Boston College: Win Or You're Screwed...Sorta

When the ACC puffed out to 12 teams several years back, it was pretty much anathema to anyone who wasn't John Swofford or affiliated with Virginia Tech. Most of this had to do with how it directly affected the basketball schedule; see the argument about Virginia being an "unfit" regular season ACC champion because they didn't get to play Duke or UNC twice (as if UNC winning at John Paul Jones was a given). On a less concrete level, it bothered purists who saw the ACC as a "basketball conference." Which is true in two fundamental ways: many of the conference's schools have achieved far more success on the hardwood than the gridiron, and (here's the important part), they don't have the characteristics of many "football schools." Besides having a handful of universities with enrollments of less than 10,000 (Duke, Wake, GT and now, BC) and mid-sized state schools (Virginia, UNC), even the larger universities (NC State, Florida State) aren't coming close to the nationwide alumni prevalence of an Ohio State or Texas or USC.

Now that the conference finds itself trying to fill out big boy bowls, this has arguably resulted in a dichotomy where the smaller schools get screwed during bowl season year in, year out because of misconceptions about a school's ability to "travel" and whether they're a "football" school. Of course, this ends up in the Catch-22 of schools like Virginia, Boston College and Wake being unable to change these reputations because they're being sent out to places like Hawai'i, San Francisco and Boise instead of somewhere within reason. They even had to instate a rule that preventing bowl selection committees from cherrypicking teams who have reputations that precede the actual product they put on the field; to illustrate the rule, if Wake Forest has a 7-5 record with a 5-3 conference slate, they can't be passed over for, say, Maryland if they're 7-5 with a 3-5 conference record.


Boston College has already been a victim of this once; despite finishing in the Top 25 in 2005, they were relegated to the Humanitarian Bowl due to the vicissitudes of the selection process (i.e., 4th choice doesn't mean you have to take the 4th best team), a large part being that Boise didn't want to bring Virginia for a second straight season considering the lack of enthusiasm they brought the first time. This year, there's far more at stake for them in the ACC Championship than just a trophy. Beat VT or UVA- you get an eight-digit payday at the Orange Bowl. Lose...well, I hear Orlando's really nice this time of year. From the looks of things, the Gator and Chick Fil A Bowl may have already decided that BC isn't part of their plans. So says Chick Fil-A president Gary Stokan:

"Everybody has a concern regarding BC with respect to its [fan] travel."

He doesn't rule the Eagles out completely, but you get the feeling that they're far less attractive of a choice than the loser of UVA/VT or southern mainstay/guaranteed sellout Clemson. Even with UVA's sketchy reputation for travel, they still have a good presence in the Atlanta area and haven't been to this bowl since 1998. All protests from BC/Atlanta Fanhouse correspondent Bill Maloney aside, you can see things from Stokan's perspective, but it still sucks hard. Meanwhile, the Gator Bowl bit the bullet last year by taking Georgia Tech just weeks after they lost the ACC Championship in the same stadium, and they're not looking to relive that thrill again. You'd best believe they're giving Clemson a good once-over.

Granted, the Champs Sports Bowl would probably sound like a far more attractive fallback plan if it didn't have that name. It doesn't have the same payday or the cachet of proximity to New Year's Day, but whatever Big Ten school fills the opposite slot (Penn State?) would pick up the ticket slack and still result in a meaningful, "name" matchup. And in the event that UVA ends up there (likely the case if BC wins the ACC), well, you have to admit that constitutes a wildly successful outcome considering expectations that preceded even the Wyoming game. But if things don't pan out that way, you basically have a situation where one of the conference's strongest teams is almost completely barred from two of its three most lucrative bowl games.