Boston College

Three days, maybe four. Hell, it might have been a week. Days and nights seem to melt together and with nothing but endless brown dirt in sight, time may not matter anyway. When seeing a rock larger than your fist becomes exciting, the prospect of death is no longer frightening - but only a certainty of relief. I dream of double cheeseburgers and milk shakes...but not just any shake, but the kind that comes in that glorious aluminum shaker with a cannonball of cascading vanilla that rattles the glass when it implodes on the spectacular white bottom. I jerk awake in the black of night to a screeching buzzard cutting a shadow through the moon above me and looking at my guts with a similar desire. Gotta move...must keep moving. I have been hired to do a job, and Coach Spaziani needs results. I am the head football recruiter for BC, and after 3 years at Duke, I have crossed the river Styx and am only marginally out of hell. Reality sucks.

There is no way that the spoiled children of the deep south can appreciate what an unbelievable job the coaching staff at BC does year in, year out. Try finding big time talent in Woonsocket, Worcester or Woburn, Mass. I am fairly certain that a rural North Florida school like Madison County could barnstorm through every school in the Adams State and never have to punt. Somehow, this revolving door of head beanpotters find a way to compete in this conference when their recruiting classes annually finish just above the Ivy League. The football team shares their miniscule weightroom with the basketball, soccer and baseball squads. The weather is atrocious five months a year, and if any of the 27 pro teams in Boston is winning that day, The Herald does not mention the school at all. Yet, every year, they seem to take ginormous, lumbering Caucasians and place them on NFL O-Line rosters. Arguably, the best QB in the League is an Eagle and this school has been in more ACC Championship games than Florida State. Every year, I am shocked at how they compete in our league, but with a 4-8 type season looming, maybe this is finally the tipping point for this program. If so, we can breathe easier at how they almost came to Tally and pulled off yet another stunning upset with a talent pool as deep as the puddle in your driveway.

Everyone wants to know what is wrong with Christian. I have an exercise which might provide an explanation. Duct tape a golf ball to the base of your elbow and head out to the back yard and try and sling a football at your overweight friends. Besides the obvious observation that you can not throw a spiral normally, this may illustrate why it was difficult for our QB to get any alacrity to his aerials. It does not explain why Jimbo stuck with him in this condition. The rationale for that is more simple. Christian is the undisputed leader of this football team, and when the leader says he can go, you let him collect $200. With all this being said, the play-calling for much of the 2nd & 3rd quarters was atrocious. The BC corners were pressed up on the line and simply not allowing short outs and bubble screens. We needed to shorten our QB throws for CP7 and that was proven when we had success in the quick WR slants and TE touchdown. I also would not have been afraid to spread out with 4 or 5 wideouts and run with less bodies in the box...something needed to give, and apparently it was the wind in the Eagle lineman. They were gassed in the fourth and it showed.

The overarching truth of the matter is that we were hungover from Miami. Now past Nole squads have been Jack & Jim-shots-at-3-a.m. puking on the lawn hungover (see USF last season). This was more like too much merlot and not enough pasta & tiramisu. We appreciate Jimbo & Mark Stoops heading out early Sat morning for 143 dozen Krispy Kremes to eventually stop the bleeding. To give some credit, Montel Harris has not run for almost 500 yards against FSU, and he will be back next year. This Jax native is one tough hombre. On one play, our knockout artist Mister Alexander came in untouched on a blitz and little #2 stepped over to cut him off. Mister destroyed him. He lifted him off the ground and may have literally stepped on him as he went through. The very next play, Harris took the rock and weaved his way through the line for 5 yards. Incredible. I don't know about you, but when Jacobbi McDaniel and Demonte McCallister fall on me 20 times, I just want to go to my room, grab my blanky and suck my thumb; not charge into these beasts again. Granted, by the 4th period, the fight was gone from the BC offense. They were just desperately hoping for another errant Ponder throw so they could stay on the sideline. The BC D did them just such a favor by allowing us to control the clock the final 8:04 with 13 consecutive runs.

Again, special teams was absolutely huge in this win. In fact, Shawn Powell may have been the MVP. He consistently tilted the field the other way and his hang time and distance are the best twosome since Megan Fox and Carrie Underwood. Dustin Hopkins is now second all time in touchbacks and the fat Polish one had just a few more TD's on that '99 offense to work with than the tiny Texan.

In the next two weeks, do not be surprised if some of the freshman wideouts begin to grab more playing time. The bottom line is that no one other than Easterling is getting open. Someone has got to prove that they can blow by a defender to give us a reason to go deep. Without that, every team is going to crowd Christian like sorority girls trying out as contestants on The FSU Bachelor.

Enjoy the open date. Your scribe is heading to Knoxville to check out the Vols & Alabama! Rocky Top!!