The university has been chosen as the first location for a college version of the World’s Strongest Man competition, and producers of the television show hope to film muscle-bound Terps competing on McKeldin Mall by next semester.
Televised nationally on ESPN, World’s Strongest Man since 1977 has been broadcasting competitors engaged in unbelievable feats like lugging heavy stones, using a rope and harness to tow a jetliner and carrying around a pair of refrigerators. But never before has the competition focused on drawing college strongmen – at least not until show producer Barry Frank decided to take the show to college campuses across the country.
“We’re going to do a kind of pilot, a test of it, next fall, to make sure we get all the bugs out of it,” said Frank, who is also the senior corporate vice president of the New York-based company that owns the show, IMG. Frank chose this university for the pilot because “[The campus] is close to New York – it’s an hour on the shuttle and it’s a big school with a lot of students, and you’ve got a big quad.”
After the show films on this campus, Frank and his crew will return to New York and begin planning competitions on 57 college campuses, which will eventually culminate in a championship show featuring the winners from five conferences, including the ACC. The winner of the competition on this campus will receive a $5,000 scholarship, Frank said.
You don’t have to be familiar with a weight bench to compete, though, Frank said. Students with experience producing television broadcasts will be competing as well. Once the competition arrives here, the university television station, UMTV, will be filming the competition, Frank said. TV stations at other campuses will do the same, and the best-produced show’s crew will help film the championship.
Frank said, however, the competition will be significantly toned down from the audacious productions seen regularly on ESPN to five or six events. In other words, probably no students towing trolleys and mack trucks or carrying 600 pound weights up a flight of stairs.
“There’ll probably be the events that are simpler to set up. I don’t want to get into moving sets to different schools,” Frank said. “We will probably make the events a little bit easier because the guys who do this for a living really are the world’s strongest men, and I don’t want anyone on college campuses to get injuries.”
The competition will take place over two days, with the first focused on whittling down a large field of athletes to 10 or 12, Frank said. The second day, a champion will be declared after competitive events. Although the competition sounds as though it could be dominated by football players, Frank said others lurking around the campus could make the cut.
“I’d want to go to the gym to see if there’s anyone out there” who’s athletic but not competing, Frank said. “There’s probably a guy in some fraternity house someplace who’s strong as a bull.”
Frank said he’s meeting with university officials on Tuesday to “scout locations and talk about the events, talk about the time of day we can run them.”
University Assistant Vice President for Marketing and Communication Terry Flannery, with whom Frank said he was meeting next week, did not immediately return calls for comment. But Student Entertainment Events President Noreen Tahir said she thought the competition would be popular among students, although the event isn’t being organized through SEE.
“I think that on a campus this large, that anything can find an audience,” Tahir said. “It’s great when things like this come to campus because it’s so unique that people aren’t being served by this.”
Contact reporter Kevin Litten at littendbk@gmail.com.
