Cultivating The Next Generation of Sports Fan

For Boston College, the mid-1990s can sometimes feel like a lost era for its football team. It came after the Glenn Foley/Tom Coughlin years, but it came before the bowl win streak and eventual move to the Atlantic Coast Conference. The Eagles weren't quite a nationally-recognized program but they had done enough to garner attention outside of New England.

In those days, nobody caught more passes than Anthony DiCosmo. A three-year starter at wide receiver, the New Jersey native was a reliable and trusted target for both Matt Hasselbeck and Scott Mutryn. Twenty years later, he's still sharing his love of the game by helping to develop the next crop of sports fan as a Senior Vice President of Nickelodeon.

"I wake up every day excited to come to work," DiCosmo said. "I'm very lucky to do that. My job is to cultivate the next generation of fan in sports. It's obviously something that I'm very passionate about. I love kids. I think looking at sports through the lens of a kid is the way that every true fan wants to believe sports are. My job is to focus on the fun elements about sports, what you really love about them and remind both kids and adults about why you play the game. This is why it's fun. What's better than that?"

It's a road that directly started at Chestnut Hill. During his time on the team, DiCosmo attended an alumni event in Philadelphia after a game played at Temple. Meeting a number of alumni, he explored the possibilities of his future, eventually settling on a potential career in entertainment. He became an intern at Viacom, the parent company for stations like MTV, Comedy Central and Nickelodeon, which he referred to as an "amazing experience."

So following a three-year professional career, DiCosmo went back to school looking to get back into a field suiting him perfectly.

"I had an injury and decided to go back to graduate school," he said. "I was figuring out what I wanted to do, but I knew I wanted to stay in the entertainment space because as much as football players are competitors, we're also entertainers.

"I saw some jobs that were open at Nickelodeon and put in a few calls," he said. "I eventually wound up going on a bunch of interviews. I met the president of the company, who was a Boston College graduate. We talked for a while and he found me a role that he thought would utilize my talents. I guess he was right because 12 years later, I've grown to a senior vice president and doing very well."

As a Nickelodeon executive, DiCosmo is able to use his student-athlete experience to focus on a wide range of constituency. In the end, though, it's all about cultivating a passion and love regardless of talent level.

"Our target audience is between six and 11 years old," he said. "So let's say the average there is a nine year old. If you're nine years old, you can be anywhere on the spectrum of your love and desire to play sports. You can be a novice who barely plays and maybe just does one sport in intramurals. Or you can be that kid playing five or six days a week, dials into SportsCenter, does fantasy sports. There's a whole spectrum in the middle of that.

"My focus is to really make sure that when kids are having a good time, it's about sports that they can fall in love with," he continued. "That's why we played the game when we were younger. We focus on that key element."

It's a perspective stemming directly from his BC experience. DiCosmo talked directly about the school's combination of academics and location, and he touched on how unique BC stands amongst its peers.

"You can narrow it down to a very select few schools that have the academic reputation of Boston College," he said. "And Boston College also has one of the most amazing cities. It has a great alumni base in Boston and has a great alumni base out into New York City. That's a very rare combination.

"Not that many schools offer that opportunity," he said. "You can go play at Notre Dame, Stanford or Virginia, and they're not in Boston. Those are schools that are on the same academic playing field, in my opinion, as Boston College. But I love the city of Boston. I loved playing football at a high level in the Northeast; it's a tough guy football team in a sports town with tough, elite academics."

That's an aspect that hasn't changed since DiCosmo caught passes from both Hasselbeck and Mutryn. Back in the mid-90s, BC was caught in the middle of college football's first real growth period. After the Foley era, the Eagles found themselves playing some of the toughest non-conference opponents while annually competing in an ultra-competitive Big East.

In 1995, the Eagles faced five ranked teams, including Ohio State, Michigan and Notre Dame and in a Big East that featured Miami, Virginia Tech, Syracuse and West Virginia. In those years, even getting to .500 wasn't a bowl game guarantee, but actually finishing with a winning record was an uphill grind for any team.

"Every single week, we played top-tier schools," DiCosmo said. "I just remember that we had one of the toughest schedules year after year. We open up against Ohio State in the Kickoff Classic then go on the road to Virginia Tech on a Thursday. Then we come home and play Michigan and we haven't hit the bulk of the Big East yet. That was part of the reason I went to BC though. If you went to BC, you wanted to play the best of the best. And we did that.

"That Notre Dame series - that's the Holy War," he said. "That's the biggest game of the year. Notre Dame won't admit it, but we're no slouches when it comes to that game. I don't think they want to play us and I don't think they necessarily love when we visit there. As a player, you're bussed in and don't realize how huge of a football atmosphere is created (at BC)."

The lack of wins does nothing to diminish memories of the teammates who gave their all for the school.

"We had a great brotherhood of guys," DiCosmo said. "And we had a lot of North Jersey guy, which was great because I was a North Jersey guy. It was cool to come up with those guys, then go to school and play together with the guys I came up with."

It fostered loyalty, something that remains and creates family ties 20 years later. Now on the parents' side of football, DiCosmo watches his son create a legacy, something he hopes might continue into Chestnut Hill.

"My son Aeneas is 16 and is starting his recruitment," DiCosmo said. "Some of it is the same as it was when I went through it, but some of it is magnified well beyond that. But I'm really excited at the possibility that my son could play at Boston College. What father wouldn't want that for his son?"

In the end, Anthony DiCosmo is both the same person he was at The Heights and a more robust, mature player. He's still a football player at heart, something that began with his time in Chestnut Hill.

"You still have that same standard of kid that goes to Boston College, which I really appreciate" he finished. "It's still a beautiful place. Campus is amazing. We haven't bent our standard to try and compete in the way that some of the other schools might. We've had our ups and downs together. I feel like Coach Addazio is really starting to right that ship. I know that Anthony Campanile is a great recruiter in North Jersey. There's a lot of similarities to my recruitment as a North Jersey guy.

"BC gave me a great understanding of how business is run," he said. "It's not just scheduling; it's also from a compliance and academic standpoint, juggling all of those things. It helps that I've done all of that as an athlete. I understand what I'm working with as an athlete. There's a mutual level of respect to work because I know where they're coming from. We speak the same language, and that's something that can't be replicated."

Cultivating The Next Generation of Sports Fan

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