keep in mind, that the game will be televised locally on WCVB channel 5 and there is virtually no chance that they will preempt even one second of the parade for the game.

Section D where I am has been painfully thin from an attendance perspective this year to begin with and I can definitely see people bagging the game to either attend or watch the parade. As Brad Bates said in his blog post the other day, embracing what the city has to offer, the Red Sox being one of them, is definitely the approach to take, but with BC having only six home dates, losing even one for any reason isn't good for the growth of the program.