THP #58: This Place Sucks

November 18, 2025
providence v Northeastern
Women’s Basketball

Allow me to start in Glasgow.

The Old Firm. Celtic v Rangers. One of the most bitter and brutal football rivalries on earth. Draped under the history of centuries of sectarian violence, the fan bases break down as Catholic (Celtic) vs Protestant (Rangers).

The two clubs have dominated the sport in Scotland for decades, and both have found success in continental competitions. But the hatred is real, true, and barely contained. Games are no longer played in the evening for fear of too much alcohol fueling too many inside the stadium.

Yet, in 2012 Rangers was dead. Due to a series of horrific financial decisions, the club was placed into administration and eventually liquidated. There was nothing left. Gone.

Celtic fans were celebratory. The awful pest in their world was dead. Life was good. It was a reason to be joyful.

Now, the Rangers brand and assets were purchased and revived as a bottom tier club but made it back to the Scottish Premier League in 2016. And even though Rangers play in the same stadium and wear the same colors, to this day, Celtic fans will call Rangers supporters “zombies”. This is sports hating at the absolute pinnacle.

And so that brings me to providence college.

Welcome to the palace of mediocrity. The Angkor Wat of mid. I hate this place. And I hate this knuckle dragging fanbase.

There are 4,000 colleges and universities in the country. My daughter can go to 3,999 of them if she chooses.

providence college. I’d love nothing more than to see it bulldozed and turned into something useful. We can start with a Motel 6 and a Golden Corral. Beneficial stuff.

I’ve been all over New England and amidst dozens of fan bases. Sure, Boston University hockey fans are a prissy bunch. And Boston College refuses to admit it’s just the safety school for Notre Dame applicants. But there is no collective as thoroughly terrible as this one. No group so wildly inflated in their sense of importance.

Make no mistake: Dave Gavitt is one of the most important and influential people in the growth of college basketball in the 20th century. If he was connected to any other school, this place would just be Sacred Heart in a cooler city. The city of Providence absolutely rules and deserves anything better than this blight soiling its name on the west side of town.

Hold on. You went to Rhode Island. Of course this is a basic rival thing.

It isn’t and it never has been. Let’s have a little story time.

It’s 2010 and I’m tweeting at Job Rothstein. While my accounts have long been deleted from the site formerly known as Twitter, I’ll never forget this.

He was tweeting about coaches and Ed Cooley. I sent a message saying that while Cooley is an ace recruiter he is a terrible Xs and Os coach in big moments, forever bailed out by his players.

A Providence blogger saw it and quote tweeted me with the tagline “hey friar nation. Get em.”

And so me at 19 learned real quick the drek that was on Twitter. For days it was unrelenting in the abuse I got. Just an absolutely brutal week for me that has clearly left scars on my psyche. How dare I say a truthful thing about a basketball coach!

A quick sidebar about Cooley. I covered his providence team against Boston College in 2012. This BC team had a roster of Olivier Hanlan and a box of crayons. providence had guys like Kris Dunn and Ladontae Henton and a bench of players that physically looked like Dudes.

My father and I thought it would be the friars in a walk. Hanlan had a double-double and BC won 71-68.

In the post game scrum Cooley had a quote that has never been equaled in its brazen stupidity. It was a quote so lacking in awareness that I’d have called him on the spot today about it instead of as a 21-year-old kid.

“Today a systematic team beat an athletic one.”

And whose fault was it that the team did not have a system to play in, Ed?

…

December 1, 2012.

I’m a lifelong Merrimack hockey fan. Been following the Warriors since I was 7. And they were playing at providence that night so I went with my buddy David.

And lucky me, someone in line just turned around and handed us two tickets for free. Didn’t even have to pay. How lovely. Things were set to take a positive turn.

Place is barely half full so we grab a seat for the game. Merrimack scores first. I clap and cut up with David a bit. No jumping. No screaming. Didn’t move much.

And yet I was getting glared at by everyone around me. I had offended the finest dropouts UMass-Dartmouth and Bryant University ever produced because how dare I not bow down to their school.

Noted.

So when Josh Myers scored early in the third to push the lead to 2-0 I made scenes. On my feet applauding loudly. Fuck off, dweebs.

Tim Schaller got providence within one late in the third and these people were turning directly at me and stepping across the aisle to cheer in my face. How their cells multiply is a mystery.

Merrimack won 2-1.

…

Summer, 2015

My friend Craig and I are at the CBS Scene restaurant at Patriot Place after a New England Revolution match. We just wanna get a late dinner, chill, and go home. The bartender, we’ll call him Jake, is a good egg and we’re having mindless chatter.

Enter the second bartender. We’ll call him Dumbass. And Dumbass was like a half-brain shark to chum the moment he overheard I went to URI.

It was nothing but providence. I just wanted to eat my cheeseburger, but Dumbass simply would not stop. His body language kept getting more and more overt and he kept on about his favorite regionally-ranked New England college.

I was tired and just wanted him to be anywhere but within 10 yards of me and then he played himself.

“So did you see how far that friar soccer team went?”

Yeah. I did. They made the final four. Let’s see how that ended for them.

“You mean the team that eliminated itself with an own goal in overtime?”

I have only once in my life ever got a true hypeman reaction. And it was from Jake in that very moment, and it was glorious.

Dumbass shrank down to a molecule and I never saw him the rest of my meal. Jake was tipped well.

…

September 5, 2025

It’s a beautiful night out. Holy Cross field hockey is hosting providence so I load my daughter in the car and head across town to the game.

It’s not about the sport on a night like that but just enjoying the energy and the music and the mood.

But we need to get there safely. And since it’s such a long walk I elect to bring the collapsible wagon for the kiddo to ride in.

Once you go down the access road there’s a ramp up the sidewalk to get to the field. If anyone were to block that walkway, and you were pulling a wagon, pushing a wheelchair, needed wheels of any type, you’d have to go directly into an oncoming traffic lane to get to the only other opening.

No person or group of people would be dense enough to set up a tent and tables right on that walkway, obviously.

The generations come and go. The faces change. Yet having more teeth than brain cells remains forever.

The Dunk sucks. Coffee milk is shit. Del’s is overrated.

Give Kim English a 20-year deal.

There is no moment with Bella today. I will not sully her lovely face by attaching her to this dump.

The Campus

Exists

The Gym

Alumni Hall is inside the fitness center. Here it is.

The outside:

The inside:

Wanna know my favorite part of the place? Sitting on a press row so poorly place that you lose the near side of the court by committing the crime of staying in your chair. This picture was taken with the camera right at my eyes and sitting back in my chair. Inexcusable.