Boston College at Clemson: Opening Line & the Basics

If you haven’t watched a Boston College football game yet this season, you might want to save yourself the trouble.

If you have watched a Boston College football game — or worse yet, all of them — I do not know of any eye bleach retailers, so I apologize.

You saw Boston College lose a tough game to Northwestern where the offense did everything except score points. You saw Boston College lose to Central Florida by 27 points on the road. You saw Boston College incomprehensibly lose to Duke, in a game which they had a 12-point lead. You saw them beat up an essentially-worthless UMass team, and you were instilled with false hope. Now, this past Saturday, you saw Boston College lose at home to Wake Forest, in a game in which they never led. If you saw all of that carnage, then you have a high tolerance for pain.

Now, the 1-4 Eagles are called upon to go down to Clemson, South Carolina to play the #8 Tigers, who are 5-0 and have already beaten teams far superior to us. It should not surprise any of you, therefore, that Boston College opened as 20-point underdogs (the line has since moved to 21).

Let’s stop right there for a moment, because I want this to sink in for my readers: Boston College is a three-touchdown underdog to a team IN OUR OWN CONFERENCE. A team THEY BEAT last year. If you aren’t utterly embarrassed at the wretched shape this football program is in, then there’s something wrong with you. If you just looked at the spread and not the teams involved, you’d think this was a Week 1 game where a big-time program is playing a weak Sun Belt team. Instead, WE are the Sun Belt team in this scenario. WE are the sacrificial lambs. WE are the ones who need an Appalachian State-type of miracle to win. Again, let me remind you that we are not only on the same level of Division 1 as this team, we are in the same conference, and yet, we are considered vastly inferior to the point where we are expected to get blown out. This team is in such terrible shape right now that it infuriates me.

To drive home the point that I made in my open letter to Coach Spaz and Gene DeFilippo the other day, here is a chart illustrating the downward trendline this program is on at the moment. (Click to enlarge)

Yeah. We used to limit our losing, and now we lose regularly. And, though I don’t want to give too much away for Friday’s article, we’re almost certain to lose again.