Buckley: Old memories heat up BC-UMass rivalry
Steve Buckley Thursday, September 08, 2016
My good buddy Fred Smerlas holds many distinctions in sports. He was a second-round selection by the Buffalo Bills in the 1979 NFL draft, the 32nd player taken overall. He was a five-time Pro Bowl selection during his days with the Bills. He later played a season with the San Francisco 49ers, and two more with his hometown Patriots.
He also holds the distinction of playing on the last Boston College football team to lose to UMass.
“It was embarrassing,” Smerlas was saying yesterday, sounding as though the game had been played last Saturday, not Nov. 25, 1978. “They were beasts. We walked off with our heads between our legs, but we did that so many times that season.”
Well, yes, there’s that. The 1978 Eagles went 0-11, including a season-ending 28-24 loss to Temple in the Mirage Bowl — in Tokyo.
Imagine traveling to the other side of the world to finish off a winless season. Then again, imagine traveling 90 miles to Amherst to suffer a humiliating 27-0 loss to the Division 1-AA Minutemen.
This year’s showdown between the two schools — to be played Saturday at noon at Gillette Stadium — has UMass fans hoping for a repeat of what happened in 1978. The Minutemen are coming off a 24-7 loss to No. 25 Florida in their season opener last Saturday in Gainesville, having given the Gators a major scare for three quarters.
The Eagles, meanwhile, came up flat in the fourth-quarter of their Dublin showdown with Georgia Tech, losing 17-14.
Think about it. UMass wades into The Swamp and is trailing 10-7 in the fourth quarter. BC makes a festive trip to Ireland and can’t close out Georgia Tech.
Hence, the optimism out Amherst way. When the Minutemen met on Sunday morning to start preparing for Boston College, coach Mark Whipple didn’t feel the need to fill the room with a lot of inspirational trumpet-blaring.
“I haven’t brought anybody in to talk to the team and all this and that,” he said. “I really didn’t have to say anything. I just know that on Sunday, when we did our BC prep, there seemed to be a little more to Boston College.
“I think there’s certainly a lot of guys, certainly in Massachusetts, who didn’t get scholarships or offers (from Boston College), maybe there’s something there. I don’t know. I just felt like the guys are ready, gaining some confidence from Florida. It’s an important game, it’s a really important game. I haven’t had to build it up . . . when you say BC around here, it brings out a little something in our guys.
“But,” added the coach, “we gotta beat ’em to have a rivalry.”
The absence of a “rivalry” is an inconvenient truth for followers of UMass football. The Eagles lead the series 20-5, with three of UMass’ victories taking place in 1901, 1902 and 1912. To put that in perspective, consider that UMass wasn’t even called UMass in those days. It was the Massachusetts Agricultural College.
The schools didn’t play again until 1966, and UMass has won only twice — a 28-7 victory in 1972 and the big win in ’78, which was the year “1-A” and “1-AA” divisions were hatched. BC was 1-A and winless; UMass was 1-AA and went all the way to the national championship game before losing to Florida A&M, 35-28.
“I think my freshman, sophomore and junior year we kicked the crap out of them,” Smerlas said.
It was even worse than that. Counting ’73 and ’74, BC won five straight games against UMass by a combined 222-43 before being blown out by the Minutemen in the college football equivalent of the Blizzard of ’78.
“I don’t hate UMass,” said Smerlas. “My brother went to UMass. A bunch of my friends went to UMass. So it’s not about them. It’s about us losing that game.
“Every time BC plays UMass I want them to kill them to make up for what they did to us in ’78. That’s why we played so angry in the pros. Geez, talk with Jim Rourke. It still haunts him as well. After a couple of beers it always comes back to 1978.”
So I talked to Jim Rourke, an offensive lineman on that winless ’78 BC team who went on to play seven seasons in the NFL.
“I wouldn’t call it the darkest day of my life, but it was one of them,” he said. “We lose to UMass, and then a week later we lose to Holy Cross, and then we get on a plane for 26 hours so we can lose to Temple in Japan.
“But the thing about the UMass game is that we knew all those guys from various All-Star games and whatnot. We still run into them, and they still rub it in about 1978. We have to eat that humble pie for the rest of our lives.”
But Rourke has found a way to cope with 1978 via a vanity license plate that reads as follows: “BC 011.”
Steve Buckley Thursday, September 08, 2016
My good buddy Fred Smerlas holds many distinctions in sports. He was a second-round selection by the Buffalo Bills in the 1979 NFL draft, the 32nd player taken overall. He was a five-time Pro Bowl selection during his days with the Bills. He later played a season with the San Francisco 49ers, and two more with his hometown Patriots.
He also holds the distinction of playing on the last Boston College football team to lose to UMass.
“It was embarrassing,” Smerlas was saying yesterday, sounding as though the game had been played last Saturday, not Nov. 25, 1978. “They were beasts. We walked off with our heads between our legs, but we did that so many times that season.”
Well, yes, there’s that. The 1978 Eagles went 0-11, including a season-ending 28-24 loss to Temple in the Mirage Bowl — in Tokyo.
Imagine traveling to the other side of the world to finish off a winless season. Then again, imagine traveling 90 miles to Amherst to suffer a humiliating 27-0 loss to the Division 1-AA Minutemen.
This year’s showdown between the two schools — to be played Saturday at noon at Gillette Stadium — has UMass fans hoping for a repeat of what happened in 1978. The Minutemen are coming off a 24-7 loss to No. 25 Florida in their season opener last Saturday in Gainesville, having given the Gators a major scare for three quarters.
The Eagles, meanwhile, came up flat in the fourth-quarter of their Dublin showdown with Georgia Tech, losing 17-14.
Think about it. UMass wades into The Swamp and is trailing 10-7 in the fourth quarter. BC makes a festive trip to Ireland and can’t close out Georgia Tech.
Hence, the optimism out Amherst way. When the Minutemen met on Sunday morning to start preparing for Boston College, coach Mark Whipple didn’t feel the need to fill the room with a lot of inspirational trumpet-blaring.
“I haven’t brought anybody in to talk to the team and all this and that,” he said. “I really didn’t have to say anything. I just know that on Sunday, when we did our BC prep, there seemed to be a little more to Boston College.
“I think there’s certainly a lot of guys, certainly in Massachusetts, who didn’t get scholarships or offers (from Boston College), maybe there’s something there. I don’t know. I just felt like the guys are ready, gaining some confidence from Florida. It’s an important game, it’s a really important game. I haven’t had to build it up . . . when you say BC around here, it brings out a little something in our guys.
“But,” added the coach, “we gotta beat ’em to have a rivalry.”
The absence of a “rivalry” is an inconvenient truth for followers of UMass football. The Eagles lead the series 20-5, with three of UMass’ victories taking place in 1901, 1902 and 1912. To put that in perspective, consider that UMass wasn’t even called UMass in those days. It was the Massachusetts Agricultural College.
The schools didn’t play again until 1966, and UMass has won only twice — a 28-7 victory in 1972 and the big win in ’78, which was the year “1-A” and “1-AA” divisions were hatched. BC was 1-A and winless; UMass was 1-AA and went all the way to the national championship game before losing to Florida A&M, 35-28.
“I think my freshman, sophomore and junior year we kicked the crap out of them,” Smerlas said.
It was even worse than that. Counting ’73 and ’74, BC won five straight games against UMass by a combined 222-43 before being blown out by the Minutemen in the college football equivalent of the Blizzard of ’78.
“I don’t hate UMass,” said Smerlas. “My brother went to UMass. A bunch of my friends went to UMass. So it’s not about them. It’s about us losing that game.
“Every time BC plays UMass I want them to kill them to make up for what they did to us in ’78. That’s why we played so angry in the pros. Geez, talk with Jim Rourke. It still haunts him as well. After a couple of beers it always comes back to 1978.”
So I talked to Jim Rourke, an offensive lineman on that winless ’78 BC team who went on to play seven seasons in the NFL.
“I wouldn’t call it the darkest day of my life, but it was one of them,” he said. “We lose to UMass, and then a week later we lose to Holy Cross, and then we get on a plane for 26 hours so we can lose to Temple in Japan.
“But the thing about the UMass game is that we knew all those guys from various All-Star games and whatnot. We still run into them, and they still rub it in about 1978. We have to eat that humble pie for the rest of our lives.”
But Rourke has found a way to cope with 1978 via a vanity license plate that reads as follows: “BC 011.”
