1. Mark Herzlich's return from cancer. This is already a huge and worthy story. It will only get bigger Saturday. Depending on how he plays, this might become one of the biggest national stories of the college football year.
2. Anthony Castonzo's Rhode Scholarship candidacy. Think of how big the Myron Rolle story was. Now add in the factor that Castonzo is better football player than Rolle ever was. This is a top ten pick, who just happens to be a bio-chem major, who wants to be a doctor.
3. Dave Shinskie -- former baseball player. This is not a new story but now Shinskie is the full time starter and hopefully a more complete player. If he plays well, his baseball background will get mentioned ad nauseam.
4. Frank Spaziani -- underrated, old school coach. Spaz is hardly a great quote or a media darling. But if he puts together another winning season and brings BC back to the ACC Championship game, the media will start to credit him for all of BC's success over the past ten years. It doesn't hurt that in a cookie cutter profession, Spaz also looks a little different and talks a little different from most DIA coaches.
5. Billy Flute -- the legacy realized. Although Flutie has played four years, this will be the first season where he starts and is a significant playmaker. Each shot of Billy will probably be followed by a shot of Doug in the stands.
These are just the predictable plots. Other players will surely emerge and provide more media fodder. Let's just hope it all has a happy ending.
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9 comments:
ATL,
You could not be more right about this year's team. Check out the huge respect we got from Herbstreit in this year's Herbies. Not only did we get 4 guys on the list. BC was his sleeper team for the ACC with Miami over BC in the title game. Now that's a game I think BC nation will travel for, and one I would really like to see. Rankings be damned, I like us as "sleeper", catching people off guard.
All great points ATL.
Unfortunately, all the Boston media has done is collectively yawn. It's game week with all of these storylines and Globe hasn't had a BC article in days and the best the Herald has come up with is the obligatory "Weber sucks but we're taking them seriously" article from Spaz.
Wtf?? At this point we're getting more coverage from ESPN (Maisel, Herbie, HD, Rice) than we are our own local papers.
On the bright side it is game week so I'm sure at some point the Globe will trot out Ryan and he'll write some canned piece touching all the storylines making sure to spell at least one player's name wrong and toss in a few backhanded compliments and references to Boston being a pro sports town.
I'm not 100% convinced Shinskie will be our full year starter for 12-14 games yet.
I say this as someone who
- was at the spring game
- read all the scrimmage articles
- saw Uncle Dave play last year
I hope he plays great and its a non-issue but I need to see big improvement to acknowledge the job is fully his.
Dan-
The New York Times Co. owns both the Boston Globe and a significant share of the Boston Red Sox. As long as that situation persists, they will continue to give short shrift to BC and other local sports in favor of covering (read: cross-advertising) the Red Sox. It's a business decision.
I've not commented in a while, but have been reading up as the season is about to start.
Erik -- I've read you posts of late, and must say that you are a total weenie.
Dan -- liked your comment. The Boston newspapers become more and more irrelevant with each passing day. The Globe has always been anti-BC at some level, so who cares what they say. And the guy from the Herald is not exactly a respected national reporter -- he is just a grunt who occasionally has a telephone call with Spaz and prints the highlights.
Have you noticed that the Globe on Twitter has very extensive tweets on college football in general, but does not bother really covering BC. But this is old news, the Boston media has always refused to cover ANY college sports with anything more than a passing article or two. Even WEEI with two former BC fottball players as hosts and Meter as a morning sidekick only give BC passing mention. If there was a big audience for BC football, these guys at WEEI would be talking more about BC football. But I guess the audience is not there (yet!)
I disagree: there definitely is a sizable audience, but it's ironically not anchored exclusively in the Boston market (alumni and student base is skewed to the tri-state area, NJ/NY/CT). That's why the inception of ESPN Boston is a net gain for BC coverage. Two forces are at work: website starved for content and a more national platform to reach the BC diaspora.
Curious to see what the "Official Visit" recruit rosters will look like for early games of note like VT and ND. A lot of solid weekend options (Clemson included) on which to sell kids.
Of the 14 posts on "Lunchtime Links" 10 ACC schools are covered by at least one of their local media outlets.
Schools not covered?
Maryland (but the Washington Post does have an entire ACC preview) and you guessed it Boston College.
I get we're not the lead sports story in Boston but as EagleinBrighton pointed out most BC fans aren't in the area and rely on the internet for coverage. In the age of sports blogs reposting links the Herald and Globe would reap the benefit of getting eyeballs from sites people actually give a crap about (ATL, BCI, HD, etc...) getting redirected to them.
Oh well, I'm done complaining about crappy Boston support.
4 days til kickoff...
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