Tuesday, August 01, 2006

Four Tiny Tidbits that Deadspin didn’t want

During the NCAA Tournament I wrote a few previews (first and second) for Deadspin. I was all set to whip up a new one for Football season. One problem: the guys at Deadspin didn’t want it. Instead of individual team Tidbits, they are going with Conference write ups. So here are the Deadspin-style Four Tiny Tidbits on Boston College that Deadspin didn’t ask for.


1. Imagine if Wally Pipp’s nephew played first base for the Yankees. Matt Ryan isn’t the first member of his family to play Quarterback for Boston College. His uncle John Loughery was an Eagle in the late '70s and early '80s. Loughery’s career was cut short when an injured thumb paved the way for some unknown freshman named Flutie.



2. You can spell B-C-S without BC. Watch any BC broadcast and someone is bound to mention that BC has the nation's longest current bowl winning streak. Yet the streak doesn’t include any BCS games or any game that has even been played in January. Winning these second-tier bowls is better than losing them, but trust me when I say the broadcasters are much more excited about this factoid than most BC fans are.


3. Boston really is a baseball town. Like many other major football programs, BC recently built a state of the art football facility called the Yawkey Center. Yes, Yawkey, as in Yawkey Way, as in former owners of the Red Soxs the Yawkey Family. After the sale of the Sox to its current ownership group, the Yawkey Trust gave BC a big chunk of change for the football facility, hence the name. Further deepening the ties between the Eagles and the Sox, BC was the first client in the Red Sox marketing offshoot the Fenway Sports Group.


4. Dual Citizenship. Much was made of BC’s defection to the ACC. Yet BC is reaching the point where they could apply for honorary membership in the MAC. Over the past five years, the Eagles have played Ball State, Toledo, and recent MAC addition Temple. This year the team kicks off its season with Central Michigan and hosts Buffalo later in the year. While these are not the most scintillating matchups, it beats playing a MAC school in the Motor City Bowl…again.

2 comments:

downtown_resident said...

The Deadspin link takes you directly to a page with a banner headline of "Boston College Golden Eagles."

Nice.

ATL_eagle said...

I didn't write the headline just the copy. We still have a ways to go downtown_resident.