Skip to footer

2013 college football: 17 odds and ends you might have missed

11. Where to find good gridiron grub

  • By Ross Atkin Staff writer

In the foreward of his new book, “Taste of the Town: A Guided Tour of College Football’s Best Places to Eat,” ESPN analyst Todd Blackledge states what has been obvious to ESPN viewers in recent years, namely that he is passionate about both football and food. His short “Taste of the Town” segments that are dropped into the game telecasts were introduced in 2007, after Jed Drake, an ESPN executive, encouraged everyone working on network’s college football coverage to not be afraid to try things. Blackledge suggested featuring local eateries in the college towns he visited, with the first spotlighted being Mac’s Drive In in Clemson, S.C.

Despite already working 15 years as a football analyst, within a few short weeks he says he became better known as a food guy. Southern towns get the most play in the book, but he naturally has a few favorite spots in State College, Pa., where he played quarterback at Penn State. Among them is Berkey Creamery, the dairy farm operation that is located on campus that still counts Peachy Paterno as a favorite flavor. Blackledge says whenever he visits the creamery he goes with insulated bags and dry ice to transport some of the ice cream home.

11 of 17
Mark Sappenfield
Editor

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

Subscribe to insightful journalism

You've read  of  free articles. Subscribe to continue.