The Tailgate: Holy Cross

Holy Cross was a special place to watch football during the 1980s.

The decade started two years after the Crusaders marched through their second consecutive win over Boston College, but the move to Division I-AA as part of college football's ongoing shift revitalized a program with opportunities that provided an eventual road to the team's first top-10 ranking since the World War II era.

Like-minded ideals leveled the playing field, and by 1986, Holy Cross owned a tent pole for the Colonial League's creation within the new subdivision. The predecessor to the Patriot League, the Crusaders steamrolled to the first conference championship with an undefeated regular season in its first nine games and entered their annual matchup with Boston College with a team stealing local headlines from the bigger, more nationally-recognized program situated in the east.

It had been less than a decade since Holy Cross last defeated BC, but the 1986 game felt very different, even as the Eagles romped their way into postseason bowl consideration. Gordie Lockbaum was on the Heisman Trophy ballot for the second straight year after finishing fifth in 1985, and his ability to play every down for the Crusaders had him in serious consideration.

It even played out differently from the Doug Flutie years, and a Holy Cross team summarily blown out by BC over the first part of the decade bloodied the Eagles with a 14-0 first quarter lead. It didn't last, but the game's devolution into a muddy muck-fest coincided with nasty trash talk and a clear, old-fashioned hate. BC eventually blew out Holy Cross behind Shawn Halloran's four-touchdown performance, the final annual meeting between the two schools that did not resume the gridiron rivalry until a 2018 contest in Chestnut Hill.

"We know - and I sincerely believe - there is a difference between Division I-A and I-AA," said head coach Jack Bicknell in Michael Madden's Boston Globe column after the 56-26 demolition derby win. "That's not being at all critical of Holy Cross; it's just a fact. And it's like we have to prove it over again… and over again… and over again. And our kids hear a lot of things, that they're as good as us or whatever, and our kids get into it. Our kids get excited."

Lockbaum managed to register 100 yards receiving in that game, but as much as his emergence fostered belief in Holy Cross, the fact remained that the Crusaders simply weren't on equal footing. They hadn't beaten BC since that two-game spurt in the late 1970s, and those games were the only wins dating back to 1966. None of those seven straight wins carrying BC into Worcester in 1986 featured less than 35 points scored for the maroon and gold, and the 1984 beatdown was more about the cars parked on I-290 to watch one more magical Flutie performance.

It did nothing to diminish the actual rivalry, but facts are hard to ignore. The realignment sent them in different directions, and the matchup's dissolution after that 1986 game felt inevitable. When the two side met again in 2018, any hope of conjuring old ghosts fell victim to AJ Dillon's 149 yards on six carries in less than a quarter's worth of work.

That was Bob Chesney's first year as the head coach at Holy Cross, and the feeling five years later is incredibly different for a Crusader program that rediscovered its launchpoint on the local radar. BC was wounded after losing its opening game, and the fifth-ranked Crusaders rolled through Merrimack's early challenge to claim another regular season win. Holy Cross hasn't lost a regular season road game since 2019, and the undefeated team from last season registered a second consecutive year with a win over an FBS opponent.

The gap that existed between the old Division I-A and Division I-AA doesn't quite form the same chasm, and the situation feels primed for a new chapter in the rivalry. It's a massive game on the local radar, and believers are dreaming about stealing the headlines Lockbaum never grabbed. There's a legacy at stake, but for BC, the big, bad team from Boston still has an opportunity to remind everyone of an old coach's statement while making right the loss from last week.

Here's what to watch for when The Rivalry meets for the 84th time on Saturday afternoon:

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Game Storylines (Norman Schwarzkopf Edition)

The more you sweat in peace, the less you bleed in war.

Jeff Hafley's open, honest assessment of his football team opened bigger wounds within his soul last week because he had to admit how Boston College defeated itself. He had to swallow how the team's fundamental mistakes cost the Eagles a win, and he had to acknowledge how handfuls of plays in either direction would have likely changed the outcome to a better feeling on Sunday morning.

Making sure that loss didn't linger was paramount, and the film helped dismantle any comparisons between Saturday's loss to NIU and last year's loss to Rutgers. Last year, to a degree, exposed the worst fears about the issues facing BC and set an uneasy tone for the rest of the season, particularly on the offensive line, where there was no surge, and the season-long struggles started in the first game.

"I was very pleased with where we were going with this game," Hafley said on this week's For The Podcast. "I thought we had really good scheme, and I thought we worked our butts off. I said last week that I had anxiety because I didn't know what we were going to see [with] a lot of new people working together…I thought we tackled well, but we had times to sack the quarterback and needed to make plays that were there. So obviously we need to coach it better, and we need to execute better."

The NIU game was a story of plays being left on the field, and while that's not a consolation prize, it's also a step in the right direction. Unlike last year, the problems from Saturday are supremely fixable through drill work and coaching, and assuming the team has better health than a year ago, BC is likely to take a major step forward from those first mistakes felt against the Huskies.

"You need to work on fundamentals and technique," Hafley said. "I'm never going to blame the players because it's a team game, so we had to get back to work with individual periods and make sure we were focusing on the right things like having our eyes in the right place, making sure we were catching the ball in the right spot and throwing the ball in the right spot. It can't just be going out and making plays, and I'm not going to do that because that's not fair. That's not the way we need to help them get better."

When placed in command, take charge.

College football instituted a new rule this year and forced clock management to reflect more of the pro, NFL-style game where time continuously ran on first downs and plays ending between the lines with the exception of the last two minutes of the half. There is no two-minute warning stoppage, and teams can't call consecutive timeouts. Games are now faster, and the updated speed resulted in more miscues across the board for coaches across the country.

The time change served almost like a triple option running attack and cleaved possessions in favor of successful clock-killing offenses like the one employed by Northern Illinois. BC finished the game with 66 total plays on an offense that averaged over 70 snaps per game last season. Four snaps is essentially a three-and-out, but assuming BC's natural step forward likely translated to one or two drives lost for an offense that averaged around 25 seconds per play last year while NIU ran well over its average number of plays from last year with an offense capable of pulling another second or two off the clock on its average snap time.

"[We felt it] for sure in the second half," Jeff Hafley said, "because we felt it in the first half and felt how fast [the game] went. You don't think about how the clock used to stop for a first down, but there's usually about four-to-six seconds before [the officials] wind [the play clock], and that adds up over time. You can really start to drain the 40-second clock, which is what NIU was doing, so in the second half, we knew we had to speed it up. I think there are going to be more teams using tempo and getting to the line of scrimmage quickly, which we started to do in the second half a little bit, to take back possession that you're losing [to the clock]."

Getting off the field against a clock-killing offense is an existential crisis for defenses in this new era, and Saturday brings dual-threat quarterback Matthew Sluka and an offense that rushed for 242 yards in last week's win over Merrimack. Two players, including Sluka, pushed near or over 100 yards, and Jordan Fuller complemented a nine-yard rushing average with four touchdowns. Sluka also connected on two touchdown passes, but he only attempted 14 throws over the entire game.

That performance places unquestionable pressure on the gaps at the line of scrimmage and highlights BC's defensive line, which rotated typical substitution packages with relative ease against NIU. The Eagles had penetration early against quarterback Rocky Lombardi, but ensuring short drives is key for a team that flashed successful moments but lacked consistency against an opponent with 33 minutes of possession time.

"The interior guys played really hard and violent," Hafley said, "and that position is the strength of our team right now. Then [defensive backs] Amari Jackson made some really good plays, and Cole Batson had a really good game. He's a really good safety, and when you combine that with the offensive line, some of the guys played really well. We ran the ball, for the amount of times we ran, [for] more yards rushing than I think we had last year in any of our games."

It doesn't take a hero to order men into battle. It takes a hero to be one of those men who goes into battle.

Bill McGovern was one of those coaches who transcended the old Boston College-Holy Cross rivalry. He belonged to both sides as a player and coach, and his entire football career oozed everything that made the older era of northeast college football so great. A Bergen Catholic graduate from New Jersey, he started four years on the Crusader defense in Worcester and later established records as a defensive back for single-season and career interceptions at the Division I-AA level. A graduate from Holy Cross in 1984, the former captain immediately went into coaching and later dedicated his entire life towards improving programs throughout Massachusetts.

He remained in the area for most of his early career, save for a three-year stint as the defensive backs coach for Pittsburgh, and the large bulk of his coaching career occurred with BC after alternating stops with Holy Cross and UMass, the latter of which included the defensive coordinator position under Mike Hodges in 1993. His hiring by Dan Henning in 1994 gave the Eagles a legendary defensive backs coach on the local radar for three years, and his second stint kicked off in 2000 with a move to the linebackers coach position with which he became most associated.

McGovern was a disciple of the New England school of defense, and his defenses alongside Frank Spaziani enhanced a BC tradition of turning linebackers into hard-nosed, tough, rugged players. Spaziani's promotion to head coach in 2009 enabled McGovern to move to defensive coordinator, and he coached Mark Herzlich's return to the Eagles alongside Luke Kuechly before finally moving to the NFL following a coaching change prior to the 2013 season.

His career finished in California as the defensive coordinator to Chip Kelly's UCLA team in 2022, but a short stint with a top-10 defense ended that year after a kidney cancer diagnosis. On Memorial Day weekend this past spring, Bill McGovern passed away at the age of 60.

Both Holy Cross and Boston College will honor McGovern on Saturday during the renewal of their old rivalry. An institution entrenched in the lore of both schools, it's only appropriate to give his due to the schools with which he was most closely associated, first as a player and then as a coach. To those who watched his teams, it's a way to pay tribute. For the players and teammates, it's fitting to think how Bill is looking down and watching the game with a clipboard in one hand and the same nature accompanying the man who once intercepted Doug Flutie while a helicopter waited to take the BC quarterback to the Heisman Trophy honors in New York.

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Question Box

Can the running game continue its take-charge approach to an opposing defense?

BC came out of its game plan in the second half of last week's game, but I'm fully expecting the Eagles to establish the running game with their early drives. Both Emmett Morehead and Thomas Castellanos (more on that in a bit) are capable of calling a run-pass option play, and their beefy offensive line should take a step forward from its fundamental issues last week.

Holy Cross has loads of experience within its defense, but the unit allowed close to 200 yards last week after spending most of last season averaging around 100 yards in a given week. Even with its own improvements, that defense is going to have its hand full with a defensive line that also isn't particularly deep.

That's really the biggest difference between FBS and FCS teams. The number of scholarships means that the top unit for the FCS team is almost always capable of playing at the upper level, but the difference in scholarships results in second team units not quite possessing similar skills. That's why offenses might run gimmick options or different styles, but it's also why defenses likewise remain creative. If those Holy Cross players are on the field and have to cycle rest periods out of the top unit, BC will have some opportunities to really punch holes in the front seven.

Does Holy Cross' offense have enough to shorten the game?

It all comes back to clock management, doesn't it? Holy Cross has an offensive line with four 300-pound players flanking a senior center, and it's a big, supportive reason why Matthew Sluka was named preseason Patriot League Offensive Player of the Year. Every single one of those linemen installed the scheme in some capacity for the four-time league champions, and every single player has some type of national recognition behind his name, including left tackle All-American Luke Newman

Again, experienced depth is a question mark, but two positions list seniors as backups, including Penn State transfer Dalton Daddona, who backs up center Christo Kelly, and backup left guard Joe Metzger broke the school shot put record for the track and field program. Sophomore Noah Eldridge is a former Massachusetts All-Scholastic.

Does Rich Gunnell go to the wrong entrance and accidentally walk into the home locker room at Alumni Stadium?

Rich Gunnell's legendary Boston College career takes a strange turn on Saturday when he returns as a visitor for the first time in his life. The former receiver is the wide receivers coach at Holy Cross, but the one-time interim head coach is forever remembered for sticking his finger at Notre Dame quarterback Jimmy Claussen. He was a trusted target during the Matt Ryan years, and settling in the area allowed him to enter coaching at the high school level before returning to BC.

He remains beloved at BC, and his presence is part of the coaching links within the Massachusetts football culture.

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Meteorology 101

I used to love joking to my parents that football season was the perfect way to discover someone's entire wardrobe. The season started in the late summer heat and continued through fall, and that one last game around Thanksgiving usually translated to temperatures cold enough for fans to break out the warmest winter jacket in the closet.

Unfortunately for me, we're still in September, and this week made me think twice about going into the attic for sweatshirts and sweatpants. It was nearly 90 degrees on Wednesday and again on Thursday, and not even the expiration of a heat advisory provided enough relief for someone who spent last week sleeping with open windows. Those 50 degree nights sure felt like a mirage, and I went on an angry rant about needing to crank air conditioning for another night.

Saturday isn't quite going to be that hot, but anyone sitting next to Fish Field House is going to soak in the heat radiating off of the upper deck bleachers. I remember sitting in those stands during those conditions and legitimately wondering how many bottles of water one person could consume, and attending practices and scrimmages in the stadium over the past 10 years reminded me how aluminum intensifies weather that inevitably gets absorbed into the artificial turf.

In short, it's going to be really hot on Saturday, and anyone attending the game should prepare accordingly. The nice, temperate conditions are gone, at least for one week, so pack more sunscreen and remember to hydrate - a lot.

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BC-Holy Cross X Factor

Boston College's Quarterback Situation

Jeff Hafley faced one of his more difficult decisions this week with how to handle the quarterback situation after the first game of the season. Both Emmett Morehead and Thomas Castellanos played last week by design, but whatever film they produced wasn't enough for the Eagles to claim a win in the first game of the season. Morehead only played a handful of snaps in comparison to Castellanos in the fourth quarter, but it was more a reflection on Hafley's perception that the team needed speed and a spark in those later moments.

Castellanos helped force overtime with his improvisation skills, but none of it stole the spotlight away from Morehead, who threw for three 300-yard games last year but didn't receive the full opportunity to settle into the BC offense.

Both quarterbacks entered this week with their own positives and negatives, but how BC handles the position moving forward is still unclear. Hafley made his decision earlier in the week after working through the film with his coaches, a point he reiterated several times during the week, but he still hasn't given an indication if the Eagles are starting one player over another, or if he intends to play both.

So what does all of that mean?

For starters, we don't know who is going to lead BC into the huddle on Saturday afternoon, but we also don't know if that's a permanent decision. The rotation in the first game felt like Morehead got yanked, but the postgame revealed how Castellanos always planned on appearing on the third drive. He missed a couple of throws, and rotating back to Morehead felt like a second benching. As it turns out, none of it was the truth.

Arguments exist for both moving to one quarterback or sticking with a second quarterback, and I don't think the debate is going to stop with a single drive. I don't see the execution of a single play prompting some otherworldly, metaphysical revelation, but I also know that there's open mindedness required whenever a coach steps outside the box. There were plenty of people who hated the Wildcat and the spread, and pro style offenses used to revolve around the Power-I, after all.

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Around College Football

Last week's five-day college football feast hit the afterburners on serving storylines on a platter, and the weekend ended with some of the biggest names splashing into the 2023 season for all the right - or wrong, depending on how you're viewing it - reasons.

In the ACC, the power structure at the top of the conference underwent a monumental shift after Florida State destroyed LSU with a 45-24 thrashing. Clemson lost badly to Duke one day with a 28-7 result that ended with fans storming Wallace Wade Stadium, and both followed North Carolina's win over South Carolina on Saturday night in Charlotte. Georgia Tech, meanwhile, scored 28 points in the second quarter and lost to Louisville after the Cardinals scored 26 points in the second half, and UConn gave NC State all it could handle before losing, 24-14.

More nationally, Deion Sanders' debut at Colorado went perfectly for the Buffaloes in a high-scoring win over TCU, while Texas State, a similar underdog under new head coach GJ Kinne, beat its first-ever power conference opponent with a 42-31 win over Baylor.

It's difficult to understand how most of those games impact the rest of the season when we're only one week into 2023, but the path forward has several programs primed to set the next stage of the race for conference supremacy. In the ACC, more matchups against SEC schools await the early schedule on Saturday when Miami and Wake Forest host No. 23 Texas A&M and Vanderbilt, which is 2-0 for the second consecutive year. Virginia Tech, a team that easily beat Old Dominion last week, hosts Purdue in a bragging rights matchup against the Big Ten, and NC State hosts No. 10 Notre Dame in the first matchup against the football independent.

Other matchups are more regionally-based and include Syracuse's third-ever matchup against Western Michigan while James Madison, a newer FBS team, heads over to Charlottesville to play Virginia. Among FCS teams, South Carolina State is at Georgia Tech while Charleston Southern visits a wounded Clemson, and Holy Cross renews its rivalry with Boston College. A more interesting matchup is slotted for the league's 6:30 p.m. debut on the CW Network when Cincinnati visits Pittsburgh in a matchup of former Big East opponents.

Scoreboard-watching the nation, Nebraska is in Boulder for Coach Prime's home debut in front of Ralphie, and No. 12 Utah visits Baylor for a matchup of future conference opponents. In the mid-afternoon, No. 20 Ole Miss heads to New Orleans to play No. 24 Tulane, and a sneaky-tough game awaits No. 18 Oklahoma against Southern Methodist, one of the latest teams to join the ACC.

The headlining matchup isn't much of a surprise given the national stature of both Texas and Alabama (and their future conference compatriotism in the SEC), but the subplots, particularly around the No. 11 Longhorns and No. 3 Tide, make this one even juicier than usual. Later on, Stanford visits No. 6 Southern California for a swan song between two Pac-12 members whose identity in the conference stretched to the furthest starts of the 20th century before realignment broke them apart.

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Dan's Non-Sports Observation of the Week

Maybe it's a sports observation, but my brother's success rate on Immaculate Grid is officially driving me off-road when it comes to finding the rarest human beings who played baseball. I'm a noted seamhead, but my knowledge has significant gaps between certain generations. I can't name guys who played in certain All Star games, but he has this uncanny ability to rattle random names at me without missing a beat. I accused him of cheating multiple times until I saw it in person, and I'm convinced he has a lost Topps team set from the 1983 Seattle Mariners embedded somewhere in his brain.

Immaculate Grid, for those who don't know, is a nine-square opportunity to identify ballplayers who adhere to the cross-section's criteria. Gaining an immaculate grid requires correct answers on all nine guesses, and rarity points are given for more obscure percentages. What started with baseball morphed into virtually every sport, and it sparked more than a few debates and conversations in my household over the past few months.

It really is great fun, and I'm finding out how much I really know about "my" sport. I carry a ton of useless information about the origins of the game (shout out the 1914 World Series champion Boston Braves), and I used Eddie Pellagrini multiple times to gain those rare percentage point advantages.

My brother, though, is on another planet. He's busy enough to probably not read this space, which is great because now I can deny that I ever admitted that he's better than me, but spending time talking about the immortal players entrenched on Baseball-Reference.com is enough to keep us going for hours on end.

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Pregame Quote and Prediction

I've always said the players don't build up rivalries themselves, people from the outside build up the rivalries. I just want to play good golf. I want to try and keep winning golf tournaments. -Rory McIlroy

I absolutely, 100 percent agree with Rory McIlroy: I just want to play good golf. Unfortunately for me, that fact usually gets lost on the first hole when my drive is shanked off to a faraway place.

My childhood coincided with Boston College's Big East football era, so I never had an opportunity to appreciate or even understand how Holy Cross represented the biggest local rival. I always hated Notre Dame over everything, and secondary points shifted towards Syracuse, Miami, and whichever team was atop the conference standings. When BC shifted to the ACC, I quickly developed rooting interests against Florida State and Virginia Tech.

Even in other sports, I never understood the dynamic with Holy Cross, and I didn't grasp the rivalry until the Patriot League elevated football to a place where the two schools reconnected. Older alumni opened those doors for me, and I realize now how much the smaller school from Worcester despised its bigger, more well-known sibling in the Boston area.

In many ways, that's Massachusetts. Worcester is rapidly upping its game as a sports town, and the smaller, minor league nature of the city is much different from the Boston big leagues. The WooSox and the American Hockey League are a great alternative to going to Fenway Park or TD Garden, and Holy Cross is a successful, smaller option compared to the power conference life offered in the Atlantic Coast Conference.

To a degree, this game is an opportunity to showcase the importance of that dynamic. Worcester lived in Boston's shadow for decades, but the breakout and success enjoyed at Holy Cross has an opportunity to punch its FBS brother right in the mouth. For decades, the Crusaders lived with that reputation, but Saturday is the rare chance to do something that hasn't happened for decades.

As is the case in any rivalry, Boston College simply doesn't want that to happen. To a degree, Saturday's game is the next chapter of the 12-game schedule. To another degree, BC needs to remind Holy Cross about big, bad Boston. In a state where parochialism reigns, that's bigger than most people understand.

The 84th meeting between Boston College and Holy Cross will lay that out for all to witness. Massachusetts' biggest football rivalry is back.

Boston College and Holy Cross kick off on Saturday at 12 p.m. from Alumni Stadium in Chestnut Hill, Massachusetts. Television coverage is available through the ACC Network Extra streaming package via ESPN's online platform of Internet and mobile apps. Radio broadcast is also available through the BC Learfield IMG Sports Network, which is on local radio in Boston via WEEI 93.7 FM with satellite options available via Sirius XM channels and , with streaming audio available through the Varsity Network.

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Players Mentioned

Cole Batson

Thomas Castellanos

Amari Jackson

Emmett Morehead