Reviving and Reliving History

The 2018 college football season will feature over 100 games between bowl subdivision teams against championship subdivision opponents. Once an outlier game played every few years, it's now an accepted part of the season, with FCS wins over FBS teams earning national headlines annually. Once considered a tune-up, it's now a game where power conference teams can find themselves caught by regional or local teams playing in their personal Super Bowl atmosphere.

Since 2006, Boston College played 12 FCS games with a majority against the Colonial Athletic Association. The Eagles played nine games against five different CAA teams, including New England-based programs like Northeastern, UMass (before it elevated to the FBS), Maine and Rhode Island. In 2010, BC played the Big Sky's Weber State in a game featuring Mark Herzlich's return from cancer, and it played its first Northeast Conference opponent last year with a game against Wagner.

The competitive nature of each power conference can cast a long shadow over non-conference games, and FCS games ordinarily lack the feel of a critical conference game against Clemson. Saturday's game at Boston College will likely be different, however. For the first time since 1986, Boston College will suit up against its most historic rival and revive its series against Holy Cross.

"We're excited to get going in week two with a chance to bring our team to 2-0, playing Holy Cross, a traditional rival game back in the day for Boston College," head coach Steve Addazio said. "It's certainly another geographical game where there's great fan interest."

It's been over 30 years, but BC-Holy Cross once stood as New England's premier college football rivalry. The series started in 1896, the same year as Clemson-South Carolina and one year before Michigan-Ohio State. In those early years, the teams played twice a year with early BC dominance countered by Holy Cross winning seven straight between 1901-1915.

The series was an annual staple that was almost never missed. It continued annually after 1943 until Holy Cross' team contracted hepatitis in 1969, then continued well into the 1980s. It was Massachusetts' answer to the other rivalries of the day, a Jesuit, Catholic response to the Ivy League's Harvard-Yale game and the service academies' Army-Navy game. But it all ended in the mid-1980s when Holy Cross helped found the Colonial League. Because it didn't offer football scholarships, Boston College couldn't schedule the Crusaders, and the series ended following the 1986 game. It became a relic of an older era until 2012, when the Patriot League instituted football scholarships. Its teams were allowed to schedule "play up" games against FBS opponents, and BC and Holy Cross almost immediately announced two games against each other, the first of which comes on Saturday at Alumni Stadium.

"We scheduled Villanova, and I coached against them (at Northeastern)," Senior Associate Athletics Director Barry Gallup said. "You can play a Central Michigan, and you play them for a lot of good reasons. But when you can play a game like Holy Cross, that's going to mean a lot. We have a lot of students with friends at Holy Cross, and there's a huge alumni factor. Our alumni from the 1980s and 1970s and 1960s are going to have a trip down memory lane. It's important for bragging rights, but it's also important for a lot of reasons."

For many, the Boston College-Holy Cross series is a look back at a time before college football became essentially its own industry. It encapsulated the very best about Massachusetts with two academic equals battling for athletic supremacy. The series played games at Fenway Park, and the 1971 and 1983 games moved to Schaefer/Sullivan Stadium in Foxboro. Individual games became important chapters to each team's history with success and failure hanging on results.

The 1984 season, for example, is best remembered for Doug Flutie's Hail Mary pass to Gerard Phelan against Miami, but the Eagles had to finish the season against Holy Cross one week later. A sold-out Fitton Field crowd parked cars out on I-290 as Flutie struggled in the first half. In the second half, he turned on the jets and paced BC to a 30-point victory. Two years later, in the series' final meeting, Kelvin Martin, caught three touchdown passes as BC overcame a 14-0 deficit to trounce Holy Cross. It came a year after Martin returned a punt 93 yards to set a record that still stands.

BC-Holy Cross was a big deal. Sellout crowds at Fitton Field matched the 30,000-plus fans who packed into Alumni Stadium, Boston College or Foxboro Stadium. It was a point of interest for fans, alumni and football fanatics alike. Players from other schools sought tickets to the game, including an offensive lineman from Division II's Central Connecticut State who saw the game in Worcester.

"I can't give you specifics, but I can remember this as clear as a bell," Addazio said. "I was driving up (north) with a bunch of my buddies. We were going up to L.L. Bean, but our tradition was to stop and see BC play Holy Cross. This particular game was at Holy Cross. I remember going into the stadium, and to me, it was like huge, big-time college football environment. It was a cold fall day and everything smelled of cigar smoke, hot dogs, the whole bit."

For his part, Addazio likely would've seen the rivalry at its last apex. Holy Cross beat BC in 1977 and 1978, and the latter was a one-point game. The Eagles won the three after that by a combined eight points. Then came the Doug Flutie era and the Colonial League, and the matchup dissolved for 32 years.

"We'd go in there like, 'Wow this is awesome,' and go watch that game," Addazio said. "It was big-time, New England college football. I remember being in Holy Cross' stadium and actually feeling the cold and the whole bit and the game and the big-time atmosphere. I remember that vividly."

Thirty years can rewrite and erase history a few times over, and Boston College established new matchups - first in the Big East and then again in the ACC. No team, however, represents more to history than Holy Cross.

That makes Saturday an experience for all the players, none of which were alive when the teams last met. It's a chance to link generations, especially for those who grew up around the region and know what both schools represent to their respective alumni bases.

"We had some people from outside of New England, but the majority of people who played were Northeast people," Gallup said. "The majority of them came from Catholic schools, and it was a great, competitive rivalry.

"When you play a team like that every year, it was like your Thanksgiving Day rivalry in Massachusetts high school," he said. "When I was in Swampscott, we played Marblehead every year. You knew the guys on the team, and you played against them. I remember losing to Holy Cross in my sophomore year (in 1966). I remember saying we wouldn't lose to them again, and then we beat them in my junior and senior years."

Boston College will play Holy Cross at Alumni Stadium on Saturday afternoon at 1 p.m. The game can be seen on the ACC Network Extra and via WatchESPN.com. It can also be heard via the BC IMG Sports Network and on satellite radio on Sirius channel 205, XM channel 384 and Internet channel 972.

Related Videos