I speak of this quote that your "HJS" seemed to find from the Winston-Salem newspaper last week. We don't get this publication out in Mishawaka, so I appreciate him locating this statement by Spaziani:
"There's a certain area we recruit," Spaziani said. "We all have our circles. It's just that we've got the Atlantic Ocean on one side of our circle…. We're not a lot of other colleges. What they do is good. We are what we are, and we love it that way."
Of course, this explains why USC Trojans always seems to compete with one hand tied behind their backs. It's because they do have one tied back, only in this case it's anchored to the Pacific Ocean!!! I cry for Washington's recruiting, as they also have the Pacific on one side and Canada on another.
Miami made an interesting move heading north to Joe Robbie, away from the tip of the peninsula. But they're still smack-dab against the Atlantic Ocean themselves, and they've been paying the price. Even Notre Dame, as awesome as we do in preseason and in recruiting rankings, even we have our cross to bear in the form of the tip of Lake Michigan falling a mere 33 miles to our west.
Now, some of you uppity BC "back-to-back Atlantic Division winner" types will say: "But OC, Notre Dame is a Catholic school and exploits those ties, so we can mine the Catholic schools also!" Ah, but children, that is a false equivalency.
Notre Dame has a traditional defense industry and ROTC presence on its campus. We're able to embrace the "Crusader" (apologies Campion types) ethic of the faith. So it makes sense for us to go into Catholic schools and appeal to kids that they'll be able to come here and be heralded for "kicking tail", so to speak. That's our tradition.
On the other hand, where is your toughness? The only "ROTC" I read about related to Boston College is "demonstration" and "defunding". So now you think you can move from peace vigils and singing "Make Me a Channel Of Your Peace" at candlelight, to then travel into a 5-star recruit's living room, and expect them to take you seriously???
Fact is, you pay the price not just for your geography, but your embrace of a tradition that doesn't translate into football success. Hey, it is what it is. But understand that you have your own circles, that you're not a lot of other colleges. You are what you are. As long as you remember that, all of us will love you.
That's been your problem the couple of years. You ignored your preseason ratings, you won some games, and people hated you. Look, life is too short to be the object of people's hate, to have college football experts glare at you as you walk into meetings, to have bowl committee people sneer at you as they eat your Boston baked beans and Fenway (Sports Group) franks. Get back to the good old days, when everyone liked you. Life's a lot better that way, when you can sit down and enjoy some cookies and tea in peace.
Cheers,
OC
