Greetings Wolf Space Pack fans. My name is Brian Favat and I write for BC Interruption, SB Nation’s Boston College blog. [Pack Backer] had the great idea of writing an introductory post familiarizing Nevada fans with the Boston College Eagles, since ACC and WAC teams don’t play each other very much. My experience with Nevada is basically limited to this season, the Pistol office, and Pistol Whipping The WAC’s introductory post on your team.
Let’s get a few BC misconceptions out of the way first. No, us Superfans aren’t all card-carrying members of Red Sox Nation. Jeff and I both root for the Yankees, and due to an increasingly national student body base, cheer for all different types of professional teams. Though if you aren’t affiliated with a pro team growing up, it’s easy to get caught up in the Sox, Pats, Celtics and (to a lesser extent) Bruins once you head to college in Boston.
We all don’t talk like Mayor Quimby from “The Simpsons.” There are a good percentage of students that come from the greater-Boston area, but more and more students come from all over the Northeast (and increasingly parts of ACC territory).
We are the only “College” in Division I-A college football; mostly because the name “Boston University” was already taken. Technically, BC is a university as it has multiple colleges. Speaking of Boston University, learn to hate the BU Terriers. The two schools are separated by just 3.5 miles and are bitter college hockey rivals. In football, learn to love to hate the University of Notre Dame, and whiny Big East schools that are still bitter BC left. In basketball, we are still feeling out the rivalries in the ACC. But everyone loves to hate Duke, and so do we.
BC actually has a pretty good tradition and history on the Division I-A college football scene. The Eagles remained independent up until 1990, when they became founding members of the Big East conference. The vast majority of BC’s time in college football’s top-level, however, was as an independent. BC would play a lot of similar schools early in its history, which is reflected in the teams we have played the most in our history – Holy Cross (82 games), Syracuse (46), Villanova (45), Temple (37) and Army (36). After a 14-year stint in the Big East, we jumped ship to the ACC, where we’ve been since 2005.
There was a lot of resentment towards BC’s move towards the ACC (more so than Virginia Tech or Miami, for some reason), and we’re kinda thankful that schools like TCU, Nebraska, Colorado, Utah and Nevada are all switching conference affiliations over the next few years. Hopefully that will help deflect some of the hate we get for moving to a more stable conference.
As for this year’s team, depending on who you ask, this year was a bit of a disappointment. When you dig yourself into a 2-5 hole, I guess you’ll take what you can get when it comes to bowl season. BC abandoned their 27 year old incumbent sophomore quarterback after 3 games in favor of a true freshman – Chase Rettig – from San Clemente, Ca. Rettig has played a bit better as the weeks went on, but for the most part, BC’s five-game winning streak after our five-game losing streak can be attributed to a lightening up of the schedule down the stretch. BC’s five game winning streak came against Clemson, Wake Forest, Duke, Virginia and Syracuse. To put that in context, that’s probably the equivalent of ending the season with Hawaii (Clemson), Sac State (Wake Forest), Louisiana Tech (Duke), Idaho (Virginia) and Fresno State (Syracuse). Not exactly a murderer’s row down the stretch.
This year’s Kraft Fight Hunger Bowl looks like it will be a virtual road game for the Eagles, with all these tickets getting gobbled up by Wolf Pack fans. And that’s cool. BC is used to playing teams close to their hometown turf in bowl games. Over the last 10 years, BC has played USC in San Francisco, Vanderbilt in Nashville, Boise State in Boise, North Carolina in Charlotte and Toledo in Detroit. Bowl committees seem content with sending the Eagles to bowl games that end up being de facto road games. BC is 3-2 in those games.
Despite playing 6+ weeks after the end of the regular season, I’m actually looking forward to the bowl game and watching the Eagles go up against the Wolf Pack. The Eagles fell to the ninth and final ACC bowl slot, but get to play the second highest rated BCS opponent of any ACC team in the bowl game. San Francisco and northern California has a decent-sized BC alumni base, and we’ve been able to play out there for three times in the last eight seasons. While Nevada doesn’t have the same college football cache as BC's bowl opponent last year, I think it will be a well-attended game. I’m very much looking forward to seeing Nevada’s Pistol offense go up against the number 1 rush defense in the nation.
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