Time to ACC-ept reality
BC football, hoops way out of their league
So who wants to become the next victim of Boston College’s decision to sell out its football and basketball programs for the right to become the ACC’s wellpaid punching bag?
That is the real upshot of the announcement that BC athletic director Brad Bates was resigning to (of course) move on to new and exciting opportunities as vice president of an executive search firm called Collegiate Sports Associates. The forced resignation of Bates comes as no surprise to anyone who has watched BC football and basketball slowly devolve into non-competitive programs in the ACC. There are masons spending less time in cellars than BC’s football and basketball teams have during Bates’ five-year tenure, a situation that has worsened with the passage of time. But the fact is it really isn’t Bates’ fault.
Winning consistently in the ACC against football powerhouses like nationalchampion Clemson, Louisville or Florida State or vs. basketball demons like Duke, North Carolina, Louisville, Notre Dame, FSU and Virginia (who are all currently ranked in the top 21 teams in the country) is nigh impossible for the Eagles unless president William Leahy is ready to lower admissions standards to a level where more topquality recruits who might not also be top-quality students are admitted. As they say down South, “You can’t cook with cold grease y’all.”
I once asked a former BC coach what it was like to work there and he succinctly described it this way: “They won’t let you lose to a guy named Tyrod Taylor but they won’t let you recruit a guy named Tyrod Taylor, either.’’
His use of Taylor, who of late has been quarterbacking the Buffalo Bills better than most of his teammates play their individual positions, may have been apocryphal but the point was not. The hard truth is some guys who are stars at Clemson or Florida State or most of BC’s ACC opponents are not getting into Boston College. At least not enough of those kind of athlete-students (as opposed to the more traditional other way around) are going to be admitted to allow BC to be truly competitive.
Attendance in both football and basketball has suffered as the losses mounted, which may not impact the bottom line as much as it does public perception because of that ACC punching bag payoff each year. But still, Leahy likes to see concessions booming and seats filled as much as any other university president at a major university running a big-time college program and that is no longer happening.
Here are the grim facts of life for BC football and basketball. In Bates’ five years, the football team went 2637 overall and 11-26 in the ACC. Worse, it was 2-14 in the conference the past two years and although coach Steve Addazio managed to cobble together a 7-6 record this year that included a victory over Maryland in the Quick Lane Bowl, it was a schedule-created record of avoidance more than achievement.
Boston College defeated only one team with a winning conference record this year and that was Wagner College, which is not a FBS school but rather competes against those in the lower FCS. The Eagles did beat two ACC schools after going 0-8 the year before, nosing out North Carolina State and Wake Forest. Those two teams finished 3-5 in the ACC, one game better than BC and had the same 7-6 overall record fashioned in pretty much the same manner.
BC beat two teams, UMass and Buffalo, who each finished 2-10 and in the bowl beat a 6-7 Maryland team that was 3-6 in the Big Ten. In other words, they’re a long way from Doug Flutie’s “Hail Mary” pass of 33 years ago but could use a few Hail Marys for the future of the football program in the ACC. If you think not, go watch the Clemson-Alabama national championship game.
As for basketball, BC’s ACC fortunes seem even bleaker. The team is 17-70 in the conference in Bates’ five-year run, has gone through two coaches and hasn’t had a winning season since the first year of Steve Donahue’s brief reign, when he went 21-13 with the remnants of Al Skinner’s final recruiting class.
Overall, the basketball program is 53-103 the past five seasons and 2-4 in the ACC tournament with three one-and-done cameo appearances. Three years ago, Bates replaced Donahue (who he inherited from former AD Gene DeFilippo, who had unwisely fired Skinner in one of his final acts a year after giving him a contract extension) with Jim Christian, but little has improved. After last night’s loss to Florida State, BC is 9-19 and 2-13 in the conference, a year after its winless conference run. Overall, Christian is 29-63 in three years and 7-47 (including tournament play) in the ACC.
Can it be that none of these guys can coach? One doubts it. One doubts even that Bates had no clue how to run the program because outside of basketball and football BC athletics is in seemingly good shape both in terms of improved facilities (thank you ACC whipping-boy cash) and many of its programs, most notably the men’s and women’s hockey teams.
The fact of the matter is, whoever BC convinces to come into this mess to replace Bates either needs assurances from Leahy that he is going to start running an ACC-style admissions program as well as ACC football and basketball programs or would be wise to rent not own because he or she won’t be here for very long.