The Tailgate: Miami

The 2001 Miami Hurricanes were one of the greatest college football teams ever assembled.

The undefeated national champions, their 30-plus points in all but two games perfectly book-ended a dominant defense that allowed 10-or-less points on eight different occasions. Three of their games - Rutgers, Temple and Syracuse - were shutout wins with a combined 123 points scored, and their 199 points in four games against ranked opponents tallied more offense than the number of points scored by Rutgers and Temple over their individual, 11-game seasons.

Miami nearly destroyed every team on its schedule, and even the Rose Bowl game denoted as the Bowl Championship Series national championship was a snoozer compared to the controversy that sent Nebraska into the game over Florida, Colorado, Tennessee and Oregon. Five players would later get drafted in the first round, and nearly 40 players from that team earned overall draft status. The number of first rounders twice set a record, first with that year's 2002 class and again two years later when six Hurricanes were picked in the first round.

The entire championship felt like a season-long coronation in hindsight, which is why it's easy to forget when the entire year nearly went up in smoke after Boston College took Miami to within 10 yards of losing a cold November afternoon in Chestnut Hill.

"We played very hard," said head coach Tom O'Brien in the next day's Boston Globe. "We were in a position to win the game in the fourth quarter, which is where we wanted to be, and we just didn't get it done."

Beating Miami would have completely upended the college football season by preventing one of the best teams in history from ever competing for a national championship. The BCS and its computerized system didn't even have the Hurricanes as the No. 1 team until one of the final weeks of the season, and they'd alternatively been No. 1 or No. 2 since the year began with a destructive win over Penn State. The initial BCS ranking in Week 8 placed them behind Oklahoma, Nebraska and UCLA, and it took two losses by Oklahoma to move them in front of the Sooners because their first loss came against the Huskers in late October.

The bottom of the Big East, which was a smaller conference with eight teams, destroyed their strength of schedule for the computers, and any loss within the league would have been catastrophic because of the overall strength of the Big 12, the Pac-10 and the SEC. Miami absolutely had to win out and preferably by a wide margin to a system where big wins helped swing the algorithm, but BC still loomed large because of the uncertainty surrounding a hard-nosed style in a game played under the possibilities within a mid-November game in New England.

Indeed, a raw, gray day didn't help the conditions for the flashy, high-powered Hurricanes, and the Eagles punched them directly in the mouth by using their defense to force quarterback Ken Dorsey to throw four interceptions. Clinton Portis stemmed some of that bleeding with 160 yards, but the physical, rough game limited wide receiver Andre Johnson and tight end Jeremy Shockey to a combined 75 yards.

Miami had no explosiveness, and BC operated against the turnovers by controlling time of possession. Star running back William Green was out of action, but Derrick Knight gained 78 yards on the ground while adding four catches for 55 yards. Quarterback Brian St. Pierre managed the offense to limit damage, and the 131 yards on the ground battled an entire afternoon against a defense featuring Jonathan Vilma, Ed Reed, and Mike Rumph.

It wasn't pretty, but BC kept itself in position to win a low-scoring, five-point game in the closing minutes after Ralph Parent recovered a fumble at the Eagles' 30-yard line. St. Pierre then led the offense down the length of the field before a frothing Alumni Stadium crowd, and with 38 seconds remaining, the Hurricanes found themselves backed against their goal line with BC snapping the ball on their nine-yard marker.

Miami's championship season needed a miracle, and it ultimately happened when St. Pierre's quick-drop pass to Ryan Read bounced off Rumph and into the hands of defensive tackle Matt Walters. He rumbled 10 yards, but Reed subsequently pulled the ball from his hands and sprinted 80-odd yards for an 18-7 win that felt more like an escape than the dominant, beast mode wins more casually seen.

"We walked into this game with the feeling they were in our way for the Big East championship," said Parent. "We played our 'A'-game. Unfortunately, we didn't come out with a win."

Miami later ran into another near-upset against Virginia Tech, but another interception by Reed prevented the 14th-ranked Hokies from kicking a game-winning field goal in the last game of the season. Not having to deal with a conference championship game due to the low number of teams in the conference, Miami easily clinched the No. 1 spot in the BCS, and the 34-0 lead en route to a 37-14 win over Nebraska cemented the Hurricanes as one of the greatest teams in college football history.

That it was almost lost on an afternoon in Chestnut Hill became a footnote that not many people remembered, but to the national television audience and many of the 44,500 fans in attendance on that Saturday, it remains a staple reason why a rough, rugged BC team is never out of a fight.

Here's what to watch for when the regular season comes to a close on Friday afternoon:

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Game Storylines (Ted Williams Edition)

I've found in life that the more you practice, the better you get. If you want something enough and work hard to get it, your chances of success are greater.

College football teams have been churning and toiling since training camps began in August, so to end the season in the last regular season game feels a little surreal to the daily grind of film, recovery, practice, game plan, and readying for a game. Waking up without a practice or a film session doesn't feel right, so it's almost paramount for a team to ignore the offseason's black hole until it gets into its rest period.

"There's still a lot to play for," said BC head coach Jeff Hafley. "We're 6-5 going into the last game, and we need to improve on a lot of things. We have some new guys who have stepped up and want to get better. Then you get those bowl practices, and you still have a chance to win eight games. So there's still a lot ahead of us, and [the team] is excited to come into [this game] with a great attitude. They're excited to be at home this week, and they're looking forward to getting back [to work]."

The last game of the season isn't the official last game for either BC or Miami, but the break between Friday and Bowl Season offers enough time to reset and reboot for that final neutral site game. The entire setup looks significantly different and feels more like a spring practice than a postseason game, at least in the beginning, which is why it becomes that much more important to treat this game like any other work week.

No one has come up with a substitute for hard work.

Tyler Van Dyke is the prototypical quarterback for the Miami offense, and giving him any kind of time to throw the ball downfield is legitimately asking for a nightmare scenario with the type of athletes available for his powerful arm. BC's defense, in turn, struggled to generate pressure against Pitt last week and is two weeks removed from Kyron Drones' dominant performance for Virginia Tech, so there's an element where the last home game has to make Van Dyke's life a little bit miserable before he can pick the secondary apart with his burners and flyers.

That doesn't necessarily mean upping sack numbers on a defense that currently ranks as the only unit not averaging at least one QB takedown per game, but it does mean hurries and pressures need to get Van Dyke moving. He's very obviously a big, powerful quarterback who can throw from a pocket area, but he's never been a mobile quarterback who makes plays on the run. He has just two touchdown runs over his whole career, and one of them came against Bethune-Cookman, an FCS school, in the third game of this season.

Miami's offensive line runs well over the 6-4, 300-pound mark and enters Saturday allowing barely north of one sack per game, and starting the same five players on a weekly basis limits defenses to less than a 4 percent sack rate, though the number is starting to creep higher and closer to 5.5 percent over the last three games. Again, that doesn't mean BC has to knock Van Dyke to the turf, but it does mean that the easiest way to disrupt the Hurricanes' passing game involves making him move and possibly eat the football more than he'd like.

"If I get a one-on-one block or if I'm trying to work a double, I'll get off the block and make a play," said defensive tackle Cam Horsley. "But if I have a double team, I'll eat up a block and make sure that my linebackers are free [to make a play]. It's an unselfish position [playing the nose tackle], but I try to go for the production and making plays."

Baseball is the only field of endeavor where a man can succeed three times out of ten and be considered a good performer.

Stopping Van Dyke isn't easy, but BC absolutely has to correct the issues that cropped up over the last couple of weeks. Starting the Virginia Tech game with turnovers and a missed onside kick recovery doomed the Eagles from the start, and the trend continued last week when mistakes sent BC home from Pittsburgh with a self-inflicted loss that felt like a blown opportunity for a seventh win.

"You lose the turnover battle, you're going to lose the football game," Jeff Hafley said. "That's really what it's coming down to. Against Virginia Tech, we lost the turnover battle, and then we lost the turnover battle, 2-0, in the Pitt game. You can't give the ball away, and if we have to take it away, we haven't taken it away in the last two weeks either. Complimentary football includes protecting the football and taking it away from an opponent. Those possessions are huge, especially in the red zone where you're giving away points."

BC is still vastly improved when it comes to giveaways, but the last three games averaged at least two turnovers to opponents at a time when team identities are hitting cruising altitudes. Even with the number of takeaways amidst the last three games still improving by more than half of a turnover per game since the start of the season, the ratio is skewing away from the Eagles at a rate that's giving opportunities back to opponents. With one game left in the season, the chance to right that ship is too loud to ignore for any team, let alone one built around defensive, tough-minded football.

"We have to be more efficient once we cross the 40," Hafley said. "There are plays to be made where we had a chance to pick off multiple passes [against Pitt], and we had chances to get a ball carrier down that turned into big runs. We can't do that. We have to get our legs back and play faster this week."

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Question Box

Can the defensive backs help make Tyler Van Dyke's life miserable?

The last two weeks robbed BC of its defensive backfield depth after the Eagles lost a number of different players to varied reasons. The overall loss of Elijah Jones coupled with an injury to Cole Batson meant BC entered last week's game with redshirt sophomore Jalen Cheek starting at one corner and senior Khari Johnson starting at free safety. BC then lost Johnson to a targeting call last week, meaning the athletic Miami receivers enter Saturday with matchups against younger, more inexperienced defensive backs on the horizon.

Both of Miami's top receivers produced 150-yard games once over each of the last two weeks, and while the Hurricanes lost each game, it's imperative for Cheek, John Pupel, Victor Nelson, KP Price, Max Tucker, and other, more unheralded names to focus on where Xavier Restrepo and Jacolby George are going.

It won't hurt if the defensive front seven gets after Tyler Van Dyke, but there's obviously a big component where the Eagles have to advance a couple of steps on Friday afternoon.

Which offense regains its late game mojo?

Boston College's status as one of the nation's best fourth quarter teams took a hit over the past three weeks when the team's touchdown-plus per-game average dipped due to a 5.7 points-per-game average over the last three games. The numbers themselves still pummel the output near the team's older ability to close out games, but the natural backslide is a testament to how ACC defenses adjusted to BC's blocking scheme and the way it plays behind Thomas Castellanos.

Fourth quarters are more competitive across the board with the large bulk of teams scoring less points over the last three weeks, and teams like Ole Miss, Oregon State, Texas and Florida State watched their scoring offense cut in half by defenses in the final 15 minutes. Miami, though, tends to play in the worst situation of those games, and while the Hurricanes are technically averaging more fourth quarter points than BC, their 3.3 points over the past three fourth quarters is a very real description of their overall struggles.

Will visitors from Miami turn into popsicles by halftime?

Saturday's going to be 80 degrees in South Florida with the typical humidity and a chance of scattered showers. Boston's going to be 35 degrees at most with overnight lows dipping into the 20s. Early afternoon winds will pull the chill factor even lower.

Friday's game is likely going to have some better weather, but this time of year is brutal for people unfamiliar with how to handle the elements. It's a gorgeous time to walk around, but sunglasses and hats that specifically cover the ears are a must. I've never been a real glove-guy, but I also usually stuff my hands in my pockets. It's also significantly easier to take layers off than it is to add layers you don't have.

If anything, I'm more opposed to the early sunsets because it makes it impossible to really enjoy the outdoors in the mid-afternoon hours. Early darkness just plain stinks (seasonal depression is actually a real thing), and it takes some adjusting and acclimatizing to get used to spending early mornings and evenings in the dark.

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Meteorology 101

Both teams have to deal with whatever elements exist on a football field, but I also don't think that the weather itself is going to have that much of an impact on the game itself. Friday's forecast precedes the weekend cold, but it also falls after a 50-degree day drops some raw and windy rain that'll pick the trees clear of whatever leaves remain on their branches.

Game day conditions will be remarkably similar to Miami's 2018 visit to Chestnut Hill, but nobody on the Miami roster likely remembers that game. Head coach Mario Cristobal was coaching his first full season at Oregon after Willie Taggart left for Florida State, and neither starting quarterback was even in college when the Hurricanes last played BC. That makes it unlikely for anyone to have a frame-of-reference for how November conditions change on an hour-by-hour basis in New England even though it's worth noting Tyler Van Dyke is from Connecticut.

I still remember the November game against Syracuse (I want to say it was 2002) where it got progressively colder in the afternoon until flurries started falling. That won't happen on Friday, but still bring your blankets along with the white bread and leftovers.

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BC-Miami X Factor

Senior Day

I'm a sucker for Senior Day ceremonies, and even with a smaller senior class leaving Boston College for its future pastures, I'm still going to allow myself to feel a little emotional as players like Christian Mahogany and Vinny DePalma run out of the Alumni Stadium tunnel for the last time. It's not necessarily because we forged some great friendship during media sessions, but I always appreciate players who I had an opportunity to get to know, at least on a football level, for the past four or five years - or, in Vinny's case, the last six.

I know I'm getting softer as I get older, but I appreciate how players running out of the tunnel look at their parents with an unabashed measure of pride. It's a special moment for everyone because of the sacrifices and memories built over 20-plus years, and I know the parents still see their son as a young kid eating orange slices or getting ice cream after a Pop Warner game just as much as the hulking Division I player still hugs his mom with the same gusto as the six-year old heading to those Pop Warner games.

I'm just starting that journey with my daughters where I'm taking them to soccer lessons or little kid activities, and I can't imagine any of this coming to an end. Looking at the parents on the field, I think I appreciate these moments a little bit more because one day I know I'll be in their shoes where I'm giving my girls their final hug for the years they've spent doing something we've all grown to love as a family.

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Bowl Selection Process, Updated

Boston College earned a postseason bowl bid when it won its sixth game of the season, but the Eagles' destination and final opponent won't be clear for some time. Bowl Season selections aren't finalized until after the conference championship weekend, and the actual decision-making process isn't the same as the old system of earning a bowl by finishing in a given spot in the conference.

The ACC itself breaks its bowl games into a three-pronged selection process that starts with the conference champion earning a contractually-obligated bid to the Orange Bowl unless it qualifies for the College Football Playoff. If the conference champion is picked to the postseason tournament, the next available ACC team defaults into the Orange Bowl regardless of where it's ranked in the CFP.

The remaining New Year's Six games could hypothetically choose an ACC team based on an at-large bid, but none of the three teams in this week's poll are currently inside the top-4 after Florida State dropped to No. 5. In this situation, the ACC champion would go to the Orange Bowl and miss the CFP for the third consecutive year.

The remaining 11 bowls are then slotted into two separate tiers with eight games occupying Tier No. 1 status. Those games could add a ninth game in the Reliaquest Bowl (formerly known as the Hall of Fame Bowl and the Outback Bowl) if the ACC's Orange Bowl opponent is a Big Ten school.

Selections to those games are made through a collaborative effort at the league level, but more successful teams are obviously more attractive to a particular bowl partner. Winning a seventh game, therefore, might not guarantee a particular game, but it certainly wouldn't hurt a team's aspirations for whichever bowl it wants to attend.

It's hard to pin down what exactly that means to BC, but there are several games that make sense for an Eagles team that was highly successful before the recent two-game downturn. The large number of pundits agree on the Fenway Bowl for obvious reasons of putting a Boston-based team in a game in its own backyard, but the 2021 Eagles were widely believed to be bound for Fenway Park before winding up in the Military Bowl.

That game hypothetically allowed them to showcase the program to recruits from the DMV area before COVID-19 forced the cancellation of the game, and it feels like the team could dictate a return trip to somewhere that's been a popular stepping stone bowl destination. The Pinstripe Bowl, for example, would also offer a matchup against a power conference opponent in a slot where recruiting and alumni bases are huge, in turn making a potential game against a team like Rutgers too juicy to ignore.

A loss conceivably drops BC into one of the three games in the second tier. Two of those games would be repeat locales from the Eagles' last trips to a game, though both the Birmingham Bowl and the First Responder Bowl don't exactly provide the same happy-go-lucky memories from years past.

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Other Football-Type Stuff To Watch

New England high school football doesn't carry the same weight as the football factories in Texas, California or Florida, but the traditions running through the region take center stage whenever several of the oldest high school rivalries roll around. The looming state Super Bowls in Massachusetts tend to put a damper on teams fighting for championships against one another, but for many high school kids, the reunion, pomp and parochialism associated with Thanksgiving makes for an exciting morning that leads directly into the afternoon and evening feast.

The foundation dates back centuries in this area, and some of the oldest high school rivalries are rooted on Thanksgiving Thursdays. The matchup between Boston English and Boston Latin was the oldest continuous high school football rivalry in the United States before the COVID-19 pandemic forced its cancellation in 2020, at which point it was replaced by the Malden-Medford matchup that managed to play during the strange "Fall II" season in the spring of 2021.

I grew up in Malden, and my dad was a Malden High School Hall of Fame track coach and contributor as the scorekeeper for the Golden Tornadoes. I didn't go to Malden High (guilty as charged that I went to Malden Catholic with my middle brother while my oldest brother was a Malden valedictorian), but we spent many cold Thursday mornings following the score as best we could. We'd later follow the scores of other high schools where we became affiliated, and I eventually had the fortune of watching MC play a Thanksgiving week game against Waltham, where my wife graduated.

Just having a Thanksgiving tradition was a conversation starter, and we loved settling into a Thursday night recap from fabled sports reporter Mike Lynch. For so many kids, this is one of the highlights of their high school careers. For many more, it's the last time they'll ever wear a football uniform. So enjoy the ride. It's worth every second.

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Dan's Non-Football Observation of the Week

Thanksgiving dinner always dooms a waistline when it's done properly, but Thursday kicks off a two-day, food-based marathon in the Rubin household that spans two families and two dinners. What starts with my family on the holiday itself ends with dinner at my in-laws, to which I'm probably destined to cover every food group in the entire pyramid by the time Saturday morning rolls around.

It's the best of both worlds for a guy that grew up with meat in his bloodline, but I'm not sure how I'm going to handle wrestling meat from a pair of 20-pound turkeys. Having two holidays is always better than one, but I'm really going to foul something up here by turning my veins into gravy boats. I can already sense that heartburn is on the horizon, and I'm not sure how many pies are an acceptable amount for one man to eat.

That said, I genuinely hope that you and yours have an amazing Thanksgiving holiday. I'm a big proponent of enjoying time off, and even if you're not one for the big family dinner, that's okay. I just hope for some relaxation and the choice to do whatever makes you happy. That's what's most important, and it's especially true around these days.

So Happy Thanksgiving. Go Eagles.

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Pregame Quote and Prediction

Your success story is a bigger story than whatever you're trying to say on stage. Success makes life easier. It doesn't make living easier. -Bruce Springsteen

I remember growing up and watching BC lose to Miami on an annual basis. I'm talking every year. Without impunity. BC ALWAYS lost to Miami.

It took Matt Ryan's 2007 season to finally beat the Hurricanes on Thanksgiving weekend at BC, but that game felt almost antithetical because it landed right between the losses to Florida State and Maryland and the ACC Championship against Virginia Tech. Miami was also in the midst of a sub-.500 season, and while the BC loss kept The U from a bowl game, it felt more like a speed bump than a traditional Miami-BC battle.

BC's owned Miami since that win. They didn't play as often as the annual Big East games because of Miami's placement as a non-permanent matchup in the Coastal Division, but three of the last four matchups have gone to the Eagles with the most recent game eliminating the Hurricanes from the top-25 during a Red Bandanna weekend.

A 7-5 season gets BC into a more prestigious bowl game than 6-6, and no matter the messaging, this is an important game. It's the last game of the year. It's the one game of this one-game season. It's after Thanksgiving, and it's going to be cold.

There's no better way to send out the 2023 season than by adding a win to that mix.

Boston College and Miami kick off on Friday at 12 p.m. from Alumni Stadium in Chestnut Hill, Massachusetts. Television coverage is available on national television via ABC with online streaming available through ESPN's platform of online and mobile apps. Radio broadcast is also available through the BC Learfield IMG Sports Network with local coverage available on WEEI 93.7 FM and satellite options available on SiriusXM channel 139 and 193. Streaming audio is also available through the Varsity Network.

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Players Mentioned

Cole Batson

Thomas Castellanos

Jalen Cheek

Vinny DePalma

Cam Horsley

Khari Johnson

Elijah Jones

Christian Mahogany

Victor Nelson

KP Price

John Pupel

Max Tucker