Wagner’s Brandon Peoples (5) recovers his own fumble as Boston College’s Isaac Yiadom (20) and John Johnson (9) rush in during the first half of last weekend’s game. AP Photo
I must preface this by saying the folks at Boston College have been very good to the Daily Item, going back to the mid-1980s when getting into a Doug Flutie game was harder than scoring a ticket for “Hamilton.” We have to know that going in, OK?
But what is BC doing playing a team like Wagner? I can understand the school’s willingness to share the wealth when it comes to taking care of local teams. Games against Maine, and Northeastern, and UMass, in cases such as this, aren’t scheduled merely for the automatic “W,” though that certainly doesn’t hurt. However, the local schools make out monetarily in the deal so that it’s not a total loss.
But Wagner’s not a local school. It’s on Staten Island, and it has no relationship with BC at all. And it’s so far beneath BC’s level of Division 1 play that it’s laughable.
So should last week’s decisive, 42-10 victory over Wagner (and, really, it should have been decisive even given BC’s difficulty beating Atlantic Coast Conference opponents) be the game that lifts the Eagles over the threshold to a bowl game invitation, then they should skip the honor. Say “thanks, but no thanks,” and move on.
BC has played UMass and Wagner already and has games coming up against Buffalo (this weekend) and Connecticut later this season. The Eagles play 12 games, so figure on seven being the magic number in getting them into a bowl. That means somewhere, provided they beat the rest of their non-league opponents, they’re going to have to come up with three ACC wins, and they let one, their opener in Ireland against Georgia Tech, slip away from them.
The law of averages says they’re going to have to win an ACC game one of these weeks.
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It would be the ultimate irony of ironies for the Patriots, after winning two games that everyone had penciled in as losses (Arizona and Houston), to lose to the Buffalo Bills. That thrashing the Bills gave the Cardinals Sunday had to be unsettling, and it was for someone such as I, a firm believer in the “theory of the reverse lock.” The theory states that when the entire universe thinks one thing is going to happen, the exact opposite is very likely to occur.
Thus, the one game we all figure the Patriots will win easily is the one they’re most likely to lose. You know, like the Giants in the 2008 Super Bowl.
So it would behoove the Patriots to forget about the buffoon who coaches the Bills and focus on the guys who play for them.
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Boy, David Ortiz is having the time of his life, isn’t he? Classy move by Big Papi Sunday, though, asking Tampa Bay to cancel the retirement ceremony it had planned for him in the wake of Jose Fernandez’s tragic death. It’s one of the many reasons why Ortiz is so hugely popular with players around the league. He does more than pay lip service to the idea that everyone should be treated with respect, except for, perhaps, dugout telephones.
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Pretty good coup for St. John’s Prep, prying John Pynchon away from Beverly to return to his alma mater as a coach. Pynchon will be only the third lacrosse coach in the school’s history. John Roy, whom Pynchon replaces, coached the Eagles to a state title in 2010.