Featured Testimonial About Creighton University
By Micah Mertes
Remember the time the Today Show came to campus?
Ten years ago this month — on Thursday, Sept. 20, 2012 — a crew from the NBC morning show filmed a segment with a crowd of spirited students in front of St. John's Church. Save for a scene from a made-for-TV movie watched by 17 million people, the Today Show segment likely counts as our campus' biggest broadcast audience.
It all started with the show's "Kathie Lee and Hoda Return to College" contest, in which the co-hosts sought the college with the most school spirit. A group of students, including members of the Pi Beta Phi sorority, submitted a video for the competition that landed Creighton in the top six most-spirited colleges — along with Brandeis University, Syracuse University, Ohio State University, University of South Florida and the University of Tennessee.
To determine the winner, the Today Show hosted a live vote and sent camera crews to the six campuses for students to campaign for their college. The morning of Sept. 20, a big, blue crowd of students, faculty and staff — along with Billy Bluejay and then-Creighton President Timothy R. Lannon, S.J., BS'73 — gathered on the steps of St. John's to shoot the segment. To increase their odds of success, the students held cutouts of Kathie Lee and Hoda's faces and dozens of signs promoting Creighton. (One sign simply read, "We have Jesuits! Vote Creighton.")
In the end, more than 150,000 votes were cast for the six schools, with the University of Tennesee emerging the winner. That following October, Kathie Lee and Hoda themselves visited the Knoxville campus.
Many might say Creighton was robbed. But hey, top six in the nation ain't bad.
Here are some photos from the Today Show shoot.
