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Notre Dame and Boston College agree to extend historic rivalry
Leprechaun Express: Notre Dame Football Intel Update, June 10, 2010
Extending Rivalry - Loose Scheduling Commitments? - Catholic College Football - Legendary Frank Leahy - Rollicking Rivalry - Desirability of NFL Stadium - News & Resource Links
Notre Dame and Boston College have extended their football rivalry until 2019, albeit only playing six times across nine years. The Irish and Eagles are set to meet (with home team in parentheses) in: 2011 (ND), 2012 (BC), 2015 (BC), 2016 (ND), 2018 (ND), and 2019 (BC). Gaps in the series will occur in 2013-14 and 2017.
This fall, Notre Dame already had been scheduled to play at Boston College on Oct. 2.
Said Boston College Director of Athletics Gene DeFilippo:
(Notre Dame Director of Athletics) Jack Swarbrick and I have been discussing this for some time and agreed that, as the only Catholic institutions that play FBS football, Boston College and Notre Dame should continue to play each other for a period of years," said. "Our series with Notre Dame has been very important to Boston College and our fans, and we are extremely pleased to make this announcement.
Unclear is whether Notre Dame seized the opportunity to request that Boston College host the Irish at the NFL stadium in Foxboro, rather than the somewhat smallish 44,500-seat Alumni Stadium in Chestnut Hill.
College football loose scheduling agreements?
Also unclear is the extent to which agreements involving future scheduling are aspirational, informal agreements or more closely finalized by written contractual terms. Then there is the question of whether a particular scheduling agreement involves buy-out options as might be necessitated by changing circumstances.
For example, while Notre Dame and Michigan supposedly agreed, amidst some public fanfare, to extend their series for a few decades, it might not be the case that the "agreement" by any means actually formalized specific contractual agreements beyond the near future.
At the same time, some commentators have focused on Notre Dame's scheduling moves, including setting up neutral site games, as telegraphing a lack of interest in diving into the seismic shifts associated with conference realignments.
Catholic college football: Notre Dame, Boston College, Villanova, Georgetown
As noted above by the Boston College Athletic Director, the Fighting Irish and the Eagles are the only two Catholic institutions in Div. I-A/FBS.
It might be interesting, however, to see if the BIG EAST encourages Villanova and Georgetown to move up their football programs to Div. I-A/FBS from Div. I-AA/FCS, as Connecticut once did.
Villanova is the reigning national champion in Div. I-AA/FCS, and therefore already playing at a level akin to Appalachian State several years ago when Appalachian State beat Michigan in football.
Notre Dame's legendary Frank Leahy also coached Boston College
The trophy awarded to the Notre Dame-Boston College winner is the Frank Leahy Memorial Bowl.
Notre Dame Alumnus Frank Leahy was the second-winningest coach in college football history, with two highly successful seasons at Boston College followed by 11 seasons at Notre Dame (with a hiatus during World War II) that comprised one of the greatest dynasties in sports history.
For his combined head-coaching career, Leahy was the second winningest coach in college football history with respect to winning percentage, behind his own former coach, Notre Dame's Knute Rockne. Leahy went 107-13-9 overall during the two seasons at Boston College and 11 seasons at Notre Dame.
With respect to just his tenure at Notre Dame, Leahy was actually the third-winningest Notre Dame coach, behind Rockne and Jesse Harper, Rockne's own former coach.
As Notre Dame Head Coach from 1941-43 and 1946-1953 (taking time away to serve in the U.S. Navy in World War II), Leahy was 87-11-9, with six unbeaten seasons, at least five national championships, and four Heisman trophy winners.
At Boston College, across two seasons, Leahy was 20-2, including an 11-0 season that included a Sugar Bowl victory and a disputed claim to a national championship.
Notre Dame leads Boston College series, Eagles stronger in more recent years
Notre Dame leads its series with Boston College 10-9 in what, thus far, has been a 19-game series dating back to the Dan Devine era in 1975, and included a Liberty Bowl win for Gerry Faust, but was not played more regularly until the Lou Holtz era.
Boston College, however, quietly backed its way into winning 7 of the last 9 meetings, setting up some big institutional memory issues akin to Michigan State, Charlie Weis and Jimmy Clausen helped alleviate with a dramatic 20-16 win last year at Notre Dame that went down to the wire.
1975: Notre Dame 17 - Boston College 3
1983: Notre Dame 19 - Boston College 18 (Liberty Bowl)
1987: Notre Dame 32 - Boston College 25
1992: Notre Dame 54 - Boston College 7
1993: Boston College 41 - Notre Dame 39
1994: Boston College 30 - Notre Dame 11
1995: Notre Dame 20 - Boston College 10
1996: Notre Dame 48 - Boston College 21
1997: Notre Dame 52 - Boston College 20
1998: Notre Dame 31 - Boston College 26
1999: Boston College 31 - Notre Dame 29
2000: Notre Dame 28 - Boston College 16
2001: Boston College 21 - Notre Dame 17
2002: Boston College 14 - Notre Dame 7
2003: Boston College 27 - Notre Dame 25
2004: Boston College 24 - Notre Dame 23
2007: Boston College 27 - Notre Dame 14
2008: Boston College 20 - Notre Dame 0
2009: Notre Dame 20 - Boston College 16
Rollicking history of Notre Dame - Boston College football rivalry
The Notre Dame-Boston College series began during Dan Devine's first year, when the Irish played BC at the stadium in Foxboro. Boston College apparently was proud to simply schedule the championship-winning Irish and hang with them to some degree, in a 17-3 Notre Dame win.
About a decade later, in 1983 when Boston College was building up a stronger footing for their modern program around Doug Flutie, but before Flutie won a Heisman, Notre Dame beat Boston College in the Liberty Bowl, Gerry Faust's only bowl win.
The field was frozen and treacherous, both teams scored three touchdowns, and Notre Dame won because their kicker made a single extra point early on. After that, at least one kicker wiped out on the slippery field while trying to make a kick. Both teams stopped attempting place-kicks and failed on two-point conversion attempts. So Notre Dame won by a point over a Doug Flutie-led Boston College in a bowl game.
Much more significantly with respect to bad blood, after a Notre Dame win in 1987, the teams met in 1992 with both Notre Dame and Boston College in the top-10. Boston College apparently was feeling as if they had worked their way into the upper tier of respectability.
Notre Dame absolutely hammered Boston College, 54-7. In addition to tough defense, the Irish brought a high-powered offense featuring Rick Mirer, Jerome Bettis, and Heisman contender Reggie Brooks. Brooks, a stocky, powerful back with deceptive speed and subtle, quick-shifting agility, had a penchant for ripping off huge open-field runs and long, jaw-dropping touchdowns. (In fact, Brooks would do the same against Southern Cal and other teams that year, on his way to finishing fifth for the Heisman.)
Boston College apparently took the experience personally, and marked Notre Dame for a grudge match. It was in the next season, 1993, that Boston College, full of righteous rage, staged the huge upset over the then-#1 Irish, freshly wearied from their Game of the Century victory over previously #1 Florida State a week earlier.
Down by three touchdowns, Notre Dame actually rallied for 22 points in the last half of the fourth quarter, to take the lead with a few minutes to go, also capitalizing on Boston College turnovers to hold Boston College scoreless during that stretch. Boston College responded with a drive for a game-winning field-goal, which itself saw a near-interception veritably bounce off the chest and hands of a Notre Dame linebacker.
Those two games marked the beginning of a fairly annual match-up between Notre Dame and Boston College, broken only by a hiatus during Notre Dame's best two years in recent memory, Charlie Weis's first two seasons.
Boston College did follow up the 1993 upset with another win over Notre Dame in 1994, 30-11. But 1994 was a rebuilding year, when Notre Dame went 6-5-1. At the same time Notre Dame was no slouch that year, mainly losing reasonably competitive games against good opponents. The Irish also went to the Fiesta Bowl, under then-existing Bowl Coalition rules, with a 6-4-1 record after tying Southern Cal; the Irish would lose the Fiesta Bowl by 17 points to a top-5 Colorado.
Overall in 1990's, however, Notre Dame was 5-3 against Boston College, and then won again in 2000, to be 6-3 in the series from 1992 to 2000.
In 1998 at Chestnut Hill, towards the end of the game, Boston College All-American running back Mike Cloud ran the ball four times inside the Notre Dame 4 without getting into the end zone. On fourth-and-ballgame, Notre Dame safety Deke Cooper made a tackle for a loss in the backfield to preserve a 31-26 victory for the Irish.
Then Boston College began a Quiet Streak that sort of snuck up on the Irish.
First, in 2001, Bob Davie lost to BC, just by four points, 21-17. It was his final year before getting let go.
Then, there was Willingham's first year, 2002. The Irish, in the top-5, once again having secured a stunning win over a good Florida State team, had no depth at quarterback and were playing a former walk-on as their signal-caller. Notre Dame ended up losing to BC 14-7 on a freakish turnover, run back for the deciding score.
Then in 2003 Willingham, in one of Notre Dame's worst seasons for blow-out losses in school history, lost to Boston College -- by two points, 27-25.
In Willingham's 2004 final season, when Notre Dame struggled to stay above .500 and Willingham was let go for not rebuilding a Notre Dame program now with its weakest foundations in more than a century, Willingham lost to Boston College again -- by one point, 24-23. The Irish had actually backed themselves into a top-25 ranking at the time, despite the program's weak footings, before the one-point loss to Boston College.
So, at this point, Boston College had a four-game winning streak over Notre Dame, by a combination of narrow losses and freakish happenstance.
But, as with Michigan State and its own streaks involving Notre Dame, Boston College did win the games.
The next time the two teams played was Charlie Weis's third season, the year with ugly win-loss record when Notre Dame made the balloon payment for the big Davie-Willingham downturn that had left the roster and the program's foundations in a shambles.
Ironically, the Notre Dame team that went 3-9 actually did not lose big to Boston College, even though the Eagles were ranked #4 in the country at the time. The final score was 27-13. But by now the streak was at 5 games.
In 2008, Notre Dame was still rebuilding somewhat. And quarterback Jimmy Clausen had the flu, and Notre Dame apparently did not want to burn a year of eligibility for Dayne Crist. Boston College beat Notre Dame 17-0 in one of the few decisive wins by Boston College in the series. To be fair, the Notre Dame defense acquitted itself well, only giving up 10 points. It seems the Irish defense might already have considered itself rebuilt at the time.
So the streak quietly became six games.
In 2009, Notre Dame regained control of the series when it pulled out a thriller at Notre Dame, winning 20-16.
Jimmy Clausen threw for 246 yards and two touchdowns, including what turned out to be the game-winner halfway through the fourth quarter, a 36-yard touchdown pass to Belitnekoff Award winner Golden Tate. On the day Tate had two touchdowns on 11 catches for 128 receiving yards.
Notre Dame's defense, maligned later in the season, was impressive, shutting down the run and securing five turnovers, including a Brian Smith interception at the Notre Dame 22 to seal the win for the Irish at about the 1:40 mark in the final quarter.
Should Boston College play Notre Dame at the NFL stadium in Foxboro?
When Notre Dame reportedly was attemptiong to negotiate an initially 10-game series with Connecticut, and asking UCONN to host Notre Dame at NFL stadia in the New York City or Boston areas, the Connecticut legislature brought up the fact that Notre Dame had been willing to play Boston College at smaller stadium when raising cane over UCONN not hosting at its fairly new regular home field.
(There were other issues at stake, including the fact that UCONN is a state school, that the NFL stadia in question were out-of-state, the investment in UCONN's news stadium, and bad blood over the New England Patriots, whose stadium is in Foxboro, flirting with the idea of moving to Connecticut and then backging out. But the Notre Dame-Boston College games came up in the political debate, and Notre Dame has indeed reportedly sought opportunities to set up games with opponents willing to do what Navy does regularly, which is to move their home game with the Irish to a major venue like an NFL stadium.)
- Back to the Top -
:: Fighting Irish Game Day: Notre Dame vs. Boston College
:: BC-Irish gridiron rivalry extends to 2019 - Boston Herald
:: BC and Notre Dame Extend Football Series To 2019 - BCEagles.com, June 9, 2010
:: BC-Notre Dame agree to 6 more football games - Boston Globe
:: ND-BC extend rivalry - South Bend Tribune
:: BC delivers with extension of Notre Dame rivalry - ESPN.com
:: Notre Dame, Boston College extend rivalry - Chicago Tribune/Chicago Breaking Sports
:: Frank Leahy biography - UND.com
:: Notre Dame Football official site - UND.com
Keywords: Notre Dame Football, Fighting Irish, Frank Leahy, Jack Swarbrick, Mike Cloud, Deke Cooper, Boston College Football, Boston College Eagles, College Football, Football, Foxboro, Chestnut Hill, Notre Dame Stadium, Notre Dame Indiana
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