Boston College Athletics
In 2007, Upstart Spartans Drew Big, Bad Eagles
September 18, 2024 | Football, #ForBoston Files
The Champs Sports Bowl featured a national ACC powerhouse and an upstart Big Ten team.
The 2007 college football season is best remembered for the sheer volume of upsets involving top-ranked teams. Nearly every week featured one team falling after it gained a foothold in the national top-5, after which another team would replace it and lose to an unranked or under-regarded opponent one week later. The process then repeated itself again and again until the season-ending Bowl Championship Series looked like the end result of a demolition derby at a county fair.
The sheer volume of upset-addled weeks felt more and more unprecedented with each passing result. No. 5 Michigan's loss to an FCS-level Appalachian State team preceded USC, the preseason No. 1, losing to Stanford for its first home loss in six years. The Cardinal had been 1-11 in 2006 before hiring Jim Harbaugh, but the magnitude of the win helped roll the season forward in a year where seven No. 2 teams lost games over a nine-week span.
Three separate weeks saw the No. 1 and No. 2 team lose their respective games, and two of those occurrences involved a No. 1 LSU team. No. 2 Kansas then lost to No. 4 Missouri one week before No. 2 Missouri lost to No. 9 Oklahoma, and a second-ranked West Virginia team lost to unranked Pittsburgh in a game that would have sent the Mountaineers to the BCS National Championship.
Boston College found itself wading through the middle of that murky conversation after beating No. 15 Georgia Tech in its third game of the season. Having been ranked No. 21 upon its entry to the national polls, BC elevated into the top-10 by beating Army and an FCS-level UMass team as the carnage unfolded around the nation. Victories over Bowling Green and Notre Dame edged the Eagles into their best start since their 1940 national championship season, but a Thursday night win over Virginia Tech solidified their bona fides as a BCS contender.
Losses to Florida State and Maryland eventually robbed BC of its No. 2 national ranking, but the Eagles soldiered forward by winning the Atlantic Coast Conference's Atlantic Division. Having played for the conference championship, a belief endured that the team wouldn't possess the same juice for its Champs Sports Bowl appearance against Michigan State.Â
Yet in the Eagles' last game against the Spartans, the team that turned the league's northern outpost into a powerhouse and found its groove for one final dance with its winningest group of seniors and a class that remains unto its own.
"The group has never lost a bowl game, part of an NCAA-best seven straight bowl victories," proclaimed Mark Blaudschun in The Boston Globe that week. "Critics would argue that the bowls - including the Continental Tire, MPC Computers, and Meineke Car Care the last three years - did not provide the highest competition. And do that [the next] opponent, Michigan State, which tied for seventh in the Big Ten, is another example.
"Winning 11 games," he wrote, "something no BC team has done in 67 years, and winning an eighth straight bowl game have been the driving forces for the Eagles this week as they have combined business with pleasure."
In any other year, the bowl game appearance would have occupied above-the-fold territory on the front page of the Globe's sports section, but the Champs Sports Bowl occurred one day before the 15-0 New England Patriots finished their chase for perfection by playing the New York Giants in their regular season finale. Having clinched the AFC's No. 1 overall seed around Thanksgiving turned the season into a coronation for the undisputed best team in the league, but the opportunity to become the first team to ever achieve a 16-0 regular season instead pushed BC deeper into the sports pages.
The timing certainly didn't lack appreciation for the Eagles after the 2007 team nearly stole thunder from a World Series championship Red Sox team and the Boston Celtics debut of Kevin Garnett and Ray Allen alongside incumbent star Paul Pierce. Just two years earlier, BC departed the Big East with Matt Ryan as its young, emerging quarterback, but that year entrenched the team as a competitor within a new league that centered its geographical identity around Tobacco Road and the Deep South. Led by Ryan at a time when he reached the apex of his powers and graced local media on a weekly basis, the Eagles were the hunted team facing a Big Ten team that hadn't had a winning season since 2003.
"It's important that we go down [to Orlando] and put our best foot forward," said head coach Mark Dantonio ahead of the team's trip to the bowl game. "I think this will make a statement as to where we're going at Michigan State."
Dantonio was Sparty's first-year head coach in 2007, but his reinvention in East Lansing led Brian Hoyer to a breakout junior season. His 2,725 yards and 20 touchdowns included a 323-yard, two-touchdown performance in a loss at Wisconsin in late September before he was nearly perfect in going 20-for-23 passing in a win over Indiana. He more specifically threw six touchdowns while going for 510-plus yards in the last two games of the season while gaining wins that clinched bowl eligibility and a shot at the top-ranked Eagles.
"If BC beats the Spartans," wrote Blaudschun, "the reaction will be: 'Big deal.' If the Eagles don't, it will be a big deal for Michigan State."
The game itself was a big reason why the bowl season remained competitive, and Michigan State led BC after Hoyer connected with Kellen Davis for an 18-yard touchdown. A pair of Ryan scores later posted the Eagles to a 14-7 lead before the Spartans rallied to cut the game to 14-13, but a 28-yard field goal from Steve Aponavicius provided the scoreboard with the cushioning difference ahead of a 68-yard go-home bomb from Ryan to Rich Gunnell. Jamie Silva added 10 tackles and two interceptions with four punt returns en route to earning the game's MVP honors, and BC won a postseason game for the eighth consecutive appearance.
"It's how you want to go out," Silva said after the win. "It's what you dream of, to go out as MVP."
Michigan State, meanwhile, built its way to a pair of 11-win seasons at the turn of the decade and later won the Rose Bowl and Cotton Bowl as part of Dantonio's run to the top-5. Neither team crossed the other's path, but the series that began when Dinny McNamara's 1935 Eagles defeated Charles Bachman's Michigan State squad one year before "Gloomy Gil" Dobie tied a second consecutive matchup in Boston now writes a chapter into a history that included a 14-0 win for Tom Coughlin's Eagles in 1992 and the lone victory for Michigan State: a 1995, 25-21 decision that went to head coach Nick Saban's Spartans.
"The big deal with this week, we got 6,000 students at our Duquesne game," said current BC head coach Bill O'Brien. "Hopefully we can get 9,000 students at this game because I think the students make a huge difference. The crowd will be big, a big factor in this game."
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The sheer volume of upset-addled weeks felt more and more unprecedented with each passing result. No. 5 Michigan's loss to an FCS-level Appalachian State team preceded USC, the preseason No. 1, losing to Stanford for its first home loss in six years. The Cardinal had been 1-11 in 2006 before hiring Jim Harbaugh, but the magnitude of the win helped roll the season forward in a year where seven No. 2 teams lost games over a nine-week span.
Three separate weeks saw the No. 1 and No. 2 team lose their respective games, and two of those occurrences involved a No. 1 LSU team. No. 2 Kansas then lost to No. 4 Missouri one week before No. 2 Missouri lost to No. 9 Oklahoma, and a second-ranked West Virginia team lost to unranked Pittsburgh in a game that would have sent the Mountaineers to the BCS National Championship.
Boston College found itself wading through the middle of that murky conversation after beating No. 15 Georgia Tech in its third game of the season. Having been ranked No. 21 upon its entry to the national polls, BC elevated into the top-10 by beating Army and an FCS-level UMass team as the carnage unfolded around the nation. Victories over Bowling Green and Notre Dame edged the Eagles into their best start since their 1940 national championship season, but a Thursday night win over Virginia Tech solidified their bona fides as a BCS contender.
Losses to Florida State and Maryland eventually robbed BC of its No. 2 national ranking, but the Eagles soldiered forward by winning the Atlantic Coast Conference's Atlantic Division. Having played for the conference championship, a belief endured that the team wouldn't possess the same juice for its Champs Sports Bowl appearance against Michigan State.Â
Yet in the Eagles' last game against the Spartans, the team that turned the league's northern outpost into a powerhouse and found its groove for one final dance with its winningest group of seniors and a class that remains unto its own.
"The group has never lost a bowl game, part of an NCAA-best seven straight bowl victories," proclaimed Mark Blaudschun in The Boston Globe that week. "Critics would argue that the bowls - including the Continental Tire, MPC Computers, and Meineke Car Care the last three years - did not provide the highest competition. And do that [the next] opponent, Michigan State, which tied for seventh in the Big Ten, is another example.
"Winning 11 games," he wrote, "something no BC team has done in 67 years, and winning an eighth straight bowl game have been the driving forces for the Eagles this week as they have combined business with pleasure."
In any other year, the bowl game appearance would have occupied above-the-fold territory on the front page of the Globe's sports section, but the Champs Sports Bowl occurred one day before the 15-0 New England Patriots finished their chase for perfection by playing the New York Giants in their regular season finale. Having clinched the AFC's No. 1 overall seed around Thanksgiving turned the season into a coronation for the undisputed best team in the league, but the opportunity to become the first team to ever achieve a 16-0 regular season instead pushed BC deeper into the sports pages.
The timing certainly didn't lack appreciation for the Eagles after the 2007 team nearly stole thunder from a World Series championship Red Sox team and the Boston Celtics debut of Kevin Garnett and Ray Allen alongside incumbent star Paul Pierce. Just two years earlier, BC departed the Big East with Matt Ryan as its young, emerging quarterback, but that year entrenched the team as a competitor within a new league that centered its geographical identity around Tobacco Road and the Deep South. Led by Ryan at a time when he reached the apex of his powers and graced local media on a weekly basis, the Eagles were the hunted team facing a Big Ten team that hadn't had a winning season since 2003.
"It's important that we go down [to Orlando] and put our best foot forward," said head coach Mark Dantonio ahead of the team's trip to the bowl game. "I think this will make a statement as to where we're going at Michigan State."
Dantonio was Sparty's first-year head coach in 2007, but his reinvention in East Lansing led Brian Hoyer to a breakout junior season. His 2,725 yards and 20 touchdowns included a 323-yard, two-touchdown performance in a loss at Wisconsin in late September before he was nearly perfect in going 20-for-23 passing in a win over Indiana. He more specifically threw six touchdowns while going for 510-plus yards in the last two games of the season while gaining wins that clinched bowl eligibility and a shot at the top-ranked Eagles.
"If BC beats the Spartans," wrote Blaudschun, "the reaction will be: 'Big deal.' If the Eagles don't, it will be a big deal for Michigan State."
The game itself was a big reason why the bowl season remained competitive, and Michigan State led BC after Hoyer connected with Kellen Davis for an 18-yard touchdown. A pair of Ryan scores later posted the Eagles to a 14-7 lead before the Spartans rallied to cut the game to 14-13, but a 28-yard field goal from Steve Aponavicius provided the scoreboard with the cushioning difference ahead of a 68-yard go-home bomb from Ryan to Rich Gunnell. Jamie Silva added 10 tackles and two interceptions with four punt returns en route to earning the game's MVP honors, and BC won a postseason game for the eighth consecutive appearance.
"It's how you want to go out," Silva said after the win. "It's what you dream of, to go out as MVP."
Michigan State, meanwhile, built its way to a pair of 11-win seasons at the turn of the decade and later won the Rose Bowl and Cotton Bowl as part of Dantonio's run to the top-5. Neither team crossed the other's path, but the series that began when Dinny McNamara's 1935 Eagles defeated Charles Bachman's Michigan State squad one year before "Gloomy Gil" Dobie tied a second consecutive matchup in Boston now writes a chapter into a history that included a 14-0 win for Tom Coughlin's Eagles in 1992 and the lone victory for Michigan State: a 1995, 25-21 decision that went to head coach Nick Saban's Spartans.
"The big deal with this week, we got 6,000 students at our Duquesne game," said current BC head coach Bill O'Brien. "Hopefully we can get 9,000 students at this game because I think the students make a huge difference. The crowd will be big, a big factor in this game."
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Thursday, June 04
Thursday, June 04
Wednesday, June 03
Wednesday, June 03
