Boston College will have rough time in ACC

Memo to Boston College: goodbye, good riddance and good luck – you’re going to need it.

With… Memo to Boston College: goodbye, good riddance and good luck – you’re going to need it.

With their plans to leave the Big East, the Eagles have now become the redheaded stepchild of the Atlantic Coast Conference.

Just four months ago, the ACC and its schools were wooing Boston College to join the conference and help create the opportunity to host a football championship game that would make millions of dollars for not only the teams involved, but the conference itself.

But it didn’t happen. The ACC invited Miami and Virginia Tech, and, like the pimple-faced kid with glasses looking for a date, Boston College got rejected.

No problem. The Eagles were still a member of the Big East and now that they had been spurned, there was no way they’d leave the conference, right?

Wrong.

After the ACC couldn’t convince Notre Dame to give up its football independence and the NCAA rejected its attempt to stage a championship game with just 11 conference members – rules state that a conference must have 12 teams to host a championship game – the ACC needed someone to finish its expansion.

When in need of an easy hook-up, why not turn to the one who still has a thing for you?

So Boston College jumped at the opportunity to join the ACC, despite having been involved in the Big East’s discussions on how to save the conference.

According to Boston College’s president, the Rev. William Leahy, the move will help the school financially and athletically, and will also open up new places for the school to recruit.

That should be difficult, considering what Boston College is facing.

One of the changes that the conference and its schools’ presidents decided on was to increase the exit fee from $1 million to $5 million, which the Eagles will now have to pay when they leave.

And that’s not the only financial concern the Eagles will have.

Boston College’s closest conference opponents will be Virginia and Virginia Tech, both of which are more than a nine-hour drive from Boston. Teams travel by either bus or plane, depending on how far away the destination is.

With those two schools that far away by bus, it’s likely that Boston College will have to send most of its teams by plane, which costs more the farther you go.

Granted, the ACC will put the Eagles in a division that geographically makes the most sense, but that still means a lot of traveling and a lot of plane tickets. And if that means that the Eagles won’t play Florida State and Miami on a regular basis, I would imagine that Boston College’s administration would be upset by that.

Of course, if the Eagles can find their way into the football championship game, then they won’t have to worry as much about financial problems.

But that won’t happen.

Boston College will now go from being in the upper echelon of what would be left of the Big East – which really isn’t saying much – to the bottom third of the ACC in football and men’s basketball. Yeah, its other sports will be competitive, but they don’t bring in the money like football and basketball.

Miami, Florida State and Virginia Tech are consistently ranked in the top 25 in football, and this year, all three are in the top 10. Maryland, North Carolina State and Virginia have all also been ranked at some point this season, which is more than Boston College can say.

The Eagles haven’t been ranked since the end of the 1999 season, when they climbed as high as No. 22. Before that, they hadn’t cracked the top 25 since the first week of the 1995 season, when they were also ranked No. 22, and Boston College hasn’t been in the top 10 since November of 1992.

The chances of the Eagles making that conference championship game and raking in the proceeds from it aren’t good.

The same could be said for men’s basketball. Boston College has a hard enough time in the Big East, and it will be hard to compete with the likes of Duke, North Carolina and Wake Forest on the court.

As for recruiting, it will give Boston College more opportunities to get players from Florida, North Carolina and Virginia, but the majority of athletes who are going to choose to go to Boston are the ones who are overlooked by Miami and Florida State.

Who is going to choose to spend the winter in Boston rather than Miami?

Leahy can say that this move makes sense for Boston College, but it really doesn’t. Had Syracuse been chosen to go with the Eagles, that might have made a little more sense, because both schools are in the Northeast.

With all of its new conference opponents south of the Mason-Dixon line – and superior to the Eagles in the major revenue sports – this move doesn’t make sense for Boston College.

As for the ACC, this is a great move because it can now have its football championship game.

Why should the conference officials care that Boston College suffers from this deal? Remember, the Eagles are the jilted lover here.

So while Pitt, Syracuse and West Virginia are at the top of the new Big East – also known as Conference USA East – Boston College will be spending plenty of time in the ACC’s cellar.

Joe Marchilena is the sports editor for The Pitt News and he is going to enjoy watching Pitt thrash Boston College in two weeks. That is, if Walt Harris can figure out which plays will work.