Hee Hee Hee. :laugh:
December 4, 2005
Mike Shalin
Special to EagleAction.com
As the clock ticked by Sunday and it became more and more clear BC was going bowling in Boise, a comment Gene DeFilippo made after BC won at Maryland came to mind.
There was nothing Gene D could do to avoid Boise.
"Not a bad season, huh?" the director of athletics said after the Eagles finished at 8-3. "Not bad for a team that a lot of my friends in the Big East said couldn't play in this league."
Not bad at all. But good enough to only go to Boise – while those friends in the Big East pop some buttons about how BC got screwed.
Which it did.
This is nothing against Boise. I'm sure it's a lovely place. And Boise State is one of the better second-level programs in the country. And the Broncos play on a lovely blue field. And they never lose on that field (until Dec. 28, that is).
All well and good.
But it's Boise.
Boise is cold.
Boise is in the middle of nowhere.
No one would ever go to Boise unless he or she had to.
It's the Siberia of college football – through no fault of its own but Siberia is Siberia.
I checked some airfares yesterday – Northwest had one for $565. United was $612 or higher.
Now, if you wanted to go to Orlando making reservations at this late date, it could cost you that much – but it's Orlando. It's warm. You might have friends or relatives there. Disney is celebrating the 50-year thing.
And it's not Boise. But, the good news is the Marriott Courtyard costs only $69 a night.
Boy, did I pick a great year to stop traveling with BC.
Sunday night, Tom O'Brien said, "There is no bad bowl game."
Sorry, but this is a bad bowl game, where the No. 19 team in the country has been sent to play a decent team on its own blue field.
The Big East folks have to be laughing their you-know-whats off.
Again, this is no reflection on the bowl itself. Those people are known to treat teams very well. They have to – they don't get that many visitors to Boise.
Now, the reasons why the Eagles are flying to Potatoland. What happened here was a number of things, capped by Florida State and Georgia winning their championship games when they weren't supposed to (the latest in a string of games that came out the way BC didn't want them to). But, in the end, it always comes down to the way a team travels – and BC doesn't travel very well, meaning it doesn't sell enough tickets, reserve enough hotel rooms or eat or drink enough to help local economies.
I saw on the message board someone said I said this could happen. But ALL the factors contributed to it happening and DeFilippo clearly wasn't happy. Some of it was understandable. But DeFilippo noted on Sunday night's conference call that two teams – Clemson (7-4, 4-4) and North Carolina State (6-5, 3-5) – beaten by BC went to bowls ahead of the Eagles. They went because they'll sell tickets.
DeFilippo said this nonsense will have to be addressed at the next AD meeting – that there should be some kind of conference structure with these bow tie-ins, meaning your place in the standings has to count for something. For BC, it meant nothing.
The only way the conferences can fix this is by guaranteeing money to the bowls for the schools that don't travel well. In other words, its clear NC State will sell more tickets in Charlotte than BC would. The Eagles are better than the Wolfpack, but, as DeFilippo said Sunday, this is all about selling tickets.
"We're definitely disadvantaged by geographics, there's no question about that," he said. "We're going to look hard at the bowls and how the bowls are able to select teams."
That's the only way this can be fixed. There aren't a lot of bowls near Boston. When the Eagles played in the Music City Bowl, the Georgia fans had a four-hour drive to the game. Last year, Charlotte was a short drive from Chapel Hill. That's just the way it is.
I have always been hard on the BC fans, how they show up late, how they scalp their tickets to the Florida State game, etc. But this is different. No one would ask someone to buy a $565 plane ticket to go sit in the cold in Boise.
It's Boise.
"Sometimes, perceptions aren't reality," said O'Brien, adding he's spoken to people from Virginia and Georgia Tech and been told they had a great time.
But doesn't this BC group, led by Mathias Kiwanuka (he said all the right things on the conference call), deserve a better place to try to break the senior record for victories in a four-year span? Sure they do.
But, then again, a win at North Carolina would have avoided all this – at least you have to believe it would have.
"There really is not such a thing as going to a bad bowl game," said Kiwanuka, who said after the Maryland game he wanted to go somewhere warm. "We can have fun anywhere."
This will certainly be the test of that.
On the basketball front, the Eagles travel to New York, still without Sean Williams and Akida McLain, but still have a better-than-even shot at beating Michigan State at the Garden Tuesday night. McLain returns after that game and we still have to think Williams is 2-3 weeks behind.
Meanwhile, life continues without them – with a 6-0 start and real signs this team is about more than Craig Smith and Jared Dudley.
I'll say it again – Williams comes back and the Eagles can WIN the ACC.
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