Boston College Bowl Selection Day: No-Fun In The Sun?
By Joe Micik
At 5:30pm Eastern time today, the Boston College bowl announcement will be made, and one of any number of a handful of games will be revealed as the Eagles’ destination.
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With Florida State’s ACC championship game victory last night to ensure that they do not fall back into the pool of bowl-eligible teams scrapping for Tier One and Two bowls, some options include the Pinstripe Bowl in the Bronx, the Sun Bowl in El Paso, the Military Bowl in Annapolis, and the Quick Lane Bowl in Detroit. Alabama’s win likely also opened another ACC tie-in with the Citrus Bowl.
As one will see below (last chance to vote is obviously today), Boston College fans strongly prefer to play in the Pinstripe Bowl. Anyone can see why: it would be the most nearby bowl game in which the Eagles have ever played, it would feature a power-conference opponent, and it takes place in a region with a large Boston College alumni population. Short of a major bowl game, getting the Pinstripe Bowl would be like hitting the lottery, and would give Eagles fans their best opportunity to travel en masse.
The venue itself inspires disdain amongst the Boston locals, but the only pinstripes will be in the game’s name, not on the field.
The new hotness in the media as of Friday and Saturday is that there is a push to send the Duke Blue Devils to New York City while the Eagles get exiled to El Paso for the Sun Bowl.
Do not get me wrong: the Sun Bowl does have some prestige and would be an interesting and noteworthy thing to see. The thing is, very few Boston College fans are going to attend.
If the Boston College bowl is the Pinstripe and we as a fanbase do not turn out, given its proximity, shame on us. If they get the Sun Bowl, about two thousand miles away on Christmas weekend, the fans are not going to travel that far. Blame the “bad fans” and whatnot, but the reality is that Boston College will not travel well down there, or many other places for that matter.
Getting sent to the Sun Bowl would be the ACC and the bowl officials saying to us “well hey, it’s a good bowl, but we know you aren’t going to go to that game, and we DGAS,” to use an acronym since this is a family site.
There might be some bitterness on the part of Eagles fans if the Sun Bowl is announced, as it would essentially rob a good number of people from being able to attend. Not everyone out there in Eagle land has infinitely renewable amounts of money and/or vacation days to spare on a trip to Middle of Nowhere, Southwest USA.
Hopefully someday, we will have a good problem to the tune of “how are we going to get all our fans to the Orange Bowl?” Right now, many of a maroon and gold persuasion want the Pinstripe Bowl because it gives us an opportunity we have never had. We want Boston College fans to go to this game, and to be able to go. This is why it would be best if there was to be no fun in the Sun — maybe only in the Bronx.