Dec. 23, 2008
Visit Bowl Central to Order Your Tickets
BOSTON (AP) — The Alumni Stadium ring of honor listing Boston College’s bowl appearances reads like the automotive ads in the newspaper.
Meineke Car Care. Continental Tire. Jeep Aloha. Motor City.
Throw in a Diamond Walnut, a Champs Sports, an Insight.com, a Music City and an MPC Computers Bowl and you’ve got a nine-year run of postseason appearances that would be even more impressive if there were just one Orange or Sugar or even a Cotton Bowl among them.
“In the next couple of years, I really believe they’ll accomplish that,” senior tight end Ryan Purvis said Monday after his last practice at the Heights before getting a break for Christmas. “We’ve been making strides. If we could just make that one leap. It’s inevitable.
“Then this program is where we want it to be — a BCS contender, a football powerhouse, not just a little school in Chestnut Hill.”
Boston College (9-4) will play in its 10th consecutive bowl game this year when it meets Vanderbilt (6-6) in the Music City Bowl on Dec. 31. A victory would extend BC’s bowl winning streak to nine games.
“I think they take a lot of pride in that,” coach Jeff Jagodzinski said. “We have a chance to win nine in a row — that’s the best in the country.”
But it’s also a bit of a consolation prize for a program that has repeatedly missed out on chances to play in bigger bowls.
There was the loss to Syracuse in 2004 that kept the Eagles from winning the conference title and dropped them from the Fiesta or Sugar Bowls into the Continental Tire. A year later they had another chance at a top-tier bowl before consecutive losses left them shipping off to Boise.
In ’06, a loss in the regular-season finale knocked them from the Atlantic Coast Conference championship game into the Meineke Car Care Bowl. And then came back-to-back losses in the ACC title game, each one depriving the Eagles of a spot in the Bowl Championship Series.
“It hurt, because we were trying to win a championship for the seniors,” said quarterback Dominique Davis, a redshirt freshman who was picked off twice and had a fourth-quarter fumble returned for a touchdown in a 30-12 loss to Virginia Tech. “I felt terrible going down there and not fulfilling the job.”
But the loss didn’t just knock BC out of the Orange Bowl. The Chick-fil-A, Gator and Champs Sports all passed up a chance to invite the Eagles, dropping them to the Music City Bowl.
Compare BC with the only other Catholic school playing major college football: Notre Dame.
The Fighting Irish boast legions of loyal alumni spread across the nation and willing to travel to see their team. BC has traditionally had trouble selling out its allotment of bowl tickets — and even its home games: The Eagles sold out just one game at Alumni Stadium this season — against, you guessed it, Notre Dame.
So when it comes time for the bowls to pick their teams, Notre Dame always moves up in class, raking in invitations from the Sugar and Orange and Fiesta that it might not otherwise deserve. And when those games are over, the discrepancy between the Fighting Irish’s reputation and its talent is exposed: They’ve lost all nine bowls they’ve played in since 1995.
On the other hand, BC winds up moving down to play lesser teams; this year, the ACC runners-up will play .500 Vanderbilt.
And that could be the ticket to ninth straight bowl win.
“For the senior class, it’s huge motivation, because we don’t want to be the class to break that,” BC receiver Brandon Robinson said. “I don’t think any class wants to be the one that breaks that.”