BC-Syracuse Ready To Add Next Chapter To Historic Rivalry
November 06, 2024 | Football, #ForBoston Files
The Eagles and Orange endured a changing landscape with their own clean hate.
The 2010 Boston College season exemplified the struggles of a program facing the realities of a post-realignment world. Good vibrations from the first three years in the Atlantic Coast Conference were largely gone after consecutive Atlantic Division championships, and few players remained on a roster that was two years removed from a coaching staff changeover. The drama enveloping BC reached a zenith when head coach Jeff Jagodzinski lost his position after being warned not to interview with the NFL's New York Jets, and replacement Frank Spaziani, while a BC loyalist and standout defensive coordinator, couldn't replicate the success Jagodzinski inherited from Tom O'Brien's core group.
The biggest story surrounded the one-year pairing of linebackers Mark Herzlich and Luke Kuechly, but the prospect of dueling first round picks prowling the defensive linebacker areas reached one of the sports world's biggest shocks when Herzlich was diagnosed with Ewing's sarcoma. His 2009 battle against cancer predated a return to the battlefield during that year's September opener against Weber State, but the close losses to Florida State and Maryland meant BC needed more linkage between both sides of the football.
Having clinched a bowl berth in the penultimate week, a 6-5 BC team waffled between bowl possibilities by the time its final game of the season approached. A trip to the Kraft Fight Hunger Bowl and a possible matchup with a nationally-ranked Nevada team loomed, but a high-profile matchup against quarterback Colin Kaepernick required a win over the last non-conference team and a familiar face from previous years: Syracuse.
"When I played," Spaziani told The Boston Globe of BC's chief national rival, "you knew that you were going to hurt on Sunday."
Spaziani had been a linebacker on Penn State's team around the changeover from Rip Engle to Joe Paterno, but the message stuck to BC's matchup against Syracuse like superglue. No team other than Holy Cross played BC more frequently, but the game against the Orange somehow never reflected either team's overall record or status.
That 2010 non-conference matchup, for example, featured a seven-win Syracuse team bidding for eight or nine wins under Doug Marrone. Left in the Big East by realignment's fallout and drama, Syracuse engineered a 19-14 win over No. 19 West Virginia in 2010 after beating a nationally-ranked Rutgers side for its fourth win in 2009. The Greg Robinson era had been moved into the past, but the 2007 team infamously defeated No. 18 Louisville for its only conference win of a 2-10 season.
Syracuse hadn't played Boston College since the Diamond Ferri Game in 2004, but the two teams waged black-and-blue battles indicative of northeast college football culture. Results followed trends, and risers and fallers typically met in the middle whenever the Orange either traveled to Chestnut Hill or hosted the Eagles at the then-named Carrier Dome. The 1992 team that won the Fiesta Bowl more narrowly defeated No. 17 Boston College in a 27-10 matchup ahead of the Orangemen's 16-10 loss to Miami one week later, but the 1993 team lost, 33-29, and backslid to 6-4-1 after dropping its first loss of the season to an unranked BC side.
Even earlier, Doug Flutie's 1984 Heisman campaign defeated an upstart Syracuse side that finished 6-5 after earlier beating No. 1 Nebraska, and the loss likely cost Dick MacPherson a bowl berth that was earned one year later when the Orangemen went to the Cherry Bowl during a season that included a 41-21 win over a struggling, 4-8 BC team.
"It crossed my mind [that Syracuse was running up the score]," said head coach Jack Bicknell after Don McAulay kicked a 29-yard field goal in the final two minutes of a decided scoreboard, "but I immediately forgot it."
Even in an era more defined by national standards, BC-Syracuse remains one of the ACC's more hotly-contested rivalries. It's akin to the Cal-Stanford rivalry now dotting the conference's overall landscape and dates back to the early 1900s. It is unnamed and without a trophy, but the 57 prior matchups put it on par with more recent and intense matchups like Florida-Tennessee, Clemson-South Carolina and Alabama-Georgia. It endured a gap caused by conference realignment and survived long enough to remain a permanent structure within a 17-team football megaconference.
This year's iteration is scheduled for a time when weather conditions are dropping into wintry form throughout the Northeast, but it's perfectly timed for a game between teams seeking the next phase of their development. For Syracuse, a 6-2 season already entrenched a postseason game for the third straight season, while BC is 4-4 and seeking to avoid a fourth consecutive loss.
Both teams experienced "Moving Month" differently, but both established themselves for the late season long haul by playing to their respective styles. New head coach Fran Brown, a former understudy to both Steve Addazio and Matt Rhule at Temple, is a defensive coordinator and defensive backs coach by his nature, while Bill O'Brien built his reputation as an offensive wizard. Brown had never been a head coach before heading to Central New York where O'Brien led NFL rosters and NCAA teams alike. Both are excellent recruiters, and both schools are tied to the same regions for their respective profiles.
"This is a great, great rivalry, which is what college football is all about," said O'Brien in this week's news conference. "All of these regional rivalries, with conference realignment, have kind of changed a lot, but there are still these [matchups]. Syracuse is a [very good] team. They're 6-2. Coach Brown does a great job there, and they're on a path that qualified for a bowl. They're on a path to have a really good season. The rivalry, I've been involved with Georgia-Georgia Tech, Auburn-Alabama, Duke-North Carolina. I've been involved with a lot of rivalries between Maryland and Virginia, and this is one of those types of games, [with] two tough football teams going against one another."
BC and Syracuse kick off on Saturday at Noon ET with television coverage slated for The CW network, which includes CW56 locally in Boston.
The biggest story surrounded the one-year pairing of linebackers Mark Herzlich and Luke Kuechly, but the prospect of dueling first round picks prowling the defensive linebacker areas reached one of the sports world's biggest shocks when Herzlich was diagnosed with Ewing's sarcoma. His 2009 battle against cancer predated a return to the battlefield during that year's September opener against Weber State, but the close losses to Florida State and Maryland meant BC needed more linkage between both sides of the football.
Having clinched a bowl berth in the penultimate week, a 6-5 BC team waffled between bowl possibilities by the time its final game of the season approached. A trip to the Kraft Fight Hunger Bowl and a possible matchup with a nationally-ranked Nevada team loomed, but a high-profile matchup against quarterback Colin Kaepernick required a win over the last non-conference team and a familiar face from previous years: Syracuse.
"When I played," Spaziani told The Boston Globe of BC's chief national rival, "you knew that you were going to hurt on Sunday."
Spaziani had been a linebacker on Penn State's team around the changeover from Rip Engle to Joe Paterno, but the message stuck to BC's matchup against Syracuse like superglue. No team other than Holy Cross played BC more frequently, but the game against the Orange somehow never reflected either team's overall record or status.
That 2010 non-conference matchup, for example, featured a seven-win Syracuse team bidding for eight or nine wins under Doug Marrone. Left in the Big East by realignment's fallout and drama, Syracuse engineered a 19-14 win over No. 19 West Virginia in 2010 after beating a nationally-ranked Rutgers side for its fourth win in 2009. The Greg Robinson era had been moved into the past, but the 2007 team infamously defeated No. 18 Louisville for its only conference win of a 2-10 season.
Syracuse hadn't played Boston College since the Diamond Ferri Game in 2004, but the two teams waged black-and-blue battles indicative of northeast college football culture. Results followed trends, and risers and fallers typically met in the middle whenever the Orange either traveled to Chestnut Hill or hosted the Eagles at the then-named Carrier Dome. The 1992 team that won the Fiesta Bowl more narrowly defeated No. 17 Boston College in a 27-10 matchup ahead of the Orangemen's 16-10 loss to Miami one week later, but the 1993 team lost, 33-29, and backslid to 6-4-1 after dropping its first loss of the season to an unranked BC side.
Even earlier, Doug Flutie's 1984 Heisman campaign defeated an upstart Syracuse side that finished 6-5 after earlier beating No. 1 Nebraska, and the loss likely cost Dick MacPherson a bowl berth that was earned one year later when the Orangemen went to the Cherry Bowl during a season that included a 41-21 win over a struggling, 4-8 BC team.
"It crossed my mind [that Syracuse was running up the score]," said head coach Jack Bicknell after Don McAulay kicked a 29-yard field goal in the final two minutes of a decided scoreboard, "but I immediately forgot it."
Even in an era more defined by national standards, BC-Syracuse remains one of the ACC's more hotly-contested rivalries. It's akin to the Cal-Stanford rivalry now dotting the conference's overall landscape and dates back to the early 1900s. It is unnamed and without a trophy, but the 57 prior matchups put it on par with more recent and intense matchups like Florida-Tennessee, Clemson-South Carolina and Alabama-Georgia. It endured a gap caused by conference realignment and survived long enough to remain a permanent structure within a 17-team football megaconference.
This year's iteration is scheduled for a time when weather conditions are dropping into wintry form throughout the Northeast, but it's perfectly timed for a game between teams seeking the next phase of their development. For Syracuse, a 6-2 season already entrenched a postseason game for the third straight season, while BC is 4-4 and seeking to avoid a fourth consecutive loss.
Both teams experienced "Moving Month" differently, but both established themselves for the late season long haul by playing to their respective styles. New head coach Fran Brown, a former understudy to both Steve Addazio and Matt Rhule at Temple, is a defensive coordinator and defensive backs coach by his nature, while Bill O'Brien built his reputation as an offensive wizard. Brown had never been a head coach before heading to Central New York where O'Brien led NFL rosters and NCAA teams alike. Both are excellent recruiters, and both schools are tied to the same regions for their respective profiles.
"This is a great, great rivalry, which is what college football is all about," said O'Brien in this week's news conference. "All of these regional rivalries, with conference realignment, have kind of changed a lot, but there are still these [matchups]. Syracuse is a [very good] team. They're 6-2. Coach Brown does a great job there, and they're on a path that qualified for a bowl. They're on a path to have a really good season. The rivalry, I've been involved with Georgia-Georgia Tech, Auburn-Alabama, Duke-North Carolina. I've been involved with a lot of rivalries between Maryland and Virginia, and this is one of those types of games, [with] two tough football teams going against one another."
BC and Syracuse kick off on Saturday at Noon ET with television coverage slated for The CW network, which includes CW56 locally in Boston.
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