Boston College Athletics
31 Proud Minutes
October 10, 2015 | Football
Written By Reid Oslin
It was a game that produced "31 of the proudest minutes of Boston College football history," lauded Boston Globe sports editor Ernie Roberts as he eloquently described how the Eagles rallied to defeat heavily-favored Syracuse, 35-10, on November 29, 1969. Those were lofty words of praise for a contest that was not even on the BC schedule at the beginning of that season.
The Eagles were originally supposed to meet traditional rival Holy Cross on that day, but midway through September, the Crusaders had to cancel their season after scores of players and coaches developed hepatitis, later blamed on a contaminated water fountain near the team's practice field.
On October 7, Boston College athletics director Bill Flynn and his Syracuse counterpart, Jim Decker, both of whom had open dates available when Holy Cross declared its team unable to play, agreed to meet in the '69 season finale.
"I remember that Coach [Joe] Yukica came in to the locker room that day and said, 'Guess what, guys? We filled the open date with Syracuse and it's going to extend our season by a week,'" recalled BC fullback Joe McDonald. "But for the Syracuse guys, it extended their season three weeks. I don't think they were too happy about that."
The late-scheduled game proved to be an unexpected boon for Boston College football.
The Eagles of that era, struggling to find a winning football identity under its second-year coach, seized the chance to take a major step up in their climb on the Eastern football ladder.
McDonald, a native of Quincy, Mass., had attended Manlius Prep near Syracuse after starring for Braintree's Archbishop Williams High School. Syracuse recruited him heavily for their football program, but after a year of enduring the constant heavy snowstorms of upstate New York, he decided that he would be far better off back in Chestnut Hill.
As a senior, McDonald was named a game captain for the Syracuse contest, and correctly called the coin toss to earn BC the opening possession of the game.
That was just about all that the Eagles would win during the first half of play. Syracuse surged to a 10-0 lead and squandered several other scoring opportunities on a pair of missed field goals, an interception and a lost fumble in the BC red zone. Almost the entire first half was played on the BC side of the 50-yard line.
But with only 15 seconds remaining before intermission, Eagle quarterback Frank "Red" Harris tossed a 22-yard touchdown bomb to end John Bonistalli to get BC on the scoreboard.
When the teams came out for the second half, Harris took control of the game, pitching three more touchdown passes (two to RB Fred Willis, another to WR George Gill) and ringing up 250 aerial yards on a 23-for-38 passing day.
Running back Jim Catone scored the Eagles' lone ground touchdown of the day on a 1-yard plunge in the third quarter.
The Syracuse players were clearly demoralized by the stellar play of the upstart Eagles, and the Orangemen resorted to cheap penalties and roughhouse tactics in the final quarter of the game.
"I think Syracuse had lost the desire with that long layoff," McDonald said. "It was really freezing that day and that old, concrete Archbold Stadium was a cold place to play football. As I think back on it, the guys had all gotten together and said 'We have not come all the way up here to lose.' And we didn't. I know our guys were sky-high for the game – and I think the Syracuse guys were the other way. It was a fantastic game. I remember coming back to Boston and people just did not believe what had happened. That was a turn-around game in modern BC football history," he said.
After his graduation from BC, McDonald went on to a long career as Special Agent for the Federal Bureau of Investigation, spending 15 years as a covert surveillance specialist in New York City, and retiring from his nearly-24-year long FBI career as supervisor of the New Haven, Conn., office.
Another BC running back who remembers the game well is Gene Comella '71, who grew up in nearby Lyons, N.Y., where one of his high school classmates was future Syracuse basketball coach Jim Boeheim.
Comella, who was also recruited by the Syracuse football team as a fullback, recalled standing on the Archbold sideline as a youngster watching a BC-SU game that featured two All-America fullbacks, BC's Brendan McCarthy and the Orange's Larry Csonka. That day, he decided to become an Eagle.
"After the game, I said to somebody, 'That's a great school – great academics and great athletics.'
"Syracuse was the school I had wanted to go to as a kid," Comella said. "But beating Syracuse in 1969 was a game I will never forget. It was like a long circle. That game gave us confidence and got us up for the next year."
Comella, who now owns a highly-successful chain of Italian restaurants in the greater Boston area, is exactly right: the Eagles leaped to 8-2 and 9-2 records in the 1970 and 1971 football seasons, thanks in great part to a stunning – but unexpected - victory on that freezing day in Syracuse.
It was a game that produced "31 of the proudest minutes of Boston College football history," lauded Boston Globe sports editor Ernie Roberts as he eloquently described how the Eagles rallied to defeat heavily-favored Syracuse, 35-10, on November 29, 1969. Those were lofty words of praise for a contest that was not even on the BC schedule at the beginning of that season.
The Eagles were originally supposed to meet traditional rival Holy Cross on that day, but midway through September, the Crusaders had to cancel their season after scores of players and coaches developed hepatitis, later blamed on a contaminated water fountain near the team's practice field.
On October 7, Boston College athletics director Bill Flynn and his Syracuse counterpart, Jim Decker, both of whom had open dates available when Holy Cross declared its team unable to play, agreed to meet in the '69 season finale.
"I remember that Coach [Joe] Yukica came in to the locker room that day and said, 'Guess what, guys? We filled the open date with Syracuse and it's going to extend our season by a week,'" recalled BC fullback Joe McDonald. "But for the Syracuse guys, it extended their season three weeks. I don't think they were too happy about that."
The late-scheduled game proved to be an unexpected boon for Boston College football.
The Eagles of that era, struggling to find a winning football identity under its second-year coach, seized the chance to take a major step up in their climb on the Eastern football ladder.
McDonald, a native of Quincy, Mass., had attended Manlius Prep near Syracuse after starring for Braintree's Archbishop Williams High School. Syracuse recruited him heavily for their football program, but after a year of enduring the constant heavy snowstorms of upstate New York, he decided that he would be far better off back in Chestnut Hill.
As a senior, McDonald was named a game captain for the Syracuse contest, and correctly called the coin toss to earn BC the opening possession of the game.
That was just about all that the Eagles would win during the first half of play. Syracuse surged to a 10-0 lead and squandered several other scoring opportunities on a pair of missed field goals, an interception and a lost fumble in the BC red zone. Almost the entire first half was played on the BC side of the 50-yard line.
But with only 15 seconds remaining before intermission, Eagle quarterback Frank "Red" Harris tossed a 22-yard touchdown bomb to end John Bonistalli to get BC on the scoreboard.
When the teams came out for the second half, Harris took control of the game, pitching three more touchdown passes (two to RB Fred Willis, another to WR George Gill) and ringing up 250 aerial yards on a 23-for-38 passing day.
Running back Jim Catone scored the Eagles' lone ground touchdown of the day on a 1-yard plunge in the third quarter.
The Syracuse players were clearly demoralized by the stellar play of the upstart Eagles, and the Orangemen resorted to cheap penalties and roughhouse tactics in the final quarter of the game.
"I think Syracuse had lost the desire with that long layoff," McDonald said. "It was really freezing that day and that old, concrete Archbold Stadium was a cold place to play football. As I think back on it, the guys had all gotten together and said 'We have not come all the way up here to lose.' And we didn't. I know our guys were sky-high for the game – and I think the Syracuse guys were the other way. It was a fantastic game. I remember coming back to Boston and people just did not believe what had happened. That was a turn-around game in modern BC football history," he said.
After his graduation from BC, McDonald went on to a long career as Special Agent for the Federal Bureau of Investigation, spending 15 years as a covert surveillance specialist in New York City, and retiring from his nearly-24-year long FBI career as supervisor of the New Haven, Conn., office.
Another BC running back who remembers the game well is Gene Comella '71, who grew up in nearby Lyons, N.Y., where one of his high school classmates was future Syracuse basketball coach Jim Boeheim.
Comella, who was also recruited by the Syracuse football team as a fullback, recalled standing on the Archbold sideline as a youngster watching a BC-SU game that featured two All-America fullbacks, BC's Brendan McCarthy and the Orange's Larry Csonka. That day, he decided to become an Eagle.
"After the game, I said to somebody, 'That's a great school – great academics and great athletics.'
"Syracuse was the school I had wanted to go to as a kid," Comella said. "But beating Syracuse in 1969 was a game I will never forget. It was like a long circle. That game gave us confidence and got us up for the next year."
Comella, who now owns a highly-successful chain of Italian restaurants in the greater Boston area, is exactly right: the Eagles leaped to 8-2 and 9-2 records in the 1970 and 1971 football seasons, thanks in great part to a stunning – but unexpected - victory on that freezing day in Syracuse.
Thursday, June 04
Thursday, June 04
Wednesday, June 03
Wednesday, June 03
