Boston College Athletics
BC-Syracuse: A "Black-And-Blue" Rivalry
November 26, 2014 | Football
By Reid Oslin
Think that Boston College and Syracuse don't have an intense football rivalry? Then consider this little bit of history from the 1963 game between these long-time Eastern - and now Atlantic Coast Conference - foes:
Late in the second quarter of the opening day game at Syracuse's archaic Archbold Stadium, a horde of Syracuse tacklers drove BC's star quarterback, Jack Concannon, out of bounds, over the SU bench and into the concrete sidewall of the gray old stadium.
Eagles' coach Jim Miller, normally a taciturn Midwesterner, was incensed. Later, when Syracuse coach Ben Schwartzwalder led his team out of the tunnel to start the second half, Miller raced across the field and stuck his finger right in the face of the started Schwartzwalder, a hard-bitten former Army paratrooper in World War II.
"The next time your goons try to hurt my quarterback, I'm coming across that field to punch you right in the nose," threatened Miller.
And he meant it.
Concannon answered the unwarranted roughhousing in his own manner: Throwing two fourth-quarter touchdown passes, but the Eagles lost that day, 32-21.
Miller, a former Big 10 lineman at Purdue, never forgot the questionable play. The next September, the Eagles stunned the ninth-ranked Orangemen, 21-14, on a last-second touchdown in Chestnut Hill. He walked off the field with a smile.
Boston College and Syracuse have been playing rock-`em, sock-`em football games since they first got together on the gridiron back in 1924 - and the competition between these two fine football programs goes back even a week earlier than their October 18 meeting that year in Syracuse. A week prior to meeting Syracuse, Boston College had played Fordham at Boston's Fenway Park. Knowing that there were Syracuse scouts in the stands jotting down the Eagles' offensive plays, BC coach Frank "Iron Major" Cavanaugh used only line plays to beat the visiting Rams, not tipping his playbook to the SU spies in the grandstand.
Boston College had to wait another 20 years to even the score: Posting a 19-12 wartime victory in a game played at Fenway in 1944.
The two schools eventually became members of a loosely-organized league of "Eastern Independents" under the banner of the Eastern College Athletic Conference (ECAC) and began more-or-less regular match-up starting in 1958. As the two northeast region representatives - along with Pittsburgh, Penn State, Temple, Rutgers, West Virginia, Army and Navy - Syracuse and Boston College would line up 43 times over the next 46 seasons.
For some reason, the teams were not scheduled to play in 1969, with Holy Cross plugged in to its usual spot at the end of BC's regular season slate. When the Crusaders were forced to cancel their season because of an outbreak of hepatitis among team members, BC and Syracuse filled their sudden vacancies with a game to be played in the frozen tundra of upstate New York. SU jumped out to a 10-0 lead, but BC, behind the pinpoint passing of Frank "Red" Harris stormed back with a second-half blitz to take a 35-10 decision, a benchmark victory for Coach Joe Yukica's rebuilt football program.
Ten years later, Syracuse officials finally decided to tear down the aging Archbold Stadium and build the massive Carrier Dome at the same site. This meant that all SU "home" games in 1979 had to be played at other venues. BC and the Orange met at Cornell's Schoelkopf Field in Ithaca, N.Y., on November 17. Coach Frank Maloney's team had high hopes of playing in Orlando's Tangerine Bowl with a victory that day, but the Eagles had other ideas, scoring a decisive 27-10 victory and sending the still bowl-eligible Orangemen packing to the Independence Bowl in Shreveport, La.
Maloney was dismissed after the 1980 season and several of his former coaches wound up on the staff of new BC coach Jack Bicknell, including a young offensive genius, Tom Coughlin, who would later become head coach at Boston College before heading off to a highly-successful NFL coaching career.
One of the highlights of the Bicknell era at BC was the 24-16 victory over Syracuse at Sullivan Stadium in Foxboro on November 17, 1984. Future Heisman Trophy winner Doug Flutie nailed down the win with a perfectly-executed quarterback draw run on a third-and-22 play, and right after the game, the triumphant Eagles accepted an invitation to play in the Cotton Bowl on New Year's Day to cap that 10-2 championship season.
When the Big East Conference decided to move from its hugely-successful basketball format into a football conference, Syracuse and Boston College were natural geographic rivals once again.
"They were always tough physical games," said Reggie Terry, now BC's Assistant Athletics Director for Football Operations and Player Personnel, but a former Syracuse linebacker. "We had some success at Syracuse in those years, but it was always a tough, tough game. They were almost always close games, hard-fought games. I don't think I really had an appreciation until much later as to just how significant this rivalry really is."
The Teflon-covered Carrier Dome was always a challenging place for Boston College to achieve success. After enduring six consecutive losses in the loud indoor stadium, BC snapped the skid with a thrilling 33-29 victory in a game that was televised by ABC-TV. Eagles' quarterback Glenn Foley had a masterful game that day, completing 22-of-29 passes for 423 yards and three scores, but it was the defense that saved the day for BC, notching five sacks of Syracuse quarterback Marvin Graves and sealing the victory with a Brian Howlett interception with just 1:20 to play.
One of the most exciting games in the long series (today's game is the 38th time these schools have met) came in 1999 in Syracuse as John Matich booted a 34-yard field goal with 2:57 left on the clock to put BC in front, 24-23. However, it took a game-saving tackle by the late BC linebacker Frank Chamberlin on a fourth-down play late in the game to preserve the Eagle victory. Chamberlin, a middle linebacker, dominated the defensive statistics that day with 25 tackles.
"It seemed it was always one of those `black-and-blue' type games," Terry said. "If you were fortunate enough to win, you had to earn it." Terry began his coaching career as a graduate assistant at his alma mater. He would later serve as Director of Football Operations at Syracuse and Director of Football Administration for the NFL's Arizona Cardinals before joining Steve Addazio's staff at Boston College last year.
Terry recalls SU's visit to Chestnut Hill in 2000, when BC's All-America running back William Green led the way to a thrilling 20-13 victory before a sellout crowd at Alumni Stadium.
But by 2003, the series was in danger of ending. Boston College had been invited to join the Atlantic Coast Conference - ahead of Syracuse - and the folks in upstate New York were none too pleased. They planned a less-than-warm welcome for the visiting Eagles in the Dome. The BC team got another setback when their chartered airplane was delayed six hours by mechanical difficulties and the squad did not arrive in their Syracuse hotel until 3 a.m. - only nine hours before kickoff of the televised contest. As the BC team took the field, some Syracuse fans tossed dollar bills at the players and coaches, apparently chiding them for accepting the same lucrative arrangement with the ACC that the Orangemen had also sought. SU had the last laugh that day, winning 39-14.
The Orangemen extracted one more piece of revenge a year later when the teams met in Chestnut Hill and the Eagles had a chance to capture the Big East Championship outright in their final season in the crumbling conference. An outright championship would have brought the Eagles to a coveted slot in the Fiesta Bowl on January 1.
Syracuse spoiled the championship party early on, with Damien Rhodes scoring a 69-yard end around touchdown just 16 seconds into the game and never looking back. The final score was SU 43, BC 17. BC's starting quarterback that day was redshirt freshman Matt Ryan, who took over the controls from senior Paul Petersen, who had broken a bone in his hand the previous week at Temple.
With that loss, BC dropped into a four-way tie for the Big East title, and ended up winning the Continental Tire Bowl in Charlotte.
When Syracuse was eventually brought into the ACC fold, the two old rivals got back into football battle. Syracuse heated the competition up to a red-hot level again last year when the Orange scored a 34-31 victory, with the winning points coming on an eight-yard touchdown pass from Terrel Hunt to tight end Josh Parris with just six seconds remaining on the clock. BC running back Andre Williams, who entered the game as the nation's top rusher, injured his shoulder in the third quarter, and had to leave the game.
A typical BC-Syracuse rivalry game, you say?
Just watch to see what Saturday afternoon brings...
