As part of Gannonfest 2019, it's important to learn about where your enemy lives, so let's talk about Gannon's home city of Erie, Pennsylvania. It's a city so nice, they named it after looking up the word "creepy" in a Thesaurus.
You may know Erie as that place that's like halfway between Buffalo and Cleveland. Coming in third place against those two isn't exactly a great example of how desirable of a city you are. I once drove through Erie to go see Nicholson when he played against the Cavs and it actually makes you want to just finally be in Ohio of all places. It has all the charm of going through 10 miles of chain restaurants and truck stops, with the added bonus of being just as far from a big city as Olean is.
Gannon is in a lot of trouble because Erie is nicknamed "The Flagship City", and if there's one thing Bonnies know how to do it's unfurl a flag. It actually got this name from being the home of the USS Niagara, which was used on Lake Erie in the War of 1812. This is where Erie began its history of losing by having a boat from the first game the U.S. couldn't win that was also named in honor of the failing Purple Eagles.
Erie is also home to Presque Isle State Park. Presque Isle literally translates to "almost an island," so the half-ass version of Pittsburgh also half asses its "islands." It also has Splash Lagoon, a water park they put indoors because it helps people forget that they're in Erie. You can experience all the fun of people peeing in outdoor pools and the thrill of getting communicable diseases through air vents, as well as the water!
Bonnies great Jaylen Adams actually recently played charity basketball games in Erie when he was on the Atlanta Hawks last season. The Erie BayHawks are the D-League/G-League/XBA/whatever team for ATL, so Jay decided to demonstrate his Franciscan spirit by showing the Erieites and Jordan Sibert how basketball is really played.
Erie also has a baseball team called the SeaWolves. The SeaWolves have basically been a farm for pretty harmless MLB teams like the Pirates and Tigers, but they should have been canceled by Twitter two years ago, especially before the Krassenstein brothers got banned for doing the impossible by being somehow more cringe than Trump. The SeaWolves hosted an "alternative facts night" to make fun of Kellyanne Conway, but really they're as complicit as SNL at normalizing this administration imo.
There's also a hockey team named the Erie Otters. They play in the Ontario Hockey League and Connor McDavid, another beloved athlete in Buffalo, was picked first overall in the NHL draft. In their logo, they somehow managed to make an otter, an objectively adorable animal, look like a guy who refers to women as "females" at a bar. Also, spelling "Erie" on the helmet is a trainwreck.
After a Google search, I learned that some guy named Joe Schember is the mayor of Erie, not what I assumed was a rusted steel beam wearing an Antonio Brown Steelers retro/bumblebee jersey. Mr. Mayor actually went to Gannon for undergrad, so I've already deemed him unfit for office. He also got a Master's degree in English from Dayton, which is a sentence so white, it just spilled mayonnaise on its Patagonia fleece.
If the Caucasity wasn't strong enough there, Erie is also the hometown of Patrick Monahan, who's the lead singer of Train aka the official band of dentist office waiting rooms. Fun fact, the song "Drops of Jupiter" is about Pat wanting to live on another planet, instead of moving back to Erie. Erie is also home of Marc Brown, who's cool because he made those Arthur memes.
Given all this, it seems like dreary Erie is the perfect home for Gannon. Tomorrow for Gannonfest 2019, we'll head on campus and learn about what makes Gannon the Dr. Thunder of northwestern Pennsylvania colleges.
