Boston College Athletics
Photo by: John Quackenbos
The Honor of Tradition and All Those Who Contributed to It
October 22, 2016 | Football, #ForBoston Files
Kuechly's career a moment for everyone to share and shine.
During Saturday's game against Syracuse, Luke Kuechly will set foot on Alumni Stadium's turf for the first time since he donned a maroon jersey and gold helmet. He'll look into the corner, where names of yesteryear stand and his name will forever become immortal with a jersey retirement that will last a lifetime.
Coming back to BC brings with it a level of nostalgia, both for the player and for his fans. Even though he prowls the gridiron on Sundays wearing the Carolina Panthers' light blue and silver, it's hard to fight off the memories of days gone by.
"You walk around, you walk through the quad, (and) you remember all the time you spent walking through there going to the Fulton for classes," he said in his press conference on Friday. "Then you walk down to lower campus and the dining hall. Edmonds is gone where I spent a lot of time. It was a special place. I'm glad I had the opportunity to come home."
There's no place like college. It's a time for maturing and growing up unlike any other time in someone's life. They enter as 18 year old kids, barely out of high school. They leave ready to join the workforce as adults and they seldom resemble the kid they used to be.
"The academics were very attractive to me," Kuechly said. "I thought being in Boston was cool. My parents talked about that - you need to go a school that's going to provide you something after football. BC has done that."
A college athlete has an adjustment period unlike any other. While they're growing into their college lifestyle, they're balancing against the strenuous activities of their sport. They're both a young student trying to adjust to college and they're an athlete living under the microscope, especially when thrust into the spotlight as a freshman as Kuechly was.
"Growing up in Cincinnati, I went to Jesuit high school," said Kuechly. "Obviously BC is Jesuit. When I was looking to get recruited, we had a bunch of guys up here from St. Xavier High School. Nick Larkin was here, and Alex Albright was here. Those guys went to the same high school as me. They both came here, they both loved it and played well in football. They were some guys that I could bounce ideas off of.
"Player-wise, Mark Herzlich was great," he said. "Mike Morrissey was a linebacker that was good to me. He showed me how to do everything, whether it was around campus, where to eat, wash your clothes, how do you get down to Cleveland Circle - stuff like that."
Arriving at BC, Kuechly projected low on the depth chart as a true freshman. But after injuries conspired to remove the players in front of him, he was thrust into a starting role. That meant more intensive meetings, practice, and a quicker learning curve. "I'd watch film with Wes (Davis)," he said. "He'd show me different things. His locker was right next to mine. He treated you like a young guys. Once you earned his respect, it was all good."
Along with Davis, assistant coach Bill McGovern, long listed as an inspiration to a number of young football players, made his mark.
"What makes a good coach is (his ability to) connect with guys off the field," said Kuechly. "He knew every guy on the team, what they were doing. He knew what classes they were taking. He knew about their families. To have a coach that took a personal approach to each guy is important."
It led to a career unparalleled in BC football history. He finished with over 530 tackles, nearly 300 of which were solo. He had seven career interceptions, two of which were returned for touchdowns. He won the Butkus Award, the Jack Lambert Trophy, the Lombardi Trophy, the Lott Trophy and the Bronco Nagurski Award. He was the ACC Defensive Player of the Year and the ACC Player of the Year. He was a three-time All-ACC and three-time All-American.
The ninth overall pick in the 2012 NFL Draft, he's already on a path that could wind him with a bust in Canton. Every year, he's been an All-Pro, adding a professional Butkus Award to his collegiate honors. The NFL's Defensive Rookie of the Year in 2012, he won the Defensive Player of the Year Award in 2013.
"We were just a tough group of dudes that played hard," Kuechly said. "It was kind of epitomized by Mark (Herzlich) with his cancer. It didn't hold him back. When you see a guy like that come to practice and go to meetings, the dude's going through chemo, he has a port and stuff. This (football) isn't really difficult if he's doing that. Those guys set the standard of what BC football was in my mind. It trickled its way down. We were very lucky to have guys like that that were just tough football players in every sense of the word. They were mean, they played hard, they gave great effort, good to young guys, treated them right."
In a way, Kuechly's jersey retirement is the epitome of what it was like to be a Boston College Eagle, in years past, present and future.
"BC was important to (Luke's teams). That rings true with our entire class," said Doug Flutie, who saw his jersey retired in 1998. "A bunch of us were Ivy League or I-AA type guys that got an opportunity. It was a high-character class. It was all the things Luke is talking about: guys there were driven, guys that worked hard, guys that did everything the right way. We weren't the most talented. At the collegiate level, you can get by on that, the hard work end of it, as long as you have a decent ability. That's what we kind of started to build then."
It's a blue-collar culture, built, as Flutie put it, on guys that weren't always "NFL prospect guys." It's about hard-nosed players who line up and hit, who care about Boston College, who care about graduating. It's about guys who want to build something at a community level, guys who don't mind operating in the shadows of a robust professional culture.
"It was a big deal for me to go to Boston College," said Flutie. "There was a window of time where we were getting as much attention as the pro sports. That's the battle here. I live down in Florida now around SEC people, and it's crazy. I don't want us going that direction; I love what Boston College represents.
"Luke is a very deserving person and a very deserving student-athlete for Boston College," Flutie said. "He's playing in the NFL and doing these great things that make you proud. He makes you proud that he went to Boston College, and it's a great moment for the program to honor one of the all-time greats."
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Coming back to BC brings with it a level of nostalgia, both for the player and for his fans. Even though he prowls the gridiron on Sundays wearing the Carolina Panthers' light blue and silver, it's hard to fight off the memories of days gone by.
"You walk around, you walk through the quad, (and) you remember all the time you spent walking through there going to the Fulton for classes," he said in his press conference on Friday. "Then you walk down to lower campus and the dining hall. Edmonds is gone where I spent a lot of time. It was a special place. I'm glad I had the opportunity to come home."
There's no place like college. It's a time for maturing and growing up unlike any other time in someone's life. They enter as 18 year old kids, barely out of high school. They leave ready to join the workforce as adults and they seldom resemble the kid they used to be.
"The academics were very attractive to me," Kuechly said. "I thought being in Boston was cool. My parents talked about that - you need to go a school that's going to provide you something after football. BC has done that."
A college athlete has an adjustment period unlike any other. While they're growing into their college lifestyle, they're balancing against the strenuous activities of their sport. They're both a young student trying to adjust to college and they're an athlete living under the microscope, especially when thrust into the spotlight as a freshman as Kuechly was.
"Growing up in Cincinnati, I went to Jesuit high school," said Kuechly. "Obviously BC is Jesuit. When I was looking to get recruited, we had a bunch of guys up here from St. Xavier High School. Nick Larkin was here, and Alex Albright was here. Those guys went to the same high school as me. They both came here, they both loved it and played well in football. They were some guys that I could bounce ideas off of.
"Player-wise, Mark Herzlich was great," he said. "Mike Morrissey was a linebacker that was good to me. He showed me how to do everything, whether it was around campus, where to eat, wash your clothes, how do you get down to Cleveland Circle - stuff like that."
Arriving at BC, Kuechly projected low on the depth chart as a true freshman. But after injuries conspired to remove the players in front of him, he was thrust into a starting role. That meant more intensive meetings, practice, and a quicker learning curve. "I'd watch film with Wes (Davis)," he said. "He'd show me different things. His locker was right next to mine. He treated you like a young guys. Once you earned his respect, it was all good."
Along with Davis, assistant coach Bill McGovern, long listed as an inspiration to a number of young football players, made his mark.
"What makes a good coach is (his ability to) connect with guys off the field," said Kuechly. "He knew every guy on the team, what they were doing. He knew what classes they were taking. He knew about their families. To have a coach that took a personal approach to each guy is important."
It led to a career unparalleled in BC football history. He finished with over 530 tackles, nearly 300 of which were solo. He had seven career interceptions, two of which were returned for touchdowns. He won the Butkus Award, the Jack Lambert Trophy, the Lombardi Trophy, the Lott Trophy and the Bronco Nagurski Award. He was the ACC Defensive Player of the Year and the ACC Player of the Year. He was a three-time All-ACC and three-time All-American.
The ninth overall pick in the 2012 NFL Draft, he's already on a path that could wind him with a bust in Canton. Every year, he's been an All-Pro, adding a professional Butkus Award to his collegiate honors. The NFL's Defensive Rookie of the Year in 2012, he won the Defensive Player of the Year Award in 2013.
"We were just a tough group of dudes that played hard," Kuechly said. "It was kind of epitomized by Mark (Herzlich) with his cancer. It didn't hold him back. When you see a guy like that come to practice and go to meetings, the dude's going through chemo, he has a port and stuff. This (football) isn't really difficult if he's doing that. Those guys set the standard of what BC football was in my mind. It trickled its way down. We were very lucky to have guys like that that were just tough football players in every sense of the word. They were mean, they played hard, they gave great effort, good to young guys, treated them right."
In a way, Kuechly's jersey retirement is the epitome of what it was like to be a Boston College Eagle, in years past, present and future.
"BC was important to (Luke's teams). That rings true with our entire class," said Doug Flutie, who saw his jersey retired in 1998. "A bunch of us were Ivy League or I-AA type guys that got an opportunity. It was a high-character class. It was all the things Luke is talking about: guys there were driven, guys that worked hard, guys that did everything the right way. We weren't the most talented. At the collegiate level, you can get by on that, the hard work end of it, as long as you have a decent ability. That's what we kind of started to build then."
It's a blue-collar culture, built, as Flutie put it, on guys that weren't always "NFL prospect guys." It's about hard-nosed players who line up and hit, who care about Boston College, who care about graduating. It's about guys who want to build something at a community level, guys who don't mind operating in the shadows of a robust professional culture.
"It was a big deal for me to go to Boston College," said Flutie. "There was a window of time where we were getting as much attention as the pro sports. That's the battle here. I live down in Florida now around SEC people, and it's crazy. I don't want us going that direction; I love what Boston College represents.
"Luke is a very deserving person and a very deserving student-athlete for Boston College," Flutie said. "He's playing in the NFL and doing these great things that make you proud. He makes you proud that he went to Boston College, and it's a great moment for the program to honor one of the all-time greats."
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