Personally I understand Donnie wanting to wear his number in his final home game. I just hope that he or one of the other defensive backs decides to wear the 31 for the final game of the season. College football thrives on traditions and although young, this tradition has heart. It also keeps the connection the defensive backs have to prior teams and it honors McGillis.
Wednesday, November 16, 2011
Explanation of the missing 31 on Saturday
When no player wore Jay McGillis's 31 on Saturday, BC fans online wondered what happened. Since no one had an answer, I asked BC SID Chris Cameron. His explained that the decision has always been the players and was never forced by the team. Chris also pointed out that although it feels like BC has been doing it forever this tradition only started with Jazzmen Williams. He did not know if the current McGillis Scholarship holder Donnie Fletcher would wear the 31 against Miami.
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It would truly be a sad day if there was no Jay McGillis 31 out there this season... It may seem "little" to many, but this would be the final nail in Gene's hat, to me. In my post-BC days, I work at a funeral home, and I know these "little" things make huge differences to families. It may be the players choice, but I assume they're not doing this to rebel against Spaz/BC. I'm going to give them the benefit of the doubt and guess BC "let it slip through the cracks" this year.
eagle1331- you realize the Spring Game is named after Jay McGillis, right? I'd say that's a pretty great tribute to his memory by the University.
I don't understand the problem. It would appear to be an honor to wear 31. That was my number in high school.
How can Penn. ST. fix the mess it is in? 1. Clean house! Replace interim president with John Garvey, president at Catholic U. Garvey is an ND grad and was dean at BC Law. 2. Hire Gladchuk as AD. 3. Hire TOB or P. Johnson as football coach thus terminating all ties to Sandusky and Paterno and their associates.4 Exit the Big 10 and join with ND to form a new conference.( NBC would be interested in this arrangement and might pay fair market value to it's members unlike ESPN)5.Invite the ACC schools to join. All may do so negating exit fees. 6.If BC were the only ACC school to leave they should join anyway( NBC would pick up part of the exit fee and the yearly payout would be higher) 7. George Will wrote in a recent article that ESPN is practically a monopoly controlling 33 of 35 bowl games.He pointed out that football coaches at LSU and BAMA get 4 million ayear while school presidents get 400G.(What about 400G for a president and 1 million for a feckless AD, GDF, at a private college?)The Congress should pass a law that any school recieving any federal funds is prohobited from paying any school employee more than the the US President(400G).8.If Will's position on monopoly is true and Gdf's statement "ESPN told us what to do" supports that, then ESPN,the ACC, SYR. and UCONN may be facing serious anti trust problems that dwarf those of Penn. St.9. Gdf boasted that he kept UCONN out of thr ACC for turf reasons yet a few years earlier he voted to add UCONN to the Big EAST in football. Why does turf matter today when it didn't yesterday? Is this another case of Gdf being delusional? Someone has to get to the bottom of this.
Coach Tom Coughlin has done a wonderful job in response to this tragic loss of Jay's young life.
http://tcjayfund.org/
The Tom Coughlin Jay Fund Foundation was created in 1996 in the honor of Jay McGillis. Jay was a very special young man who developed leukemia while a member of the football team at Boston College. Tom Coughlin was inspired by the courage, compassion and faith he and his family demonstrated during the course of his illness.
Jay was diagnosed with leukemia in November, 1991 (the day before a nationally televised home game against the University of Miami), and lost his battle just eight months later, on July 3, 1992.
In honor of this Brockton all-scholastic - who was awarded a scholarship at BC based upon his grit and sheer determination - let's shock the college football world and defend the hell out of ND on Saturday.
Go BC - beat ND!.
Just doodling and thinking about the sad state of BC Football, and in particular our rivalry with Notre Dame. We have won 9 games, and Notre Dame has won 11.
We completely dominated ND just 3 short years ago, but now we are a shell of our former selves because of mismanagement and terrible coaching.
The result is that this year I range from not caring at all to wanting to jump on a plane and confronting our AD and HC over their dismantling of our program.
Boston College does not deserve to get soundly beaten by ND this Saturday, because I believe in my heart that other coaches could have molded this group of BC players into a winning team starting 3 years ago. But as our Head Coach Frank Spaziani would say “it is what it is”.
Rather than wallowing in disgust of our present situation (it’s not good for our health), let’s look back to our very first game with the Fighting Irish - it was such an exciting buildup.
Please realize that we older fans always rooted for Notre Dame because they were our national team, so to speak. We were always very proud of our own team, but ND was the big Catholic School program.
This does not mean that when we finally got our chance we didn’t want to beat the heck out of them - on the contrary, we were (are) tough guys from a big city with a sh…y climate - bring it on!!!! We were the real “Fighting Irish”! :-)
And so it was such a big deal when the Fighting Irish agreed to come to Boston (Foxboro) on a Monday Night to open our 1975 season! In those years BC didn’t have much depth, but we looked forward to playing a team that returned many players from its National Championship Team in 73!
Would they kill us, or would our pride be such that we would hold our own with a chance to shock them?
It was during these years that Bill Flynn began scoring big out of region teams to come to Chestnut Hill (Texas in 74 and 76; Miami 75; Texas A&M 76; Tennessee in 79), or we would travel there (Texas Tech 71; Georgia Tech 72; Texas A&M 73; Tennessee 77; Stanford and Miami 79) . MAC schools were not on Flynn’s wish list.
In my mind, this period marked our slow rise to a stronger program. My blood boils when I think of how fast Spaziani and Defilippo have destroyed it all – but that’s another story.
Next Post
09-15-1975, Foxboro, MA ND 17 BC 3
Billed as the Catholic Super Bowl and the Leahy Bowl, the first ever meeting between the two schools gave Dan Devine his first victory as Notre Dame's head coach. The game was broadcast nationally on a Monday night in 1975, drew a capacity crowd of 61,501 to the Patriot’s Stadium in Foxboro, Mass.
Though BC lost 17--3, we like to think that a rivalry was born that would carry over into an '83 Liberty Bowl matchup and take off in earnest in the '90s.
ND was ranked #9 in the country at game-time in that inaugural appearance. (ND finished 8 and 3 and were ranked in the Top 15 for most of the season - I think they finished up at #17, but not sure). Their losses were to USC, Michigan State and Pittsburgh [Tony Dorsett] which won the NC in 1976).
Ross Browner led an aggressive Irish defense that shut down Mike Kruczek (50 yards passing) and recovered a fumble to set up Jim Browner, who led the team with 95 yards rushing, for a 10-yard touchdown.
Later in the third quarter, Randy Harrison's interception led to Al Hunter's 24-yard insurance score. That was the player I feared the most. The guy was from Greenville, NC and I remembered that he had also run a kickoff back against Alabama in the Sugar Bowl in ND’s 1973 National Championship Season when he was a freshman.
Hunter rushed for 102 yards in a 20 – 9 victory over Penn State in the Gator Bowl that year at the end of the 75 season.
Hunter, along with Ross Browner and three other Notre Dame players, was returning from a one-year suspension.
Glenn Capriola led Boston College with 107 yards rushing. In those years, BC did not have a lot of depth, but we played a nationally ranked team very tough.
Where do we stand today, Frank and Gene?
In honor of Jat McGillis and in recognition of our very first game with ND in 1975, please join me in this rendition from Revere's own
27th Lancers - 1975 edition.
(Sorry, I don't know how to paste this in properly).
1975 27th Lancers Danny Boy
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kOFE6GaPQCU
1975 27th Lancers entire routine (Danny Boy comes in around the 10 minute 15 second mark - really cool.)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=80h5F4q_HV4&feature=related
Go BC - Beat ND
great comments bkj, always enjoy the history lessons
BJK-
Although I appreciate the historical perspective, I wouldn't hold out the 1970's as some sort of heyday of BC football. Look at the record books. We went 0-11 in 1978. We went 1-9 against ranked teams over the course of the decade. MAC schools might not have been on Bill Flynn's menu, but Villanova, Umass, Tulane, and other patsies were. We never went to a bowl game. We often drew only 10,000 - 19,000 for home games.
This is a bad year for BC football, but overall I'll take the modern era (circa 2000-present) of BC football over the 1970's any day.
You're right, Tim - and I don't want to go back there. That's what I meant when I said "our slow rise to a stronger program".
Our attendance will continue to fall off with losses and a boring Spaziani 3 or 4 -play (RRPP) offense. If we become non-competitive in the ACC, we'll soon see 19K for attendance on a chilly autumn day against Wake or MD or Duke, etc. - just like the 70's.
Villanova was part of the so-called "Eastern Independent Conference", so we played them every year. They weren't chosen because they were patsies. They beat us a couple of times in the 70's and many of our wins were very close.
UMass was another story, although they beat us in 72 and 78. (we paid them back in 73 and 74 for sure) :-)
Our record against Tulane in the 70's was 3 wins and 5 losses.
I'm still mad at Joe Yukica for being too conservative and punting, rather than going for it on 4th down, late in the 1975 game. We were only down 10-3 and Joe didn't try to pick up the first down. He punted and ND scored its "insurance" TD.
We were in a position to win and Yukica seemed satisfied with merely having been competitive against ND. Sound familiar? The program fell to 0-11in 1978.
The game at Shaeffer Stadium in Foxboro was packed and the parking lot parties and traffic james were amazing. Reports of what went on may have been what frightened the Newton people into all of the tailgating restrictions.
I don't think a different DB should wear 31, its Fletcher or BUST IMO since he's the McGillis scholarship. That's actually one fo the better parts of the spring game, finding out who gets that scholarship and who (typically) will wear #31 in the last game.
I agree he shouldn't be forced to wear it, I just don't get why he wouldn't. Hopefully he does for Miami, it doesn't really matter if it is home/away to make a tribute.
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