Miami at Boston College: Opening Line and The Basics
By Joe Micik
Ladies and gentlemen, we have weathered the offseason and made it to game week. Whether you’re bullish on this Boston College football team’s prospects or not, it’s football season once more, and we’re all together in our support for this team. On a personal note, thank you all for your readership as Soaring to Glory begins its fourth season covering Eagles football.
Now then, to the business at hand: on Saturday, the Boston College Eagles will play a real football game for the first time since November 25. We’ve had to settle for spring games and situational scrimmages for nine long months, but the waiting is finally over. The Eagles open their 2012 campaign against the team they played in the 2011 season finale: the Miami Hurricanes. This time, the game is in Boston on the newly-revamped Alumni Stadium field.
The previous contest was memorable in that Luke Kuechly completely dominated the competition in his final BC game. Now, Kuechly is gone, but most of his teammates have remained, though a few new faces will work their way into the mix. One man permanently missing for Miami is quarterback Jacory Harris, whose proficiency in arm-punts helped the Eagles end the season with a victory.
It’s the start of the year so you might not know what you have in your team, anyway, but the bookies don’t have much of a read on this game, either. As of Sunday evening, the MGM-Mirage had Miami as a one-point favorite, while Stations had BC as a one-point favorite. This September 1 contest appears to be a pure toss-up as of right this moment.
Boston College’s season hasn’t even begun yet, and already they’ve worked their way through several key injuries on both sides of the football. Meanwhile, the Hurricane football program has been in serious turmoil lately (though that has been a breeze compared to the mess Penn State is in) and their prospects for 2012 are just about as bleak as BC’s according to the media poll. Both teams have issues, and we’ll spend the rest of this week trying to figure out whose are lesser.