The Music City Bowl officials are worried about Vanderbilt fans not spending enough money. There should be plenty of good hotel rooms from which to choose.
BC has offered 2010 running back Jamaal Jackson.
BC was among those schools visiting Joel Knight.
The dates are set for our next two home games with Kent State.
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38 comments:
just wanted to move the thread about whether or not the band should travel with the team to today's posts. the group that i went to tampa with last weekend discussed a couple of things in this vein. first, it's awesome when the whole band comes. it makes the game more fun, the students who play in the band tend to be pretty awesome and vocal fans, and it makes our meager crowds look a little better. we were talking about how the home student section is way better now than when we graduated 5 or so years ago, but they still dont travel. if it's cool to go to home games, wouldn't sending 200+ kids help to make it cool to travel? i mean, these kids have roomates, maybe if they're going they can convince their buddies to go as well.
one last small thing. it seems like when we win an away game, the team comes over to the visiting fan section for the alma mater. when we lose, not so much. it would be nice for the team to show a little appreciation for the fans who do travel. especially these postseason games, win or lose, fans like to show support for the seniors. just a heads up for jags.
ATL:
1. Quit yer (constant) whining about the bad travelling by BC fans ... there are lots of valid reasons why people do not want to fly (or drive) several thousand miles to see a football game. BC fans are still be good fans even though they are not as zealous as fans from Nebraska or Michigan or Clemson who travel anywhere at anytime for their teams . . . really, think about the mindset of these fans and why we choose BC and not some insane sport-first-and-only school.
2. VTech did not travel well to Tampa either. That should tell about he undesirablity of going to Tampa last weekend.
3. Bowl games are about making money for bowl sponsors and that's it. Competition is secondary. Clemson gets a 1/1 bowl because they bring in the $$. But that does not mean they have a good football team.
I think there is a very big difference between setting up a trip to Tampa with less than a week's notice and having nearly a month to plan a New Year's Eve vacation to Miami for the Orange Bowl. It is not just a straw man argument.
I have tried to remain silent for several days. I didn't want to say anything rash about the game before cooling off and seeing it again.
As I stated once before, Gene's hire of Jag's was bad. Jag's has poor judgement. Why stay with Davis? Why start him if his mind was not there? Put in Billy Flutie at least. The team was unprepared for the game. After you play a team 4 times in the last 12 months, you should come out a little stronger.
The season was a disappointment...quite simply no BCS bowl. Who cares about the Music City Bowl? Cmon....yahoo says that it is the 28 worst bowl out of 36. If we say this season was a success cause we lost Ryan and went back to the ACCCG, it is a cop out. Let's admit it that Gene needs to go and so does Jags.
No more dreaming folks. The Music City Bowl is not enough. Reach for the Heights and if you coach can't take you there fire him. Good Riddance Jags, go back to Green Bay and coach Rogers.
Steve Logan that is another story. The guy's coaching history is terrible and Jag's hire of him is another example of bad judgment.
I'm going to assume that Bline's post is ENTIRELY sarcastic...What really gets me is this miserable OOC schedule we've got...Has this season taught GDF nothing??????? It does not matter if we lose to an awesome OOC team 100-0, if we win the ACC we're in the Orange Bowl, if we dont, we're Nashville/SF/Boise bound...I'm seriously reconsidering buying season tix after seeing our home slate next year...
mod34b, I am not trying to whine. I am trying to point out to those who complain about the bowl system or our travel rep that we don't have much of an arguement against it. We've been given two big games, two years in a row to turnout for and didn't. It is what it is.
Karen:
These were championship games on Saturday, on the east coast. One with two weeks notice. One with incredibly cheap airfare. We brough less than 3,000 people each year. There is no way 20,000 BC fans would pack up and go to the Orange Bowl.
Brookline....I completely disagree with your statement about Jags....Jags and his staff are simply the best thing to hit BC football since Doug Flutie.
ATL - I tried booking a room last night at several downtown Nashville hotels...no vacancies. Had to grab one near Vanderbilt. There's a disconnect on the hotel rooms.....PS you do a great job.
Bline, give me a break.
I would not be suprised to hear the whisperings of some of our boosters questioning the direction of the program after another loss in the ACCCG. There is a small minority of boosters that were unhappy with Gene's selection of Jags but let it slide to see how he would do. They were all for Whipple. Now with a Music City Bowl berth that means nothing, they can now slowly influence Father Leady to get rid of Jags and bring in Whipple or a coach with a better pedigree.
How the hell can you argue with Jagz's results the last two years? This year's team lost arguably the best QB in college football and then its starter during the season and still made the ACCCG. The program is on the upswing and a force in the ACC. You and your alleged anonymous boosters can feel free to cry all you want about Whipple, who is a good coach.
Rob:
Just admit that Jags was a bad hire. Mark Whipple was a better fit for the program. He comes with more experience and better ability. Jags was just able to butter up Gene and Fr. Leahy during the interview.
At least TOB, would have the intelligence to have replaced Davis with Flutie before the start of the game.
Brookline12, you really have your finger on the pulse of BC football. If you think whispers among alums is going to derail what Gene wants, you are mistaken (see TOB, see Inglese).
I won't admit it because it's not backed up by any substance.
Mod34b and Karen and others - I agree that there are many valid reasons not to travel 1000 miles for a football game, etc. However, we play in a conference and our goal is to win that conference. As the season progresses fans can pencil in their plans for the Championship Game well ahead of time. This year round trip flights from New York and Atlanta to Tampa were less than $150.00, for example, and there were plenty of economy hotel rates. I know that the air rates from Boston were higher, but I didn't check any other alternatives.
You're either of a mind set to go with the team all the way, or you're not - I understand that. Having only 1 week to plan is not valid, however, in my opinion - most fans could see this coming and were making their "what if" decisions well in advance.
Jax and Tampa are not good sites for the ACCCG - Swofford was nuts to put the games there.
But picture the 2010 ACCCG in Charlotte with BC against UNC (as an example). Bank of America Stadium will be rocking with 73,000 fans - a good many of whom are fans of other ACC schools. Under those circumstances, being one of say 10,000 BC fans could be as exciting as it gets for a college football fan. The road to Miami on New Years goes through the ACCCG for us.
Ben - I posted this earlier:
Come on, BC - come on, Gene - we need the entire band in Nashville. We want to put our best foot forward for sure. What about the MusicFest/Battle of the Bands presented by CMT - Tuesday, December 30, 6pm. Downtown on historic 2nd Ave. / Commerce Street. Admission to the bands performance is FREE. Bowl Patch holders receive special discounts at participating MusicFest restaurants and entertainment venues.
Come on BC - Come on GDF - Come on Director of the Band - let's do the right thing. Otherwise we will look really bad - maybe even pathetic....sending 39 members of the Marching Band to the Music City Bowl. Are you nuts? A game in Nashville against Vanderbilt can be a wonderful overall student recruiting tool for Boston College - if done properly.
This game was a sellout last year (Kentucky v. Florida State) and I think I read somewhere that it ranked 9th in viewing audience of all the bowls. There will be plenty of comments about the educational quality of both schools. Do it right, BC - please.
See we now understand what it is about....
It is not about what BC wants or what is best for BC...it is about what Gene wants and what is best for Gene.
brookline,
please dont say anything else on this blog.
Thank you Brookline for pulling the all-star move of stating your own ridiculous opinion and then seeking to give it weight by saying it's substantiated by "whispers of big time boosters."
Bline is out of his mind with his comment about Jags. Yes, the loss sucked, but seriously, we were playing with a 19 year old kid making his second start at QB against one of the nation's best defenses. We were barely supposed to break .500 this year and we won the Atlantic crown again. Bottom line: Jags is a great coach. He took a team with nothing and made them a contender.
Plus, the student body is excited about this program. He's a fun coach, an exciting coach, and has respect from his team, the BC community (Campus School), and his colleagues throughout the ACC.
Does anyone else think Brookline12 might be Tom O Brien coming back to haunt us?
Brookline, I get that BC fans shouldn't settle or something. However, by your logic Mike Leach should be fired at Texas Tech, Mark Richt should definitely be fired at UGA, and coaches like Belloti and Spurrier and Butch Davis should all be fired for not winning their conference. If we win the bowl game, no other coach will have ever won as many games in 2 seasons as Jags, and we were ranked as high as #2 last year. You are completely disconnected with the vast majority of BC fans, both current students and alumni, if you think Jags is held in anything other than the highest esteem. In your opinion, therefore, any coach we hire next year should take us to a BCS bowl because if they don't, like Jags hasnt in his first two years, they should be fired. So basically you expect us to be firing coaches every couple of years? Wow, classy fan you are
Eagle, I usually agree with nearly everything you say, but you make it sound like two weeks is a lot of notice. This year we did not have that extra week and it could not have come at a worse time. It was the week after Thanksgiving, so many students had just traveled and our finals start this week. In other words, it wasn't a good time to just up and go to Florida.
Also, I can't agree that there was "incredibly cheap airfare." My roommate went at $270 to go there and back in the same day. I realize that's not that much money, but at the same time, it's pretty steep for at least me, a college kid with no money. And he came back the same day, if he had stayed a night, it would have been even more. Then you have to factor in that there are people who definitely cannot afford BOTH the bowl game and the championship game and are holding out for the orange bowl. I know that's terrible logic, but it's just a fact of money.
Bline is totally crazy but he has a point. It is not just about having a good season. It is about having a great season every year or at least competing for the ACC championship.
Do I think we should fire JAGS? Of course not but you have to start to question some of his decisions this season. The VTech game needs to be questioned. If Davis was not prepared, why go with him?
Brookline - why was Mark Whipple a better fit for the BC Program? I'm not being sarcastic. When the job was open, I thought he might have been the leading candidate, but he didn't come out on top in the interview process. Are you saying that GDF only picked Jags because he could perhaps "over power" the guy, but felt he couldn't do that with Whipple? Or are you saying that Whipple flat out would have been a much better Head Coach at Boston College than Jags from the mid-west? Ultimately I formed a judgment that Coach Whipple (fairly or unfairly) would have been another Dan Henning. Jags is doing a lot better than Kragthorpe at Louisville - another candidate for the BC job.
I certainly respect Whipple's record at the University of Massachusetts where he posted a 49-25 (.662) record in six years (1998-2003. Is that your main reasoning? Their pro experience is a wash, really.
For the record - I like Jags - I think he's a very nice fit for BC and no coach is perfect. I'd be happy knowing someone in my family was playing for such a coach. He looks pretty good so far. Wait a couple of years when he really brings it home. Maybe he'll have a year when the team isn't decimated by injuries that would be nice.
Big Jack Crack, I also don't fully agree with penciling in the ACCC game in advance. We didn't have that set in until the fourth quarter against Maryland the week before. It's probably smart to just plan ahead, but at the same time, there's the human element of looking too far in the future and then being heartbroken year after year. Plus, you can plan ahead for it, but you wouldn't actually buy your ticket in advance and then the prices aren't nearly as favorable.
I'm not excusing our attendance the past two years, but it isn't as "it is what it is" cut and dry as people make it seem. I still think the Orange Bowl would be different.
Unless Jags can catch a whale like TOB did with William Green, we are in trouble.
Bline. No way would TOB have gone with Flutie. He didn't think Flutie was a QB. That's why Billy was a WR the last two years as well as the back-up punter. Our back-up QB going into yesterday would have been Ross Applegate, who isn't even on the roster at Alabama anymore.
The honest truth is that once in his career TOB had us in position to win the conference outright (2004) and Jags has done it both of his first two years on the job. If that's your criterion (competing for conference championships) Jags has far outperformed TOB.
Now every coach makes questionable decisions and I won't defend Jags for sticking with Apon all year or the general energy the team displayed Saturday, but you act like the coach is omniscient and omnipotent. He can't read Davis' mind and it does appear that the kid was by far our best option over the weekend (Chris Johnson? Billy Flutie? Really?). Remember when Crane was really struggling and their names NEVER came up? There's a reason for that.
I certainly did not want to come off as hostile in my first post. From Boston, fares were at least 350 round trip and the weekend was going to be around $1000 all in. And I definitely thought long and hard about going. Maybe 20000 fans would not have jumped on board for Miami, especially with so many people struggling in this economy. But there would have been far more than 3000 BC fans at the Orange Bowl.
I cannot understand how anyone could be unsatisfied with the job Jags has done so far. The team is far better off now than it was two years ago and will perform even in the coming years because of Jags.
Gionta, your points are mutually exclusive. I can want the best for this program and not be happy with losing the ACCCG, as I am. But I also can look at the overall status of the program and be happy with it including the team's performance this year given the loss of so many key players and low expectations to start the year.
Brookline you are a completely wrong when it comes to the BC football program. BC was picked to finish 4th in the Atlantic Division behind Clemson, FSU, and Wake during the preseason. The team lost one of the top QBs in the country, a very strong O-lineman (Cherilus), every RB on the team (until Jeff Smith returned late), and 3 or 4 of the most important pieces of our defense (Dunbar, Silva, Tribble, Pruitt). On offense Jags/Logan had to recruit a true freshman starting RB (since the cupboard was empty due to TOB), break in a 5th year senior QB that had only started one game his entire college career, move a tackle from right to left in order to protect his new QBs blindside, and adjust the offense to a new style of QB. Spaz had a slightly easier job on D since Raji returned and Toal was healthy, but had to rely on an incredibly young/inexperienced secondary and fill the holes left in the LB depth. Not only were they able to effectively fill many of the holes, but they also were able to adjust during the season on offense in order to make Crane more comfortable in the offense. I give Jags and Logan a ton of credit on offense and nothing but praise should be laid on Spaz as the defense was the heart and soul of this team. Obviously the team fell short in the ACCCG, but what do you expect when you bring in a redshirt frosh QB that had started one previous game and wasn't really challenged by a strong D (Bud Foster is another fantastic D coodinator). I am just as sick as the next fan of these mid-tier bowls, but at the beginning of the season you would have been laughed at if you predicted them to go to the ACCCG - I will be pretty satisfied with a bowl win over and SEC team and another 10-win season given the preseason expectations.
Brian:
Preseason expectations are also always wrong. Don't think what we did is an act of God. Let's leave our Catholic guilt behind; the truth will set us free.
Bline, you're pretty clearly just some clown who wants to be a pretend contrarian on here. If you actually think this way, good luck to you.
Davis played for the same reason Crane played all season - no matter how mentally or physically unprepared he was, he was the best option.
Unless they knew we are getting one of the 2 top QB recruits we're still after, you're not going to blow Tuggle's redshirt on the ACCCG, nevermind in front of a national audience at Raymond James Stadium. Something tells me a QB making his first start in that situation would be worse than one making a second start. You don't play Flutie because the closest he's come to playing QB in 4 years is that fake FG. It would have been exciting, but it would have been just as ugly, I'm sure.
Logan did what he could with a weeks time with Davis, and it turned out well at Wake. He wasn't going to be able to do it 2 weeks in a row with different QBs. They have to build a report with the center, a feel with the line and RBs, and synergy with the WR. Anyone thats played football knows that.
As for flights, I drove, so I'm not voice of reason, but I stayed with one friend from Boston that paid $145 R/T and one that paid 300+, and they were on the same flights... it was just a matter of when you booked it, where you booked it through, and revenue management on the airlines parts...
Preseason expectations are based on everyone's expectations of what each team will do during the season (novel concept). My point was that BC was not expected by anyone to be as competitive as they were this year. If they can win the bowl game, it is quite an accomplishment to start a coaching tenure with 2 straight 10-win seasons, especially at a school that does not attract the top talent. Would a ACC title/BCS bowl appearance have made it even better? Absolutely! But calling for Jags/Logan's heads after two strong strong seasons is absurd. If that were the standard, TOB would have to be fired right now as well since he hasn't done anything at NC State (and don't even get me started with Charlie Weis). BC is not going to become USC, UF, OSU, OU, or one of the elite programs and to have expectations set at "BCS game or bust" every year is just being naive about college football.
I honestly can't believe anyone would complain about Jags. Are you kidding? We're not a football factory because we graduate our team--look at the graduation rates of the top programs in the country. Schools are willing to make the trade-off. BC is not. That instills a bit of pride in me as an alum. But, to a few others, perhaps there's a different definition of success. Perhaps others want BC to be UF or UGA. I certainly don't. Having said that, we probably should've won the conference on Saturday, but disappointment happens quite often when dealing with 20 year olds. Davis and the defense both kinda stunk and that's that. It happens.
However, you'll never get me to believe that BC will ever have an above-average fanbase. Unless, of course, we begin to dominate the ACC year-in and year-out and people's mindsets change (not to be disappointed in a big-game performance).
We'd have enough trouble selling the 17,500 OB ticket allotment.
I don't know the inside scoop on the band issue, but I do hope the entire band can make it and that the decision rests with the Athletics dept. and not the kids. It's the little things that often change the culture.
OK, this is addressing anyone who thinks Billy Flutie should have played QB on Saturday. I have seen at least three people echo these sentiments.
REALLY???????????????
As bad as Crane and Davis were this year (at times), Flutie couldn't even make the 2 deep to start the season. If you think Davis was overwhelmed, think about how Flutie would have reacted with absolutely no time as a D1 QB, going up against a VaTech defense. One in a million. If matty ryan performed the way he did against Syracuse in game 1, think about what flutie would have done vs. VT.
And I doubt he has many reps with the first team. As out of sync as Davis looked at times with the offense, it probably would have been worse with Flutie.
Can we put this to rest? I dunno if it's because of his last name, but this has to be one of the most ridiculous things that I have ever heard. PLEASE stop and think before typing a generic football thought (insert the backup QB when starter struggles...AND his last name is Flutie!!!). I bet you are the same type of football fan that screams holding when there is a flag in the backfield after 10 seconds of protection. And then wants praise for knowing the call.
It's so ridiculous it's making me angry.
In fact, I bet these are the same fans that called for Davis to start when Crane was struggling.
please. stop it.
Thank you, Matthew. I completely agree. Would I love it if Billy Flutie turned out to be Doug Flutie, or Matt Ryan, 2.0? Hell yeah. But there's a reason he wasn't on the two-deep and there's a reason TOB moved him to wideout.
Quite simply, Jags has very few options - even with Crane - healthy at QB. The prize QB that TOB recruited after Crane - Ross Applegate - never took a snap at the Heights and there was no one on the roster between Crane and Davis.
Here's some food for thought:
What if BC actually WAS an ACC title contender to begin with? We hear how depleted the team will be and how we'll finish in the middle of the pack in the preseason, but guess what, this team is one thing, and it is a division winner and ACC runnerup.
So remove the BC name and just look at it as team X. If you look at the year and analyze the team's decision making as a division winner (again, throw out everything from the preseason, this is a DIVISION WINNER), are you happy? Are you satisfied? Would you have made any changes?
Before you start stoning Brookline12, try looking at it from another perspective.
Karen - I didn't think you were hostile. I know that cost is a real issue, especially for students and younger fans. I know it was for me when I was a student. And Walter makes a good point. I'm an optimist, and have fun with "what if" scenarios.
One thing I was thinking when I mentioned the cost from NYC - 4 to 6 students could drive there from Boston, somehow hit up the relatives for the cost of the flight and say an extra $100 and all share a room at a Residence Inn type hotel. What the heck - it's college or it's "we're still young, let's find a way".
But I also know that attending a game in an empty stadium is no fun. I think Charlotte will be better.
Finally - if we aspire to win this conference, we have to think about how we might get to the championship game. It's never going to be easy for BC folks.
I live 90 miles south of Bank of America Stadium in Charlotte. If we ever make that game, I promise to have scoped out the area well ahead of time - and through ATL will publish suggestions for safe, lower cost hotels nearby, etc. You name it - we can be well prepared with the BC Club of NC.
That's all I'm saying - maybe someday we'll figure out how to make this game a game that most students and fans want to go to. We're in the ACC - so unfortunately any game like this is not going to be nearby to BC - but Charlotte is accessible.
I'll shut up for now :-)
Brookline-
You, sir, are no Observer College.
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