Boston College: Who’s Been Naughty This Year?

You know how the old song goes: “gonna find out who’s naughty or nice.” Today, we find out who was naughty in 2011.

Each of the “naughty” people will be rated using good, old-fashioned lumps of coal. This is a chart to explain:

Boston College-related

• Gene DeFilippo. Our athletic director has played a key role in the decline of the football program and twice gave BC fans the Bronx cheer in 2011: first, he made a wisecrack on Twitter during the Clemson game that all their fans are in their seats on time, and second, while announcing Frank Spaziani’s return, he said, when asked about the fans’ frustration, “it doesn’t matter.” Topping it off with such extreme hyperbole as to say Spaz is the “best coach” we’ve had in his 15 years here is also insulting to our intelligence.

It was definitely not a banner year, and it’s pretty clear that he does not like us or care what we think.

• Frank Spaziani. Spaziani is a symptom of the problem, not the source of the problem. In a way, I almost feel bad for the guy. He’s far too incompetent to be a head football coach, and you’d figure that there’s a reason he hadn’t gotten a head coaching gig elsewhere, but he is there at the leisure of the guy above him on this list.

I will say one thing: I think he is doing the best he can. It should be very obvious, however, that his best isn’t good enough for an ACC program. It was a legitimate downer to watch his team play this year, and I never thought I’d say that about BC football.

• The Boston media. This does not apply to all in the local media who covered this team, but enough. Amongst their invective about anonymous internet posters being mean to Gene and Spaz, calling out the student newspaper, and grand proclamations that all is well and the fans are wrong, the local media was very naughty this year. We can even through some national folk onto this pile as well, pushing all sorts of propaganda and calling out the fans for being knee-jerk reactionaries (my words, not theirs as far as I know).

These are non-BC fans informing us that they, press-credentialed as they are, have better insight into BC sports than fans who invest time and money in them and follow them 365 days a year for no better reason than loving the school.

I originally planned on giving them two lumps of coal, but many of these individuals disgraced their profession this year by penning non-incisive, slanted, pie-in-the-sky opinion pieces with no basis in reality. Furthermore, they were the willing mouthpieces of a program going downhill and they are making it more difficult for the necessary changes to come about by publicly helping to lower expectations.

• People who say (insert name) is “not a real fan.” This has been directed at me a few times over the course of 2011, as well as others in the BC fan internet sphere. We may disagree on the state of things in BC sports and who/what is responsible, but at the end of the day, we are all BC fans and want BC to win. Claiming someone isn’t a fan or isn’t as good of a fan as you are is childish, and that extends across all fanbases of all teams. Let’s let it stop in 2012.

Miscellaneous

• Colorado College. Thanks for ruining our dreams.

• Corey Trivino. I think this one pretty much needs no explanation. If the allegations are true, he’s a douche. Three lumps of coal instead of four, because he’s innocent until proven guilty.

• Randy Edsall. His first year at Maryland was so incomprehensibly bad that he makes Spaz look like Bo Schembechler. He gets two lumps of coal for making the ACC look that much worse, but I take one back for getting BC a win.

• Todd Graham. Nice job bailing for a new job one season after taking your now-previous one. Apparently, in his time at Pitt, he managed to alienate the Steelers and earned the ire of every Pitt fan upon his departure.