For a while this fall, Binghamton University students stopped caring about the lack of a football team. All anyone talked about was The Cameron Keith Show, the top edition to this year’s fall lineup.

Keith, a sophomore forward from Aberdeenshire, Scotland, burst onto the scene in the grand opening of the $4.2 million Bearcats Sports Complex, scoring all three goals in Binghamton’s 3-0 romp of Cornell on Sept. 29.

Keith kept it up in the next game on Oct. 6, scoring both goals, including the overtime game-winner to lead the Bearcats to a 2-1 victory over hated Boston University.

Two games. Five goals. One man.

And for that outburst, and for the impact that the BSC had on the Binghamton sports landscape, two consecutive Saturdays in the fall earn Pipe Dream’s 2008 Moment of the Year.

This is no discredit to Rory Quiller or the men’s tennis team or anyone else who took home championship hardware this season. This is about impact and what 2007-08 will be remembered as. And in the hearts of sports fans, this year is about the Bearcat Hooligans, the Bearcats Sports Complex and Cameron Keith.

Soccer is not supposed to sell in America. Americans are not supposed to line up in the freezing cold and chant and sing for their favorite strikers. But it happened, here at Binghamton University, one of the most apathetic schools in the country.

In a school where athletics barely make a blip on the national radar screen, soccer became the exception. Binghamton averaged 1,299 fans per game, 21st in the country. Binghamton is rarely 21st in the country in anything, let alone attendance for a sporting event.

To put things in perspective, Binghamton averages more fans per soccer game than America East rivals Stony Brook, New Hampshire and Boston University averaged for basketball games.

And if Cameron Keith hadn’t provided that offensive spark in the first two games, maybe that doesn’t happen. Maybe soccer fades into oblivion like so many other BU sports and Cameron Keith just becomes the guy in the back of the class with the cool accent.

But that didn’t happen. Instead, Keith delivered in front of a then-record 1,862 fans and instantly became one of BU’s biggest stars. Keith brought a type of soccer that fans could get behind; high-scoring, high-energy and high-intensity.

Last year’s run of shutouts and dramatic saves by Jason Stenta was exciting and pure, but fans want offense and scoring, and Keith provided that like never before.

Until the AE championship game, Keith’s five goal games came in front of the two biggest crowds to ever watch a soccer game at BU. And those crowds held all year, and became rowdier. The Bearcat Hooligans emerged. Casual soccer fans were turned on to a new sport.

Had the first two games at the BSC been losses that might not have happened. The stadium could have been a $4.2 million failure. This year could have been remembered as the season that Rory Quiller jumped really high, but nothing else really happened.

Instead it’s remembered as the year men’s soccer took center stage, and the year BU students finally realized that they’ve had a football team all along.