Followed ACC for 40 years and I'm sick to my stomach about this. I want nothing to do with these awful rust belt schools. I hate everything about Syracuse and that cavernous weird dark freaky basketball arena ( Duke and UNC having to travel up to that snowbound wasteland is my February vision of hell). Pittsburgh is a nothing school that nobody cares about. I have no idea why the ACC takes on these loser lost big east teams with their tv markets that consist of unheated Pennsylvania hunting trailers. Please let me wake up tomorrow and discover that this bad dream never happened.
The ACC is lucky to count Boston College as one of it's member schools.
Boston College is head and shoulders above almost every university now competing in sports on a National level. Having attended countless BC sporting events in my life, my fondest memory was watching the late, great Heisman Trophy winner Ernie Davis score two TDs at the old BC Alumni Stadium under curmudgeon head football coach Ben Schwartzwalder while at Syracuse. Davis was the first African-American athlete to win the Heisman Trophy.
November 1961. I was 13 years old. It was a crisp day in Chestnut Hill, Mass. and just one of many BC football games I was lucky enough to attend as a youngster thanks to my benefactor and proxy dad, a now deceased BC Alumni who took a fatherless young man under his wing and brought him to all kinds of BC sporting events. Hockey being a personal favorite.
Syracuse versus Boston College. Earnie Davis' last regular season college football game (Davis later played in the 1961 Liberty Bowl). My benefactor, told me Ernie Davis was a great player, so I tried to keep track of his orange helmet that afternoon as he darted around the field.
I remember BC quarterback Jack Concannon, in his shiny gold helmet, under constant attack by Syracuse’s defenders as the Eagles lost.
Davis is the subject of the recent film, "The Express." See it if you can.
That Syracuse-BC game was so long ago it predates instant replay and SportsCenter. I just looked up some game accounts to see if I remembered things correctly. Syracuse did beat BC, 28-13. Davis scored two touchdowns, one on an interception - yes, he played on both sides of the ball - as he rolled up 203 yards and surpassed his Orangeman predecessor, Jim Brown, in total career yardage. But it was Concannon who had the longest run of the day: a 79 yard scamper for a TD.
Oddly, of all the players on the field, Concannon would have the longest NFL career — 10 years, mostly with the Bears.
Davis was the top NFL draft pick, and he signed what was then a whopping $200,000, three-year deal with the Browns. But he was diagnosed with leukemia and never played a game in the pros. He died at 23.
I remember reading about his death and getting an early sense of the fleeting nature of youth.
Back to Boston College.
Boston College is one of only 13 universities in the country offering NCAA Division I football (Football Bowl Subdivision), Division I men's and women's basketball, and Division I hockey.
BC athletes are among the most academically successful in the nation, according to the NCAA's Academic Progress Rate (APR). In 2006 Boston College received Public Recognition Awards with 14 of its sports in the top 10 percent of the nation academically. The Eagles tied Notre Dame for the highest total of any Division I-A university.
Other schools having 10 or more sports honored included Navy (12), Stanford (11), and Duke (11). Teams honored were football, men's fencing, men's outdoor track, men's skiing, women's rowing, women's cross country, women's fencing, women's field hockey, women's indoor track, women's outdoor track, women's skiing, women's swimming, women's soccer, women's tennis, and women's volleyball. Boston College's football program was one of only five Division I-A teams that were so honored. The other four were Auburn, Navy, Stanford, and Duke.
I have no idea how Auburn managed to qualify.
wilheim
Boston College is head and shoulders above almost every university now competing in sports on a National level. Having attended countless BC sporting events in my life, my fondest memory was watching the late, great Heisman Trophy winner Ernie Davis score two TDs at the old BC Alumni Stadium under curmudgeon head football coach Ben Schwartzwalder while at Syracuse. Davis was the first African-American athlete to win the Heisman Trophy.
November 1961. I was 13 years old. It was a crisp day in Chestnut Hill, Mass. and just one of many BC football games I was lucky enough to attend as a youngster thanks to my benefactor and proxy dad, a now deceased BC Alumni who took a fatherless young man under his wing and brought him to all kinds of BC sporting events. Hockey being a personal favorite.
Syracuse versus Boston College. Earnie Davis' last regular season college football game (Davis later played in the 1961 Liberty Bowl). My benefactor, told me Ernie Davis was a great player, so I tried to keep track of his orange helmet that afternoon as he darted around the field.
I remember BC quarterback Jack Concannon, in his shiny gold helmet, under constant attack by Syracuse’s defenders as the Eagles lost.
Davis is the subject of the recent film, "The Express." See it if you can.
That Syracuse-BC game was so long ago it predates instant replay and SportsCenter. I just looked up some game accounts to see if I remembered things correctly. Syracuse did beat BC, 28-13. Davis scored two touchdowns, one on an interception - yes, he played on both sides of the ball - as he rolled up 203 yards and surpassed his Orangeman predecessor, Jim Brown, in total career yardage. But it was Concannon who had the longest run of the day: a 79 yard scamper for a TD.
Oddly, of all the players on the field, Concannon would have the longest NFL career — 10 years, mostly with the Bears.
Davis was the top NFL draft pick, and he signed what was then a whopping $200,000, three-year deal with the Browns. But he was diagnosed with leukemia and never played a game in the pros. He died at 23.
I remember reading about his death and getting an early sense of the fleeting nature of youth.
Back to Boston College.
Boston College is one of only 13 universities in the country offering NCAA Division I football (Football Bowl Subdivision), Division I men's and women's basketball, and Division I hockey.
BC athletes are among the most academically successful in the nation, according to the NCAA's Academic Progress Rate (APR). In 2006 Boston College received Public Recognition Awards with 14 of its sports in the top 10 percent of the nation academically. The Eagles tied Notre Dame for the highest total of any Division I-A university.
Other schools having 10 or more sports honored included Navy (12), Stanford (11), and Duke (11). Teams honored were football, men's fencing, men's outdoor track, men's skiing, women's rowing, women's cross country, women's fencing, women's field hockey, women's indoor track, women's outdoor track, women's skiing, women's swimming, women's soccer, women's tennis, and women's volleyball. Boston College's football program was one of only five Division I-A teams that were so honored. The other four were Auburn, Navy, Stanford, and Duke.
I have no idea how Auburn managed to qualify.
wilheim
