National College Comedy Competition Comes to BU

Poster
Poster
BU and BC competed in the first round. | Photo by Christine DeLuna

It was the weirdest feeling in the world. Last night, I was in a room full of Boston College students and I didn’t care. The fifth annual TBS and Rooftop Comedy National College Comedy Competition (NCCC) started picking Boston area teams last night at Improv Boston in Cambridge. First to go head to head? BU versus BC, of course!

16 students, eight from Boston University and eight from Boston College, left their textbooks at home and brought in the laughs to make it onto their college’s team and through to the next elimination round.

I like to think of myself as a comedy connoisseur (others might say snob). I went into the show thinking I would have to sit through endless jokes about party girls and frat boys, or worse. I was completely wrong.

Topics ranged from awkward encounters at the grocery store to Dante’s Divine Comedy (we’re college students, they had to throw us an intellectual bone at some point).  It didn’t matter which school the comedian was from—funny is funny, and there was a lot of funny in that room.

I laughed at a lot of the Boston College students’ routines despite the fact I was internally snarling at them, and some of the biggest laughs for the BU comedians were from the BC crowd. Maybe this is a great lesson in how we can end the feud—before any competition that pits BU against BC, we should have one comedian from each university come out and do a set. The spectators will all be laughing at the same jokes and realize how alike they are. (Yeah, I don’t see it happening either.)

In the end, Shawn Musgrave, Tom Niblock, Nick Peine, and Ari Stern made it through to represent BU in the NCCC. Videos of their routines will be placed on the Rooftop Comedy website where people can vote for their favorite college team. Teams are placed first against their rival and then, if they win, against another university in their bracket.  As Tom Niblock (CAS ’13) helpfully explained it to me, think March Madness, but with comedy.

Niblock didn’t expect to make it to the next round, since he changed his routine at the last second from the one he performed at the auditions. Changed or not, Niblock and his fellow BU team members proved Boston University is home to more than just high tuition and an annoyingly high number of students studying business.

Voting starts April 1 (appropriately April Fools Day). Go to the competition website to help BU beat BC (and some other schools too).

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