Durham just got another small push in its efforts to bring Google’s high-speed Internet access project to the Bull City—the endorsement of the mayor of Morgantown, W.Va., whose home team lost to the Duke Blue Devils in the semifinals for the NCAA Men’s Basketball Championship.
When it became apparent that Duke’s men’s basketball team was going to meet the West Virginia Mountaineers on April 3, Durham Mayor Bill Bell and Morgantown Mayor Bill Byrne made a friendly wager. The mayor of the losing team’s hometown had to write an endorsement bolstering the other town’s application for the Google project.
Well, Duke trounced West Virginia, winning 78 to 57 (and of course, went on to win the national title). As a result of the loss, Byrne wrote a humbled and humorous letter of support for Durham’s application to Google on April 7, saying:
“With a heavy heart, I take pen to hand (actually finger to key board) and herein express the City of Morgantown’s enthusiastic endorsement of Durham’s Google application to be selected as ONE of hopefully SEVERAL (to include Morgantown) communities to participate in Google’s broadband experiments.”
Will the endorsements help Durham’s chances? We can only wait to find out. Google is supposed to announce its test communities by the end of the year.
Read more about Durham’s bid for Google fiber, and the Google project.
