The Holy War's Next Chapter

I embrace everything about being from Boston. This is my city, I like to say, and I grew up here. I rode the Orange Line as a kid and learned at a young age about the broken feeling of seeing Heath Street on the Green Line when you're sprinting to grab "anything but E" to make it to Kenmore for first pitch at Fenway.

I forgot to buy return tokens in the days before the Charlie Card, and I know it takes hours to go from Boston College to Park St. I have been stuck on the tracks above Boston Sand and Gravel (with photographic evidence to support my claim), and my heart skips a beat when I head over the Longfellow Bridge on the Red Line. I still cram shoulder-to-shoulder on the way back to Riverside because my wife grew up in Metrowest.

I love Boston, but I never embraced Notre Dame. Some people around here loved the Fighting Irish, especially those who grew up in the late 1980s and early 1990s. The shamrocks and leprechauns brought national championship pride to the Irish Catholic culture in and around the city, but I was never destined to ride that train. My path instead forged a different, maroon-and-gold direction.

This week, that parochial pride and sibling rivalry will ride beneath the streets of Boston once more. Boston College and Notre Dame - the Holy War - will play its first incarnation between conference opponents when the two teams compete against the backdrop of one of the most unique times in world history. They will do so while the Eagles honor the memory of Welles Crowther in their annual Red Bandanna Game and the Fighting Irish look to reclaim their national championship mantle.

"Barry Gallup is really the guy that I go to for all the history and all the tradition," BC head coach Jeff Hafley said. "Coach Gallup has been here for such a long time. If anybody represents Boston College football, it's (him). I remember Coach Gallup from the time I worked camp here as a young coach and the way he took care of me. He sends me emails, he sends me highlight films, he sends me clippings. I know this game is very important to a lot of people at Boston College, and I respect the tradition. I understand the tradition and the rivalry."

Rivalry indoctrinations are usually built by long standing hate dating back over decades. Boston Bruins fans, for example, handed generations of disdain for the Montreal Canadiens to new, young fans, and Boston Celtics fans did the same with the Los Angeles Lakers. Red Sox-Yankees feels like it predates modern society. Add in a dash of old American Football League rivalries between the New England Patriots and the New York Jets, and there's decades' worth of beatdowns in both directions.

BC-Notre Dame is something altogether different. BC hosted Notre Dame in 1975 and went to South Bend in 1987 with a meetup in the Liberty Bowl sandwiched in between, but the disdain and hate didn't begin in earnest until Lou Holtz called for a fake punt during a 54-7 thrashing in 1992.

It simmered for a year until David Gordon kicked No. 1 Notre Dame right in its national championship dreams. It was one week after the 'Game of the Century' win over Florida State and still stings Irish fans almost 30 years later as a table-setter for the off-field discussion.

It's why a shorter, three-decade, semi-annual tradition is built on the right kind of hate. Holtz's fake punt and Gordon's kick are initial highlights, but Justice Smith's 144 yards helped blast BC past Notre Dame in 1994. It's Tim Hasselbeck's three touchdowns in 1999, and it's a six-game winning streak that both included the infamous Green Jersey Game in 2002 and stamped Notre Dame as the lesser program by 2008.

It's the way the Irish regained their mojo in 2009 and the fact that nobody knows exactly what Rich Gunnell said to Jimmy Clausen during a postgame tête-à-tête. More than a decade later, it's a seven-game winning streak for the Irish, including the 2015 Shamrock Series game at Fenway Park, and the fact that 12 years have passed since BC's 17-0 shutout at Alumni Stadium.

"Being a Midwest guy (from Michigan), I obviously watched (Notre Dame) a lot," cornerback Josh DeBerry said. "It was a stage that I always wanted to be a part of, and growing up, I always worked my hardest and imagined myself out there. Come Saturday, it's going to be out there. I'm blessed, and it's a great opportunity for (our) team to go out and do something big."

That noise, though, doesn't set the tone for anything Jeff Hafley and BC is trying to accomplish this week. The coach anticipated these questions and understood the plethora of storylines entering this week, especially since this is his team's second consecutive game against a rival. Notre Dame's win over Clemson was an eerie callback to 1993, and quarterback Phil Jurkovec transferred from the Irish to the Eagles.

He digested all of that, but it's all extraneous noise. There's a more pertinent goal for him, one based on level-setting a football team to play against a very good team.

"What I'm trying to do this week - and I mean it - we have to focus on ourselves," Hafley said. "You can say that it's 'coach speak,' but we can't get caught up in (the hype). We're playing a really good football team, we had a really good practice (on Tuesday), and the guys have great energy and are excited. But if we don't stay the course, or we start trying to do too much, or we get over-excited too early, we're not going to play well."

Notre Dame, after all, is the No. 2 team in the nation after joining a conference for the first (and possibly only) time, and that Clemson win was the Tigers' first regular season defeat since 2017. The Irish are dangerously good in every facet and are running roughshod through college football with four games remaining in their season.

Their 33-point win over BC last season was the largest margin of victory in the rivalry since a 52-20 win in 1997. It was the second time in four meetings that the Eagles failed to score 10 points against the Irish and fourth time overall.

"We're excited to get an opportunity to play them," Hafley said. "Just watching them, watching them on film now a little bit more now that I've had time. (Notre Dame head coach Brian Kelly) has done a really good job building this team. You could see it, guys are playing confident, they're big, they're physical, they're strong. It's another team that I always look at (with) really good players, just like Clemson. They're well-coached. They have three good schemes (on) offense, defense and special teams. Their fundamentals and technique are really sound...which is why they're the No. 2 team in the country."

Boston College and No. 2 Notre Dame will kick off at 3:30 p.m. on Saturday from Alumni Stadium in Chestnut Hill, Massachusetts. The game can be seen on national television on ABC with radio broadcast available on the BC Learfield IMG Sports Network, locally in Boston on WEEI 93.7 FM. ABC's broadcast will have a local feel to it with Boston native Sean McDonough calling the play-by-play and BC grad Molly McGrath on the sidelines. They will be joined by Todd Blackledge in the booth and Todd McShay on the sidelines.

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Josh DeBerry

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