The Tailgate: Louisville – Boston College Athletics

Joe Yukica represents the criminally underrated portion of Boston College’s record book. The one-time winningest coach in program history, he remains tied with Jack Bicknell and Tom O’Brien for the longest tenure in Chestnut Hill, one of three coaches to spend 10 seasons on the sideline. His 68 wins are second to O’Brien, but .648 winning percentage rank better than any modern coach with more than two seasons.

He failed to finish higher than fourth place in the Yankee Conference while leading New Hampshire for the two seasons prior to his arrival at BC, but his legacy converted the Eagles back to national prominence by immediately sending them back over .500. They finished 4-6 in the last two years of Jim Miller’s time with BC, and the 1966 loss to Holy Cross was the second Crusader victory during his time. BC was never the dominant program for any extended period within the rivalry’s history, but the losses in the late 1950s and early 1960s were a long way from the three straight wins in the pre-World War II or post-Korea timeline.

Under Yukica, BC was 6-3 and 5-4 in 1968 and 1969, but an upswing in 1970 brought the Eagles to their first eight-win season since 1962. One year later, a 9-2 record included blowout wins over Navy, Richmond, Villanova, Pittsburgh and UMass, and the 21-7 win over Holy Cross over Thanksgiving weekend ensured BC would never again cede more than an isolated victory to its rivals in Worcester.

Yet the biggest accomplishment and the most impactful part of Yukica’s tenure at BC is experienced whenever fans scan their electronic tickets at Alumni Stadium. Prior to that 1971 season, the dedicated stadium from 1957 boasted a regulation track with a seating capacity near 26,000, but it had little national appeal aside from its one season as host of the American Football League’s Boston Patriots. In February, long after Yukica’s first eight-win team finished its year with a win over the hated Crusaders, athletic director Bill Flynn announced an ambitious project to install a swimming pool and field house alongside added seating for the football stadium on a price tag of approximately $1.5 million

He intended to foot the bill with a new athletics fee that would be paid on a per-student basis, but the expansion to 32,000 seats at Alumni Stadium brought BC to a number that remained through the Conte Forum construction in the 1980s. By the mid-1990s, that capacity, too, was small, and the last remaining end zone of the stadium’s horseshoe enclosed it to its current 44,500-seat capacity.

Without Yukica’s success, it’s possible none of that ever happened. Alumni Stadium topped 30,000 fans for the first time in 1972 while beating Holy Cross, 41-11, and the season-opening game against No. 10 Texas in 1974 offered the first-ever sell-out to the “new stadium.” Two years later, a win over the No. 7 Longhorns handed the Eagles a victory over a top-10 opponent for the first time in over a decade and brought BC back to the national rankings for the first time since 1955. 

The program wouldn’t downturn until Yukica’s departure at the end of the 1970s, but BC spent its future occupying a much larger scope in college football because of his accomplishments. The Doug Flutie era turned the Eagles into a national brand and a championship powerhouse, but that doesn’t happen without the Yukica era. The Big East doesn’t happen, and neither does the Atlantic Coast Conference – maybe.

Boston College hosts its Homecoming game on Friday night by playing Louisville in the stadium that occupies the same footprint as Joe Yukica. It’s worth thinking about that when scanning a ticket to attend because all of this – the music, the video boards, the matchup – owes a debt of gratitude to its old ball coach.

Here’s what to watch for when Boston College hosts Louisville on Friday night:

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Game Storylines (Dr. Strange Edition)

Dr. Strange: Dormammu, I’ve come to bargain!

As a huge fan of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, I always found it weird how Dr. Strange occupied a large part of moving the storyline forward. It wasn’t my favorite movie from the entire Infinity Saga, and I honestly found myself confused by the whole time-bending concept. At one point, I think I referred to the movie as an Inception rip-off.

It’s grown on me since that first viewing, so bear with me as I explain the infamous scene involving Dormammu. Call this a spoiler alert, but Strange is able to defeat the demonic entity by outsmarting him with a willingness to get consistently vaporized. By understanding how to time-loop his way through the Dark Dimension, Dormammu is forced to repeatedly kill Strange, which in turn spares Earth’s reality. If you haven’t seen the movie, none of this makes sense, so I’ve lost you anyways – and yes, before you ask, I know how nerdy this whole thing sounds.

From a football standpoint, let me link the concept because the Virginia and Virginia Tech games feel a bit like a Dark Dimension engulfing reality in this place where time doesn’t exist. BC hasn’t been allowed to move its program forward, which in turn is forcing the Eagles to relive the reality of the questions arising from the disappointing two losses.

“Number one [priority] is to continue to define the BC football culture that we want,” said head coach Bill O’Brien of this week’s practices. “Number two is to define what leadership is. Number three is to define, in different ways, what we mean by taking care of the football and drilling it with ball security drills, over and over again. Number four is tackling better and drilling it more.”

None of this is reinventing the wheel, but the numbers against Virginia and Virginia Tech skewed because BC fell out of sync with its fundamentals. From the highest elevation, the Eagles understand that winning stems from playing their game, not someone else’s.

“It’s like a pot, right?” O’Brien asked rhetorically. “We’re all in it together. Players need to play better. Coaches need to coach better. We all work hard to do that.”

Baron Mordo: Temporal manipulations can create branches in time. Unstable dimensional openings. Spatial paradoxes! You want to get stuck reliving the same moment over and over forever or never having existed at all?

Dr. Strange: They really should put the warnings before this spell.

Louisville once housed a scheme fit for the greatest dual threat quarterbacks in college football. Lamar Jackson very obviously ranked atop the list of players who commanded the Cardinal offense, but his successors – Jawon Pass and Malik Cunningham – ran the ball with lethal efficiency while passing downfield at opportunistic moments. Cunningham in particular offered freakish athletic skills over a four-year span, but head coach Jeff Brohm’s overhaul completely altered the quarterback situation after Louisville floated into transfers Jack Plummer and Tyler Shough.

Plummer completely melted BC’s pass defense last year for 388 yards and five touchdowns on 18-of-21 passing, but not much changes from the six-foot, five-inch pocket passer to Shough, his successor who initially played for Oregon before transferring to Texas Tech and, finally, to Louisville.

“He’s very smart and very accurate,” said O’Brien. “He understands where to go with the ball, and he’s a good decision maker. Coach Brohm has had all kinds of different quarterbacks [over the years], and he knows how to coach an offense. It’s a big challenge for us because he’s a quarterback with great anticipation. He’s athletic and can get out of trouble. He can direct the offense.”

Shough memorably split time at Oregon with former Boston College quarterback Anthony Brown, and he enters Friday after throwing for 342 yards and four touchdowns against Miami. It was his third 300-yard game of the season and second in the last three weeks, but it’s worth noting that the Cardinals lost each of those games, which places emphasis on the team’s ability to run the football.

The Ancient One: You cannot beat a river into submission. You have to surrender to its current and use its power as your own.

Stopping Shough requires more attention and love on the defensive back end because his offense features receivers who can get open and create space. Alabama transfer Ja’Corey Brooks is reinvigorated and matched his sophomore total in the SEC nearly identically with 36 receptions for 679 yards and eight scores in his first seven games at Louisville, and while he’s the primary threat, Isaac Brown, Caullin Lacy, Chris Bell, Jamari Johnson, Ahmari-Huggins Bruce, and Mark Redman are all names with 10 catches or more in the first seven games.

“It’s definitely a good team,” said safety KP Price. “There’s speed, so you definitely have to respect it, but at the end of the day, we still need to play our game and know our game plan. It’s definitely a good matchup. They have great speed receivers and running backs on this team. That’s not anything we haven’t seen, but it’s something that we have to mention.”

Few teams nationally keep up with Louisville’s speed on the outside, so stopping the Cardinals requires a two-fold approach that starts with the BC defensive front. Getting to the quarterback quickly, even against a team with a good-or-above-average offensive line, is paramount simply because owning the line of scrimmage opens options for defensive backs to play physical while keeping the receivers in front of them. 

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Question Box

Can the offense get back on track?

The numbers aligned into a perfectly straight route for BC’s offense: beat Louisville on defense by running the football. The bread-and-butter of the Eagles’ overall soul needs to have a big game behind that offensive line because the Cardinals typically falter when they surrender yardage on the ground. Coupled with BC’s reputation as a pounding offense, utilizing the running game is a big piece of moving this team back into the win column.

Which team creates more stress-of-game penalties?

I heard this term primarily on the hockey rink, but I think it applies specifically to how football teams generate momentum against one another. Stress-of-game refers to the moments when players lose concentration because they’re either burned out or tired. Communication breaks down, a loose penalty occurs, and the opposing offense takes control by creating an explosive play. From a hockey standpoint, it’s the key faceoff win after an icing call when the offending team can’t substitute, and it’s when the substitution puts the most experienced offensive unit on the ice against a tired defensive pairing that commits a bad penalty or gives up a power play goal.

In football, sustaining long drives creates stressful moments for an opposing defense, but there’s pressure and stress on an offense to avoid a three-and-out that puts the defense right back on the field. Committing a bad penalty or a turnover in that situation is effectively creating that stress-of-game call, so for BC, generating pressure while avoiding it internally is a big objective.

Which hamstring explodes on Saturday morning?

I’m taking my older daughter to her first soccer day on Saturday morning, which means I’ll sleep approximately four hours after the Louisville postgame before waking up to drive us over to the gym. We’re both pretty excited because we spend so much time playing with our toy soccer balls in the house while watching English Premier League teams on weekends (I officially cursed her when she learned the words to several Everton songs).

I only recently started running after going on hiatus for a couple of years, though, and my body is NOT in the physical condition that once sprinted the back half of a 10K road race. I’m also nowhere near as young as those days, so my wife is betting on how quickly one leg develops a severe cramp on Saturday morning. I think the right hamstring is currently the in-house favorite with my left ankle shortly thereafter. Nobody is offering odds on my back.

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Meteorology 101

It drove me absolutely crazy this week when the weather hit 80 degrees on Monday and Tuesday. I wasn’t thrilled about digging around a drawer for one pair of golf shorts that didn’t get shoved into the attic last week, but my wife opened every single window in the house and brought summer’s last grasp into our living room as soon as the sun burned the morning fog into oblivion.

It was nice, but I’m completely ready for a cold October night game on Friday. We’re facing real fall temperatures this weekend when things dip down towards the freezing mark, but Friday night is going to keep the mercury north of 40 degrees long enough to enjoy a hot apple cider without needing a jacket. Mid-40s in the overnight hours is, as we call it, “hoodie weather,” and it means I’m expecting folks to add a layer or two to the blanket that’s packed into the bags. 

Nothing – absolutely nothing – beats the smell of grilling meat in the colder air, so I’m naturally pretty excited for the atmosphere of a Friday night football game.

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BC-Louisville X Factor

If my mind can conceive it, if my heart can believe it – then I can achieve it. -Muhammad Ali

Thomas Castellanos proves weekly that he’s a metamorphosing quarterback when he’s under center for BC. He’s thrown for 250 yards and multiple touchdowns while running for 100 yards against any given opponent, but he’s typically at his best when he lets the game dictate how he attacks a defense. In the last two games, he lost his way when the offense felt forced, so I’m hoping the wake-up calls from the losses brings an element of fluid creativity back into his execution.

That doesn’t mean he needs to run all over the city of Boston to gain a first down, but his biggest issues over the past two games occurred when the pace forced him to play a different style. Against Virginia, his two interceptions changed the course of the game at a time when he admittedly didn’t need to make a downfield throw, and his fundamentals against Virginia Tech were completely out of character despite throwing for 200 yards and rushing 20 times for 58 yards. 

From a pure football standpoint, he doesn’t need to rush for 73 yards like he did against Florida State, nor does he need to throw for 250-300 yards and four touchdowns. All he needs is to minimize those mistakes and let the game come to him because that’s when he’s at his most dangerous.

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Dan’s Non-Football Observation of the Week

One of the great thrills about having kids is seeing your parents turn into grandparents. My dad, in particular, was one of those old-school parents who worked insane hours to provide for the family when I was a kid, but he always found time to coach my little league team or watch a swim meet or baseball game. He expected our best effort, win or lose, and he’d push us to find our outer limits by levying suppositions on us that were both lofty and attainable.

He mellowed over the years, but my dad’s reaction to my second daughter is still one of the greatest thrills in my life because she specifically turned him into mush. They have this weird relationship that’s built on whatever mind meld happened when she was born, and the two of them always ask for one another whenever I’m on the phone. Considering my place on the phone, it actually kind of gets frustrating when you’re trying to talk about something house-related, and your dad immediately goes, “WHERE’S MY PAL?” 

It’s incredibly heart-warming, but I joked to my mother that the man either mellowed or converted into a completely different human being over the past ten years. I still remember getting into the car and watching him turn “the other way” after school because I was about to get chewed out with nowhere to go and no cell phone to save me. I very much recall failing a test because I didn’t study hard enough and being told, in no uncertain terms, why I failed the test. I also remember him making goo-goo faces at my daughter while singing Cocomelon songs to her.

This is not the same man.

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Pregame Quote and Prediction

Hello my friend, we meet again, it’s been a while, where should we begin? Feels like forever. -Creed “My Sacrifice”

Apparently Creed is making a huge comeback. I don’t know when or how that happened, but I’m just throwing out there that I still own my copy of Weathered on CD. I bought it in 2001 right before I discovered Bruce Springsteen, and it’s in the CD book – you kids have no idea what I’m talking about – next to the Barenaked Ladies, Alanis Morissette, and the dual-disc edition of Speakerboxxx/The Love Below. 

Don’t come at me.

BC hasn’t played a home game since its win over Western Kentucky. The Eagles are a different team, and the 4-1 team that once looked like it was heading back to the national rankings is now fighting for respectability within the Atlantic Coast Conference standings. The last two losses, damaging as they were, occurred, but nobody in Chestnut Hill is running from them. All that’s left is to greet Louisville at the 50-yard line, welcome them to Boston, and send them home with a loss that’s absorbed from a team that rediscovered its own groove.

Boston College and Louisville kick off on Friday night at 7:30 p.m. from Alumni Stadium in Chestnut Hill, Massachusetts. Television coverage is set for ESPN with the great Anish Shroff handling play-by-play duties opposite former Houston Cougar and NFL first round draft pick Andre Ware. Longtime reporter Paul Calcaterra will report from the sidelines.