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ESPN's "SportsCenter on the Road" will visit Saint John's Clemens Stadium on Saturday, Sept. 26, for a live show airing from 6-8 a.m. CDT, in advance of the Johnnies' 1 p.m. game against St. Thomas.
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Anchors Matt Barrie and Sara Walsh will host the telecast, which will include highlights and analysis of Friday night's sports and a look ahead to the weekend's key matchups. Not only will a national audience get a glimpse of the rivalry's pregame atmosphere but learn more about each institution's rich history.
The event is free and open to the public Saturday morning, rain or shine. Previous Johnnie-Tommie games have drawn as many as 16,000 fans. No official Division III football attendance records are kept. St. John's, which plays at Concordia-Moorhead on Saturday, is currently ranked No. 8, while St. Thomas is currently No. 12. The Tommies have a bye this week.
The Clemens Stadium gates will open at 5 a.m.
Following completion of the broadcast, the stadium will be emptied. The stadium's ticket booths will open at 8 a.m. and the gates will reopen at their normal starting time of 10 a.m. for the football game.
"To host ESPN's SportsCenter on the Road is an incredible opportunity for all of Saint John's to become better known on the national stage," SJU president Michael Hemesath said. "We look forward to showing our guests from ESPN the finest in Benedictine hospitality and their viewers across the country to the finest in NCAA Division III athletics."
The Clemens Stadium concession stands, as well as the SJU Bookstore stadium shop, will be open throughout the broadcast. All on-campus parking lots will be open to the public. Once the inner campus lots are full, access will be limited and vehicles will be directed to outer campus parking lots. Guests/fans will then be shuttled to the inner campus (similar to home football games).
"Our football program is excited to have ESPN's SportsCenter on the Road on our campus next Saturday," SJU coach Gary Fasching said. "We are proud of our university, our campus and the great tradition of our football program. This event will give the country a chance to see what is so special about Saint John's."
"What an amazing opportunity it is for us to have Tommie-Johnnie as a feature on SportsCenter," UST coach Glenn Caruso said. "The fact that ESPN thinks so highly of the Tommie-Johnnie rivalry is a testament to both schools' commitment to excellence, as well as the rivalry's longevity."
St. Thomas and St. John's first played in football on Thanksgiving Day in 1901 at St. Paul's Lexington Park. The schools have played 83 times in all, including an annual meeting in each of the last 63 seasons.
St. John's leads the all-time series 51-31-1, but the rivalry is known for close finishes, upsets and surprises. In each of the last three games in the series the visiting team has won. There has been one tie, seven one-point escapes, and 11 other games decided by four or less points. In the last five meetings alone, a missed PAT kick in overtime in Collegeville and a missed field goal as time expired in St. Paul let the visiting fans storm the field to celebrate in heart-racing fashion.
These two Catholic universities sit 90 miles apart along Interstate 94 in Minnesota. St. John's, founded in 1857, features a scenic, pastoral campus in Collegeville, with nearly 1,900 undergraduates. St. Thomas, founded in 1885, has both a neighborhood and an urban vibe as home to approximately 6,000 undergrads.
ESPN is expected to arrive in Collegeville Thursday night, Sept. 24, and construct its set throughout the day Friday, Sept. 25. The SportsCenter on the Road bus is a mobile production facility that carries the equipment needed for doing a SportsCenter broadcast at a remote location. It also contains production facilities for an on-site producer, director and sound engineer, and equipment for feeding signals to ESPN headquarters in Bristol, Connecticut, via satellite.
The Collegeville appearance is part of the SportsCenter on the Road series, which takes the program out of the studio to events and fans. The show visited Notre Dame (Sept. 5), Michigan (Sept. 12) and Boston College (Sept. 18) earlier this season, and Ralph Wilson Stadium (Sunday) prior to the NFL game between the Buffalo Bills and New England Patriots. It has also originated in the last year from the NBA Finals, NFL Draft, Super Bowl and the College Football Playoff.