Photo by: Meg Kelly
BC and Michigan State Find Cross-Section Of College Football
September 03, 2025 | Football, #ForBoston Files
Risers and fallers dot the limited history between the two schools.
CHESTNUT HILL, Mass. -- Much of what's known about Boston College's minimal football history against Michigan State occurred after the Eagles completed their run through the infamous 2007 season. Once the No. 2 team in the nation after eliminating their first seven opponents, a comeback win over No. 8 Virginia Tech set the tone for the team's first-ever run to an ACC Atlantic Division championship before a 30-16 rematch loss to the Hokies sunk BC in the league's still-new title game.
The era's arcane and draconian bowl selection process later prevented BC from advancing to the Chick-Fil-A Bowl, so landing in the Champs Sports Bowl handed the Eagles a matchup against a 7-5 Michigan State team that narrowly won its way into a postseason game. For the first time in their careers, Matt Ryan and Brian Hoyer dueled one another, though both were overshadowed by Jamie Silva's 10 tackles, two interceptions and four punt returns in a 24-21 win for the Eagles.
Saturday's matchup is, in a way, a callback to how that era sent BC and Michigan State on different paths. The apex of BC's post-Big East golden era crossed onto the path of a Big Ten team still searching for an identity after losing head coach Nick Saban to the SEC and LSU. The personnel in that game littered NFL rosters in the upcoming years, and it reflected the changing tides of a short-historied matchup that somehow managed to constantly find itself thrust into college football's fast-paced realignment.
"Their program is traditionally a winner," BC head coach Tom Coughlin told The Boston Globe ahead of his team's 1992 matchup with the Spartans. "They've got great coaching, great tradition, great players. If you look at the tape, you'll see that they're big, strong and physical. We're looking at this game as a four-quarter struggle."
Neither BC nor Michigan State entered 1992 with bowl expectations after producing sub-.500 seasons in 1991. Each enjoyed glory years during historic runs during the 1980s, but the memories of Doug Flutie's Heisman Trophy campaign and Cotton Bowl win faded alongside Michigan State's Rose Bowl win after winning the Big Ten championship in 1987. Both exited those eras with a momentary uptick, but it did little to ease the growing pains associated with each program's transition period.
In East Lansing, dueling blowout losses to Notre Dame and Michigan flanked a tailspin induced by losses to Central Michigan and Rutgers. Playing the majority of those games at Spartan Stadium worsened that situation, and a 31-0 loss at Indiana in the week prior to the 45-28 loss to Michigan all but ended the team's bowl hopes after George Perles finished 1990 with another national ranking and a third postseason win in four years.
BC sat on the opposite end of the spectrum. The Eagles approached a full decade since Flutie's 10-2 season ended with the No. 4 national ranking, and even the 1986 Hall of Fame Bowl season extended further into the program's rearview as the advent of the Big East loomed on the horizon. Jack Bicknell was gone as the decade shifted into the new era, which began when Coughlin broke cleanly during the 4-7 season in 1991, but the Eagles were in a renaissance period after steamrolling Louisville, Army, Pittsburgh and Temple for four wins. A season-ending loss to No. 1 Miami was by five points in a sold-out Alumni Stadium, and a 3-0 start to the 1992 season brought BC national prominence for the first ime in years.
"For the first time since 1984, when BC made a 4-0 start en route to a Cotton Bowl berth, the Eagles are 3-0 after impressive victories over Rutgers and back-to-back shutouts of Northwestern and Navy," said The Boston Globe ahead of Michigan State's trip to Chestnut Hill for that '92 season. "And now, with the stigma of five losing seasons seemingly behind them, the Eagles have emerged to lay claim to a Top-25 spot."
Inverting the teams' fortunes from their later 2007 meeting illustrated the delicate dance between consistency and change. The two programs ebbed and flowed through their head-to-head meetings by offering an intersection of teams destined for different ends of college football's elite. In that 1992 matchup, BC's 14-0 blanking of the Spartans gave the Eagles their third straight clean sheet, and later wins over West Virginia and No. 9 Penn State rocketed them into the top-10 before the ignominious 54-7 showing at Notre Dame. A Hall of Fame Bowl berth beckoned for an eight-win team that eventually lost to Tennessee, 38-23, before returning to within range of the top-10 with its 9-3 season in 1993.
Michigan State, meanwhile, bottomed out with its loss to Boston College but failed to finish .500 after losing to Illinois in the final game of the season. The 1993 team was slightly better after beating the No. 9 Wolverines in East Lansing, but two momentary returns to the top-25 instead ended in a three-game losing streak and the Liberty Bowl loss to Louisville was the final highlight of Perles' career with the Spartans, who didn't win a postseason game until Saban's final season in 2001.
Again in contrast, BC was in its third straight bowl game in 2001, and its Music City Bowl win over Georgia is still considered a high water mark among those years. So when they met in 2007, it was again an inverse of a program that peaked at its apex while another program sought its future fortune.
"We had a great time," said Champs Sports Bowl MVP Jamie Silva in The Boston Globe's postgame coverage. "To finish with a win and to have 11 wins is something special. We wanted to be considered one of the best teams to go through here, and we might be on that level."
That leads things back to this Saturday and the unique situation involving two programs attempting to challenge their respective conference's elite. Two years after Michigan State was mired in a four-win season that involved a coaching change, head coach Jonathan Smith is seeking a return to the 11-win ways that included a berth in the 2021 Peach Bowl. Standing in his way is Bill O'Brien and a BC team that advanced to a bowl game last season. Both teams dominated their first week, but both stare directly at a matchup that might just indicate who is rising or who has to seek fortune on another path.
Boston College and Michigan State kick off against one another at 7:30 p.m. on Saturday, September 6, 2025 from Spartan Stadium in East Lansing, Michigan. Television coverage is slotted for NBC with streaming available through Peacock.
The era's arcane and draconian bowl selection process later prevented BC from advancing to the Chick-Fil-A Bowl, so landing in the Champs Sports Bowl handed the Eagles a matchup against a 7-5 Michigan State team that narrowly won its way into a postseason game. For the first time in their careers, Matt Ryan and Brian Hoyer dueled one another, though both were overshadowed by Jamie Silva's 10 tackles, two interceptions and four punt returns in a 24-21 win for the Eagles.
Saturday's matchup is, in a way, a callback to how that era sent BC and Michigan State on different paths. The apex of BC's post-Big East golden era crossed onto the path of a Big Ten team still searching for an identity after losing head coach Nick Saban to the SEC and LSU. The personnel in that game littered NFL rosters in the upcoming years, and it reflected the changing tides of a short-historied matchup that somehow managed to constantly find itself thrust into college football's fast-paced realignment.
"Their program is traditionally a winner," BC head coach Tom Coughlin told The Boston Globe ahead of his team's 1992 matchup with the Spartans. "They've got great coaching, great tradition, great players. If you look at the tape, you'll see that they're big, strong and physical. We're looking at this game as a four-quarter struggle."
Neither BC nor Michigan State entered 1992 with bowl expectations after producing sub-.500 seasons in 1991. Each enjoyed glory years during historic runs during the 1980s, but the memories of Doug Flutie's Heisman Trophy campaign and Cotton Bowl win faded alongside Michigan State's Rose Bowl win after winning the Big Ten championship in 1987. Both exited those eras with a momentary uptick, but it did little to ease the growing pains associated with each program's transition period.
In East Lansing, dueling blowout losses to Notre Dame and Michigan flanked a tailspin induced by losses to Central Michigan and Rutgers. Playing the majority of those games at Spartan Stadium worsened that situation, and a 31-0 loss at Indiana in the week prior to the 45-28 loss to Michigan all but ended the team's bowl hopes after George Perles finished 1990 with another national ranking and a third postseason win in four years.
BC sat on the opposite end of the spectrum. The Eagles approached a full decade since Flutie's 10-2 season ended with the No. 4 national ranking, and even the 1986 Hall of Fame Bowl season extended further into the program's rearview as the advent of the Big East loomed on the horizon. Jack Bicknell was gone as the decade shifted into the new era, which began when Coughlin broke cleanly during the 4-7 season in 1991, but the Eagles were in a renaissance period after steamrolling Louisville, Army, Pittsburgh and Temple for four wins. A season-ending loss to No. 1 Miami was by five points in a sold-out Alumni Stadium, and a 3-0 start to the 1992 season brought BC national prominence for the first ime in years.
"For the first time since 1984, when BC made a 4-0 start en route to a Cotton Bowl berth, the Eagles are 3-0 after impressive victories over Rutgers and back-to-back shutouts of Northwestern and Navy," said The Boston Globe ahead of Michigan State's trip to Chestnut Hill for that '92 season. "And now, with the stigma of five losing seasons seemingly behind them, the Eagles have emerged to lay claim to a Top-25 spot."
Inverting the teams' fortunes from their later 2007 meeting illustrated the delicate dance between consistency and change. The two programs ebbed and flowed through their head-to-head meetings by offering an intersection of teams destined for different ends of college football's elite. In that 1992 matchup, BC's 14-0 blanking of the Spartans gave the Eagles their third straight clean sheet, and later wins over West Virginia and No. 9 Penn State rocketed them into the top-10 before the ignominious 54-7 showing at Notre Dame. A Hall of Fame Bowl berth beckoned for an eight-win team that eventually lost to Tennessee, 38-23, before returning to within range of the top-10 with its 9-3 season in 1993.
Michigan State, meanwhile, bottomed out with its loss to Boston College but failed to finish .500 after losing to Illinois in the final game of the season. The 1993 team was slightly better after beating the No. 9 Wolverines in East Lansing, but two momentary returns to the top-25 instead ended in a three-game losing streak and the Liberty Bowl loss to Louisville was the final highlight of Perles' career with the Spartans, who didn't win a postseason game until Saban's final season in 2001.
Again in contrast, BC was in its third straight bowl game in 2001, and its Music City Bowl win over Georgia is still considered a high water mark among those years. So when they met in 2007, it was again an inverse of a program that peaked at its apex while another program sought its future fortune.
"We had a great time," said Champs Sports Bowl MVP Jamie Silva in The Boston Globe's postgame coverage. "To finish with a win and to have 11 wins is something special. We wanted to be considered one of the best teams to go through here, and we might be on that level."
That leads things back to this Saturday and the unique situation involving two programs attempting to challenge their respective conference's elite. Two years after Michigan State was mired in a four-win season that involved a coaching change, head coach Jonathan Smith is seeking a return to the 11-win ways that included a berth in the 2021 Peach Bowl. Standing in his way is Bill O'Brien and a BC team that advanced to a bowl game last season. Both teams dominated their first week, but both stare directly at a matchup that might just indicate who is rising or who has to seek fortune on another path.
Boston College and Michigan State kick off against one another at 7:30 p.m. on Saturday, September 6, 2025 from Spartan Stadium in East Lansing, Michigan. Television coverage is slotted for NBC with streaming available through Peacock.
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