Boston College 2011-12 in Review, Part I: Football

As the offseason months went on, things did not improve. Not only did Boston College have to watch bowl season at home for their sofa, but they learned officially that they’d be losing Luke Kuechly while also saying goodbye to Max Holloway, who was “excited” to move on to the next stage in his life. BC lost a small handful of recruits who were interested as well, including Akeel Lynch, who switched to Penn State.

Boston College lost some coaches as well. First, special teams coach Mike Dawson left football altogether. Next, Dave Brock was demoted from interim offensive coordinator to special teams while Doug Martin came in from New Mexico State to take over. Brock eventually left for Rutgers, becoming their offensive coordinator. The Eagles also lost Ryan Day, who became Temple’s co-offensive coordinator (and the mysterious Kevin Rogers showed up shortly thereafter as the quarterbacks coach). The jury is still out on the replacements, obviously, but some, like new ST coach Sean Desai, are appealing coaching candidates.

The spring game in late March was relatively troublesome. One does not want to read too much into such a game, but Rettig was undeniably terrible and there was next to no depth in the defensive backfield — neither of which inspire much confidence for 2012 at all. Of course, the game was also played in late March on a cold, rainy day with a virtually-empty Alumni Stadium.

The Jaryd Rudolph scandal notwithstanding, the news kept getting worse. In late April, Montel Harris was dismissed from the team for a “repeated violation” of team rules. We do not know now what they are, and we may never, but the take-away here is that Harris is no longer on the team. Who knows if he’d have contributed in 2012, anyway, but the perception that Boston College is a program in decline and that Spaziani is on the hot seat continued to grow within the media as the 2011-12 school year concluded.

Heading into the 2012 season, if Boston College has a season much like 2011, fan frustration may reach a breaking point.

Tomorrow: Part II, men’s basketball