W2WF: Carquest Bowl vs. Virginia (1994)

In 1971, the Boston College football team won nine games. It went undefeated at home with a perfect 5-0 record and ended the year by beating five consecutive opponents by a 106-42 aggregate score. In the last two games of the season, the Eagles crushed local opponents by a combined 56-7 advantage.

Joe Yukica's Eagles had a better overall record than Houston and Arkansas and finished better than Notre Dame and LSU. Yet all of those schools finished the season ranked, and all four of those teams earned bowl invitations except for the Fighting Irish, who announced prior to the final game of the season (against LSU) that they would not accept a postseason game.

BC was under-regarded, the product of an environment designed to centralize college football to the Midwest and South. The Northeast was a blip on the college football radar, and the geographic insignificance of the sport in relation to its Heartland siblings forced schools like BC, Syracuse, Pittsburgh, Temple, and others into a tough slot. The loose conglomeration of independents hurt their status, and bowls wouldn't sniff teams that played Richmond, Villanova, UMass, or Holy Cross, no matter how ingrained rivalries ran.

That's not to say there was bad football, but the decided lack of exposure locally conspired with an even greater dearth of national availability. National television focused on programs capable of drawing eyeballs to ratings, and the local area, loaded with professional sports, hurt the ability to earn television time in place of guaranteed coverages.

That all changed in the 1980s when cable television burst onto the scene. College football reorganized in time for ESPN's arrival, and as conferences negotiated for guaranteed airtime for its members, independents started looking for ways to cash in. Less than a decade after Doug Flutie and Jack Bicknell brought BC to national prominence, the Big East formed, guaranteeing the Eagles a seat at the national table for the first time in program history.

That's why these teams are arguably more important to the program's history book than any eight-win or nine-win team before it. These teams aren't necessarily better or more famous than those teams from 20 years ago; they just rank entirely different. The game is more national, and this week, No. 15 Boston College plays Virginia in the Carquest Bowl, a relatively new game only in its fourth incarnation.

Here's what else to watch for in this week's game:

****
Weekly Storylines

I will always love you.

This game is the final time quarterback Glenn Foley will ever suit up for a Boston College football team. The four-year starter is the centerpiece of the program's renaissance and ends his career as possibly the best quarterback in school history. He has an opportunity to break 10,000 career yards, a feat matched only by record holder Doug Flutie, while building his touchdown record to unmatchable levels. After pulling past Flutie with his 68th touchdown at the end of the season, Foley needs just one more to become the only Boston College quarterback with 70 career scoring throws.

Likewise, what happens after this game will be equally interesting for head coach Tom Coughlin. There are rumors that the new Jacksonville expansion franchise in the NFL is looking at the Boston College head coach to help build its inaugural season, but equal amounts of rumors are steadfast in keeping Coughlin in Chestnut Hill. Athletic director Chet Gladchuk ranks among the many, including most players, under the impression that Coughlin is staying, but it's worth mentioning that the 20-win head coach is at least in the spotlight.

"You're only as good as the last time you lined up," Coughlin said. "So are we going to spend all offseason like we did last year, which was talking about what we did against Tennessee, or are we going to talk about something positive? It can only help us reflect on something good rather than something bad."

Whoomp! There it went.

BC enters this game as a favorite because its opponent is a 7-4 team that finished in fourth place in its conference, but Virginia was once the sleek sleeper pick in the Atlantic Coast Conference. The Cavaliers were undefeated after crushing its first five opponents, a group that included three conference opponents in Maryland, Georgia Tech, and Duke. Then came the game against Florida State, and a 40-14 thumping ended the team's hopes of capturing national glory.

Virginia did rally to beat North Carolina a week after losing to FSU, but that was the high water mark of the season. The team won just one game the rest of the season - a 21-9 win over a struggling Wake Forest team - and lost three of its last four, including one to a Big East team in Virginia Tech.

"I think we deserved a bowl bid," head coach George Welsh said. "We were 7-4 in a tough conference, and we finished ahead of North Carolina State. We were 5-3 and they were 4-4, but they beat us in our head-to-head meeting. I know it took an Arkansas win at the end to do it, but we're here."

An easy transitive property identifies Boston College as a better team than the Hokies since the Eagles won the head-to-head matchup, 48-34, in early November. Coming off a near-upset against West Virginia, a game BC likely should have won to clinch a potential Sugar Bowl berth, it remains to be seen if a sagging team can rally enough fortitude with the one month break.

I said hey, ey, ey, eyyyyy...what's going on?

The primary spotlight is on both Foley and Coughlin, but Virginia quarterback Symmion Willis enters this game capable of upstaging his Boston College counterpart. He's thrown for more than 2,000 yards and is on the verge of a 20-touchdown season with a diverse group of receivers with differing skill sets.

Patrick Jeffers and Tyrone Davis both average more than 18 yards per reception with six touchdowns apiece, and running back Jerrod Washington spots them with an 870-yard season averaging more than five yards per carry. This is an efficiently-talented offense that knows how to damage defenses, and the balance with the defense is something the Eagles will need to be aware of as the game progresses.

"I think our offense has to move the ball and score touchdowns," Welsh said. 'I hope we don't have to score five (times) or something like that because I don't know if we're capable of that."

BC's key is then to turn this game into a track meet on offense. Foley has a plethora of weapons in Pete Mitchell, Clarence Cannon, and Keith Miller, but Darnell Campbell's breakout season, which has him on the brink of 1,000 yards, can move the sticks and wear out defenses. If that opens up the game at all, Virginia is going to have severe difficulty keeping up.

*****
Scoreboard Watching

West Virginia's win over BC clinched a Sugar Bowl berth against Florida, but the Mountaineers don't have an outright shot at a national championship. A split national title would be more likely if they can win their bowl game, a prospect that would require Nebraska to beat Florida State in the Orange Bowl.

FSU is No. 1 in the Associated Press poll. Nebraska is No. 1 in the coaches poll and the Bowl Coalition poll. The Seminoles, who lost to Notre Dame but slid back into championship contention when the Fighting Irish lost to BC, can win everything outright by beating the Cornhuskers. Those two games both go off tonight to make for compelling college football television.

The Fighting Irish, meanwhile, will watch someone win a championship from the sidelines. They play Texas A&M this afternoon in the Cotton Bowl, but the one-loss team fell to No. 4 nationally when it ended the regular season against BC. There is no direct route to the national title because of the three teams in front of them, which is an especially sweet feeling for those of us up here in Boston.

It's all part of a full day of bowl games that kick off with the Hall of Fame Bowl at 11 a.m. Michigan draws NC State in that game before Miami plays Arizona in the Fiesta Bowl at 1 p.m. The Citrus Bowl features Penn State and Tennessee at that same time before the Rose Bowl kicks off at 4:30 p.m. with a traditional Wisconsin-UCLA matchup.

*****
Around the Sports World

I'm a hockey traditionalist, so I readily admit I was skeptical of the NHL's realignment entering this year. Moving the Bruins out of the old Adams Division into a Northeast Division with the Pittsburgh Penguins felt wrong, and replacing the division playoff system with a traditional format made me feel like hockey was trying too hard to replicate the NBA's format.

This regular season has been great, though. The Bruins can't win at home, but the division is ultra-competitive with five teams competing for playoff spots. Under the old format, the playoffs would essentially be set already because Hartford and Ottawa likely won't catch Montreal, leaving Quebec to battle for that fourth place slot with the Canadiens and Sabres. The Bruins are further ahead, but the presence of the defending Stanley Cup champion made this division all the more competitive.

That said, I'm leery of the Bruins potentially drawing a team from the other division in the postseason. They're right in the thick of a playoff race, and the new seeding formula means they could conceivably draw Washington, New Jersey, or the New York Islanders in the first round. I don't love that system, especially because the Rangers are on cruise control right now.

Even if the Rangers manage to completely fall apart, which always remains a possibility for a franchise that hasn't won anything since 1940, I don't love the Bruins' potential slot against Montreal or Buffalo with the Devils or Rangers lurking in the wings.

Only one real complaint in the new format, though. I don't understand how Toronto is in the Western Conference. I know it was in the Campbell Conference last year (hello, Wayne Gretzky's comeback with the Kings in the playoffs), but there had to be a way to realign the Maple Leafs into the Eastern Conference. Toronto is closer to Boston than Ottawa, but the Senators are the last place team in the Northeast.

It's just a complaint. There's no real reason to ever have the Bruins and Maple Leafs in a division against each other when the Canadiens are already here. Lord knows I'd never want to go to Maple Leaf Gardens for a playoff series.

*****
Pregame Quote and Prediction

The time to worry is before you place the bet, not after the wheel is spinning. -Bill Parcells

The Glenn Foley era provided BC fans with a magical run to national prominence. Tom Coughlin purged the program of older players more ingrained with a losing culture or mentality and rebuilt everything from the ground up. Both understood how to endure growing pains but projected steadfast confidence and fire in the Boston College brand.

Now both have a chance to walk away with a ninth win, a feat unaccomplished in Chestnut Hill since the 1986 team beat Georgia in the Hall of Fame Bowl. That team broke the shadow of the Doug Flutie era but couldn't sustain its success into the latter years of the decade, and the Jack Bicknell era ended with 13 wins over four seasons.

I don't really remember concern about the post-Flutie era while he ran all over the nation, but reality reared its head after Shawn Halloran led the Eagles to that win in 1986. The success wasn't meant for sustainability back then, which is why Coughlin did what he did to start his era.

Talking about life after Foley is a necessity in this game. Coughlin built a future infrastructure with Mark Hartsell and Matt Hasselbeck, so worrying now about how he'll rebuild around them is important. Internal rumors reiterate Coughlin's commitment to remaining in Chestnut Hill, which in turn translates to working with those players over considering the jump to the NFL. If BC is able to maintain this success, it's because the discussion happened now over later.

That said, this is an opportunity to sit back and appreciate the last four years. The future is incredibly bright in Chestnut Hill, and more bowl games are likely on the horizon. It's owed to the Big East era and a quarterback who rewrote Doug Flutie's record book. The unprecedented growth is on his shoulders, and it potentially ends this week in postseason glory.

Related Videos