Strike Out ALS: The Ice Bucket Challenge Recap

It all started with a challenge.  Our own Grant Salzano received a challenge to dump a bucket of ice water over his head in support of ALS awareness and research.  He answered the challenge in the most Grant way possible, flying in, and going as over the top as possible in his challenge.  Paying it forward he took to the Internet and put forth the challenge from coast to coast, going west to Brian Favat, the blogfather himself.  But that was just the beginning.

Giving this the feel of a heavyweight fight, Grant put forward the challenge to a true Boston College legend, a man who's done more for BC's history than we'll ever really understand or quantify - BCEagle74.  He responded in spades:

But Grant wasn't done there.  He also issued a challenge to the one and only Matt Ryan, the former Boston College quarterback turned Atlanta Falcon franchise cornerstone.  And Matty Ice made good on his nickname, giving a nod to the man who challenged him in a completely surreal moment for us here at BCI:

But the fun of it is pushing forward the challenge. As we mentioned earlier, Grant put the challenge forward to Brian Favat, our head honcho in chief and resident Californian. Dropping ice over his head might've come with a major California waste-of-water fine, but that's fine, since this is all for a good cause. And he issued his challenge to a complete All Star cast: AJ Black, myself, and Johnny Hockey himself, Johnny Gaudreau.

The rest was history for AJ.

Johnny came up next.  Answering the call set forth by Brian Dumoulin and our own Mr. Favat, he nominated a couple other members of the BC hockey community and had a gigantic trash can of water dumped over his head.  I'm just throwing out there that Johnny Hockey can't even go small with this; he has to beat everybody at what he does, right?

And yours truly got in on it by answering the bell:

AJ sent a nomination out to Bill from Eagle in ATL and Landon Howell from FanCred.  I put forward the challenge to our own Joe Grav and Bentley University's Alex Grieve, the captain of the Falcons hockey team.  And with some major hopes, we threw some love out to some of BC football's finest - AJ nominated Mark Herzlich, who might be tied up with the Hall of Fame Game in Canton on Sunday night but certainly has some ice water available, and I nominated Steve Addazio, the Boston College football head coach.  Both Jerry York and Jim Christian answered the bell already, and we're hoping the football team follow Matt Ryan's lead and get behind it.

Again, why are we doing this?  Well, we're trying to raise awareness about ALS, commonly referred to as Lou Gehrig's Disease.  You heard about it from the inspirational story of Dick Kelley, and the courageous and awesome fight being waged by Pete Frates.  But there's more left to be done.  ALS whittles away physical attributes one-by-one but leaves the mind untouched.  It's a truly terrible thing for anyone to have to go through, but we can all try to band together and strike out ALS as a team.  Regardless of any differences anyone's had with each other in the past, banding together in support helps raise awareness as only a united front can.  And being able to fight this is a cause worth joining up for.  So get in the game, get wet, and let's help raise some money for ALS research and support.

Pete - this one's for you:  We are!  BC!