In The Air Tonight

Shank gets the warm & fuzzies for a renewed college football 'rivlary':

Nostalgia will be in the air as Holy Cross takes on Boston College in football again

Nobody loves tradition and nostalgia more than yours truly.

I have scrapbooks with every story from when I covered the BNBL for the Globe in the 1970s. I see photos of myself from the ‘90s and realize those old shirts are still in my closet. I long for “The Ed Sullivan Show” Sunday nights on CBS at 8 p.m.

Trust me when I tell you that I know and love the old Boston College-Holy Cross football rivalry.

My dad went to BC with Tip O’Neill, Class of ‘36. When I applied to Holy Cross in 1970, the application asked, “How did you first hear of Holy Cross?” The answer was, “As the son of a BC grad, I have been aware of Holy Cross since my earliest days.”

But it may be time to pray for My Old School. The Crusaders, national contenders in the Football Championship Subdivision, are playing at BC Saturday and there’s concern that it won’t be competitive. The former rivals — who have taken separate paths athletically — have played only once since 1986, and that was a 62-14 BC rout five years ago.

I'm not able to get a point spread from the normal betting sites as of this writing but I'm sure it'll be something in the range of four touchdowns, maybe more. It stands to reason this series was stopped because of the lopsided nature of the last bunch of the games, and a 62-14 loss more than qualifies.

Lockdown Dan

I guess it's not much of a surprise to see that strains of health puritanism would make it to the Boston Globe's sports section, as Shank believes the BC Eagles shouldn't play football this fall:

The list of bad ideas introduced to Boston sports fans through the years is long and winding. The Red Sox once tried to sell us Jack Clark. Then Bullpen by Committee. Now they’re all about Payroll Flexibility. TD Garden officials thought it would be a swell idea to reconfigure seating in the lower bowl of the arena last year. Oh, and remember the campaign to bring the 2024 Olympics to Boston?

Now we have the crazy notion that the Boston College Eagles are planning to play their ACC football schedule this fall while our region tries to get back on its feet in the middle of a global pandemic.

For the record, the Wuhan coronavirus is now considered an epidemic, which is a disease less prevalent in a population than it is in a pandemic. I'm certain the CDC downgraded the virus to this epidemic status a month ago, but they don't seem very willing to advertise it explicitly (and easily findable) on their website. In any event, one of the tricks I don't appreciate the media playing is this exact sort of bullshit. By continuing to call it a pandemic they keep doing the media's Prime Directive, which is scaring the shit out of people.

What in the name of Buddy Garrity is going on around here? Who do we think we are — Clemson, S.C.? Odessa, Texas? Tuscaloosa, Ala.?

Seriously. I understand folks who live in football hotbeds going for this. But Boston, a place where absolutely nobody knows your name if you are associated with college football? Boston, a hub of science, medicine, high-tech, and deep thinking? We are going to have big-time college football here on autumn Saturdays in 2020?

So, if it's not popular we shouldn't do it? Like me not reading your newspaper?

We knew Harvard and Yale weren’t going to play this year. Same with the Patriot League, the NESCAC, and all the quaint little schools that play small-time college football. Those were easy calls. Even Division 1 pretenders UMass and UConn had the good sense to pack away the shoulder pads for the fall. Massachusetts high school football is also closed for the season.

But BC is planning to play North Carolina, Pitt, Georgia Tech, Notre Dame, and Louisville in an empty Alumni Stadium. It’s hard to escape the conclusion that BC is going forward to protect its share of ACC TV money. The Eagles’ slice of the ACC pie is in the neighborhood of $30 million annually.

So, you overlooked that league affiliation thingy back there, didn't 'cha?

I won't bore you with the rest of it but he repeats the notion a few times - we're in Massachusetts, not Georgia or Florida and thus they shouldn't be playing. How dumb of an argument is that? By the way, that's the primary argument and health concerns are of a secondary importance. Just look at this bullshit conclusion:

We are Boston. We are about science and knowledge.

This is insanity. And it’s dangerous.

What is insane and dangerous is continued efforts to lock people down and restrict their freedom of association (or movement, at a physical level) and it all that entails in the name of a virus that is slightly more infectious and roughly as non-lethal as many of the others I've lived through. The widespread lockdowns and declaration of sizeable portions of the economy as 'non-essential' and thus forced to close shop is a) unprecedented in my lifetime, b) does have harmful side effects and c) will always be seen by me as a galaxy-class fuckup by those in charge of these measures, most of them fucking Democrats.

But let me instead talk about the players. It's bad enough there will be online courses (they simply aren't the same thing) but for all of them, they are also there to play football and if / when a few of them make it to the NFL or CFL, all the better. My buddy Eddie swears up and down that the experience of hanging in a college locker room getting ready for and playing college sports is like nothing else, and I don't doubt it for a second. Shank's position deprives them of this opportunity. To hell with that - let's get back to our normal lives, the sooner the better.

The End Of An Era

Shank laments the lack of interest in a particular college football game.

Did you know that the Notre Dame Fighting Irish are coming to Chestnut Hill to play the Boston College Eagles Saturday at 3:30 at Alumni Stadium?

Of course not.

Nobody knows.

I knew, but only because they announced it at the end of the Notre Dame - Georgia game on Saturday.

Shake down the thunder and dropkick me Touchdown Jesus through the goalposts of life. Our region’s abject apathy about this game is the latest demonstration that we are the worst college sports town in America.

There’s no shame in this. Not in my book anyway. I love the fact that we have evolved into a pro sports-only town. The Four Horsemen of Boston sports — the Red Sox, Patriots, Celtics, and Bruins — provide more than enough fodder to fill these pages and fuel four all-sports local radio and television stations.

He then goes on to rue the lack of college football. Typical of Shank to try and have it both ways.

Close BC / Irish Game

... but you'd barely know that after trudging through this column. Here's the sole paragraph devoted to discussing the game:

The Irish had butterfingers on this night and made a mockery of their top-four ranking while playing a vastly inferior opponent. (BC is 3-8 and has lost seven straight.) Against a strong BC defense, the Irish fumbled four times (two lost) and were intercepted three times. Notre Dame turned the ball over three times in the red zone. If Bill Belichick coached either of these teams Saturday, the Hoodie would have been fitted for a straightjacket after the game. The Irish were the definition of “overrated.’’ The Eagles were unwatchable on offense.

The rest of the column was evidently written before & during the game. Talk about mailing it in!

One Trick Pony - II

Notre dame must be using over inflated footballs

— Dan Shaughnessy (@Dan_Shaughnessy) November 22, 2015

Pasty White Irishman Rejoices

Fenway ready for the Irish pic.twitter.com/CuBX8bFXxJ

— Dan Shaughnessy (@Dan_Shaughnessy) November 20, 2015

You're Fired!

After four years on the job and this season's 2 - 10 record, Boston College football coach Frank Spaziani gets shitcanned. Shank takes the predictable parochial route while pretending to care about the former coach.

We are old people who mail handwritten letters and make phone calls while the rest of the world sends e-mails and texts.

Correction - you are an old person using snail mail and rotary phones, so speak for yourself.

We are English-speaking tourists, dropped into a city square in Sicily, trying to understand what everyone is saying. We are sports-crazed Bostonians, blissfully unaware why the rest of the country makes such a big deal out of college football. Boston College, the only Division 1 program in Greater Boston, fired its football coach on Sunday. After four disappointing seasons, bottoming out with this year’s 2-10 bomb, Frank Spaziani was relieved of his duties by new athletic director Brad Bates.

This one's buried behind the Great Globe Paywall, so my guess is that we're not missing much...

Thus Sprach Homer

Shank gets a mini vacation to San Francisco and tries to gin up interest in this year's World Series between the Detroit Tigers and San Francisco Giants. There will be default interest, at least for the first two games, since there are no other major sports events on television until the weekend.

SAN FRANCISCO — Five years ago, the Patriots were on their way to an 18-0 record, the Ubuntu Celtics were in the early days of a championship season, Boston College’s football team was ranked second in the nation, John Farrell was Terry Francona’s first-year pitching coach . . . and the Red Sox were in the World Series against the Colorado Rockies.

Those were the days when you cared about the World Series. You couldn’t wait for Jonathan Papelbon to pull a 12-pack box over his head and do another Riverdance on the Fenway lawn.

So boozing's okay when Papelbon used to do it? Got it!

Baseball mattered. The World Series mattered.

You might think a columnist with Shank's three decades plus experience could focus almost exclusively on the subject at hand. Unfortunately, Shank feels the need to interject many parochial items in his column that you would think primarily involve the two teams, or the World Series in general. But you would be wrong:

■ The Kung Fu Panda. What is not to love about the Giants’ third baseman? Pablo Sandoval is baseball’s biggest loser and baseball’s biggest winner simultaneously. He must have the worst body of any athlete competing for a championship this year. He also has got the best nickname since Dennis “Oil Can” Boyd. Sandoval is Everyman, batting in the middle of the lineup for a team in the World Series.

■ Al Alburquerque. The Detroit reliever hacked off everybody in Oakland when he fielded the final out of a Division Series game and kissed the baseball before throwing it to first base.

■ Giants second baseman Marco Scutaro. Can’t you just hear Bob Lobel voicing over his highlights, saying, “Why can’t we get players like that?’’ Scutaro holds a special place in Red Sox lore. His baserunning blunder in Baltimore contributed to the final loss on the final night of the 2011 season. He flung his glove into the dugout when he came off the field as the Orioles celebrated at home plate. He was dumped during the offseason in a front office effort to avoid the luxury tax. He was also one of the Red Sox’ best players during the 7-20 collapse of 2011. Scutaro hit .387 (36 for 93) in his final month with the Red Sox. And now he is the MVP of the National League Championship Series (14 hits).

■ Tigers manager Jim Leyland wears spikes and smokes in his office. His wife is from Greater Boston and he has been known to complain about the cost of college tuition.

■ If you’ve tailgated on Commander Shea Field before a BC football game, you’ve stood in the spot where Buster Posey called pitches for Florida State against the Eagles in a three-game ACC baseball series in 2008.

No shots at the Red Sox or John Henry - is this Shank's new found restraint?

You're Both Right

Shank shakes off the past couple of snowstorms and comes up with another Boston College connection a few days before B.J. Raji plays in the Super Bowl on Sunday.

He ain’t heavy, he’s my brother.

Actually, he is a little heavy. The brother of Boston College basketball forward Corey Raji weighs 337 pounds. And he’s playing in the Super Bowl Sunday.

“A lot of people don’t know B.J. is my brother,’’ said BC’s senior slasher. “Not everybody can say that their brother is playing in the Super Bowl. It’s just a blessing to have somebody that close to me in one of the biggest games in the world.’’

A good column ensues, mainly because he's not able to rip on
this guy.

What? No Blue Christmas?

Not content to write yet another meandering picked up pieces column, he even manages to choose weak Christmas music:

Picked up pieces while listening to Mitch Miller Christmas carols . . .

How can you not pick The King?

What follows from the dreadful opening sentence is the fruitcake of sports opinion columns. Feel free to regift this one!

It's A Twofer - II

Shank had a long day yesterday. First was his radio show on 98.5 The Sports Hub, where he helpfully informed the audience that he'd be at the BC - Notre Dame game last night, which ended close to midnight. He weaves accounts of that game with partial mentions of the Red Sox - Yankees doubleheader into a column that comes across as bland and semi-informative.

Who Cares About College Football?

According to Shank, it's not us. Although college football was "practically invented in the northeast", Shank assures us that we are a professional sports town. It's not the first time Shank has expressed such an opinion (I'm unable to locate previous articles stating this sentiment with respect to college football), and Shank also throws in the seeming disinterest in local college basketball and hockey to bolster this argument.

While it may be difficult to actually gauge or quantify levels of interest between college and pro sports in this neck of the woods, Shank provides many examples of the past popularity of college football (roughly dating from 1920 to the Flutie-era BC Eagle football teams) and the more recent dearth of college sports coverage in print and radio. It's likely that shift is attributable in part or in whole to the likes of Yaz, Orr, Bird & Brady. I don't agree with him on the John Calipari era UMass teams, probably because this is where I started following college basketball. While I follow college and pro sports (currently half-watching the Navy - Maryland football game), I think there are more occasions where the pro games (of all types) seem to be bigger events, and perhaps more numerous, than their college counterparts. For example, (end of September - early October) even with the Red Sox out of playoff contention, the Red Sox - Yankees series will always draw like a magnet, or the Patriots playing a division rival. To quote Shank,

That's just the way it goes. We are a professional sports town.

A reasonable statement; I'm just not entirely convinced.

Marathon Man

Shank covers two Boston sporting events on Monday:

Early in the afternoon, there were thousands of people running toward Kenmore Square, their faces twisted, their pain obvious at the end of an excruciating ordeal. Some needed medical treatment.

Those were the Red Sox fans, beating feet out of Fenway Park after another hideous (8-2) loss to the Tampa Bay Rays.

The Marathon runners? Most of them were doing pretty well by comparison. Running 26.2 miles is a piece of cake compared with watching the local baseball team these days. In April 2010, the Fenway mound is Heartbreak Hill.

Man For All Seasons

Shank keeps the Boston College theme going for another article, writing about BC's athletic director Gene DeFilippo and the 24 / 7 search for a basketball coach that resulted in the hiring of Cornell's Steve Donahue.

We Are The Champions

Boston College wins its fourth national championship in hockey last night, defeating Wisconsin 5 - 0. Shank waxes ecstatic about the composition of the team:

The BC goalie is from East Falmouth. One of the captains is from Milton, Massachusetts. They’ve got players from Weymouth, Boxford, Springfield, Reading, Braintree, Dorchester, Shrewsbury, and Needham. They’ve got a skater from Biddeford, Maine, and another one from Wallingford, Conn.

Oh, the coach is a New Englander, too. Try to find somebody in Watertown who hasn’t bumped into Jerry York at the Dunkin’ Donuts on Mt. Auburn Street.

So glad Shank's shredding that parochial New England attitude...

Hockeytown

Shank pens a pair of pretty good articles about Boston College's hockey team and the senior captains (three from the hockey team, one from the baseball team) that share the same dorm room / apartment on the BC campus.

BC plays the Badgers of Wisconsin tonight for the college hockey championship. Win or lose, expect Shank to make at least one cheesy reference in tomorrow's column.

Go Eagles!

Thicker Than Water

Shank pens a good article about the bloody obvious Archie Manning Angle, parents who want their kids to win the big games, even if it's against the parent's old team.

The Sorry State Of Massachusetts

Shank went to the Beanpot on Monday night and couldn't get 'fired up' about it:

I went to the Beanpot last night and tried to get fired up about the whole thing.

...

Here’s what really killed me. Last night’s Harvard roster had only one guy from Massachusetts (Chris Huxley of Weymouth). Harvard had 11 players from Canada, one from Sweden, and one from Croatia. Boston University, last year’s national champion, featured two kids from Massachusetts (out of 21). Northeastern had four Bay Staters and Boston College a whopping 11.

Not to sound like a WTKK talk show host, but the lack of locals took something out of it for me. What happened to the days of Peabody’s Bobby Carpenter on the cover of Sports Illustrated? The days of Charlestown’s Jackie O’Callahan, Scituate’s Dave Silk, and Winthrop’s Mike Eruzione winning Olympic gold? Jim Craig going from Oliver Ames to Boston University to Lake Placid?

I don't know; times change, perhaps?

Ridin' The Shetland Pony

Sunday's Shank Globe column sees Danny Boy riding his high horse to denounce the dishonesty of college coaching, with Lane Kiffin making the jump to USC after one whole year at Tennessee. Shank doesn't like people who have a tangential interest in the process:

"Yahoo towns with nothing else to offer make college football/basketball a local religion with poisonous Booster Clubs...",

"He romances the athletic department, the student population, and the local yahoos (i.e. people who’d buy a book written by Calipari).",

"Losers who catalogue such things (folks who dedicate their lives to ranking 16-year-old offensive linemen) claim Kiffin’s 2010 recruiting class was top-10 material."

Shank also can't stand current Kentucky coach John Calipari, which may have started when Calipari left UMASS - Amherst in the mid 1990's.

Shank has a few kind words for Rick Pitino:

Remember all the lies we got from Pitino when he ran the Celtics? Little Ricky could always make it go away by saying, “That was how I felt at the time.’’

I'd have to see what lies Shank's referring to, but the problem with Pitino was something else. I went to one Pitino-coached Celtics game, and Pitino was yelling at Antoine Walker and Paul Pierce every damn time up & down the court. You can yell like that at college kids, not professional athletes that make double & triple your salary, even accounting for Pitino's hot-shot salary at the time. I was hoping the basketball would somehow wind up in my hands from a bad pass or something, just so I'd have something to throw at Pitino to shut him up.

Pieces Picked Up

When you run out of major subjects for a column, write about a bunch of little ones instead. One would think Shank would cover the baseball playoffs in their entirety, but when you're jet setting across the globe, who has time for that?

Picked-up pieces while packing for London and wondering how Schill got overlooked by the Nobel Committee . . .

Looks like a few Patriots / Buccaneers columns are in our future and a gratuitous swipe at the Big Lug, all in the first sentence. Shouldn't there be an expiration date on cheap shots aimed at former Boston athletes?

Janet Marie Smith’s departure from Fenway is a big bowl of wrong. With John Henry’s money and Larry Lucchino’s vision, Smith polished Fenway into the jewel that it is today. She found space where there was no space. There are always going to be things about the park that do not work (hello, Sections 3-9), but Smith did more for the park than anyone since Tom Yawkey rebuilt Fenway in 1934. Her departure speaks to new tension inside the walls on Yawkey Way. If you care about the future of the ball club, this is a warning shot.

It's good to know Shank is reporting news instead of spreading rumours and innuendo...

Brady coming out of Sunday’s game early reminded some of the night in Utah when Larry Bird sat down even though he was one steal removed from a quadruple-double.

No article is complete without the random Larry Bird reference!

Here's a good reason to like the Coors commercials:

The idiotic, ubiquitous beer commercials with the doofus kids asking questions of NFL coaches make me want to blast my flat-screen with a shotgun.

...

Jim Zorn might just as well put a sign on his forehead that reads, “Fire me!’’ He’s reminding us of Clive Rush in the final days.

I have Tom Cable of the Raiders as the first NFL coach to get fired this year. Zorn's making that bet look pretty bad, kind of like this 'effort' by Shank...