It will be more than a game on Wednesday night.

During Syracuse University’s men’s basketball marquee match-up against the Wisconsin Badgers Wednesday night, the Sport Management Club will be running its eleventh annual charity sports auction. The auction will benefit the Salvation Army of the Syracuse area.

“From the beginning they’ve been a great beneficiary to work with, and truly a great cause,” said Jack Moriarty, co-chair of the auction and a senior sport management major.

The money raised at the auction will go towards one of Salvation Army’s 40 programs, which are meant to help about 40,000 individuals around the Syracuse area, said Kevin Reese, co-chair of the auction and a junior sport management major.

Making the decision for which charity the auction would benefit was a tough process, Moriarty said, but “the outright winner was the Salvation Army.”

The game tips off at 7:15 p.m., but the doors of the Carrier Dome open at 5:15 p.m. “to give people time to arrive early and hopefully do a lot of bidding,” said Kate Veley, faculty adviser of the club and the events and alumni manager for the David B. Falk College of Sport and Human Dynamics.

The auction will take place in the backcourt from 5:15 p.m. to the start of the game’s second half. The silent bidding will end when the buzzer goes off, Veley said, and then people can come to the backcourt after the game to see what they have won.

The auction is the prime event for the Sport Management Club and entails a semester of planning and research, Reese said. The club has committees that work on donations, sales, logistics, marketing and getting items for the auction, he added.

The backcourt will be occupied by 100 tables covered in nearly 450 items up for bidding, Veley said.

The items range “from almost every conceivable sport,” Veley said, but the auction also offers gift certificates to local restaurants, electronics, items for kids, jewelry and clothing.

Published on December 1, 2015 at 10:48 pm

Contact Andrew: angodnic@syr.edu