Category Archives: Football

Holy Cross – then . . . and again!?

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1966 Sub Turri

If it was Thanksgiving weekend when we were students at BC, it was also BC-Holy Cross football . . . except once. While the first three BC-HC games took place on the traditional Turkey Saturday, the 1967 game was the following Saturday, December 2. (That season started late. First game wasn’t until September 23. Not sure if it was just calendar or something else.)

BC-HC football was also the season finale. There were only eight or nine bowl games back then — the iconic Rose, Sugar, Cotton, and Orange bowls, along with the newer and lesser Tangerine, Liberty, Bluebonnet, Sun, and Gator (and occasional Pasadena) bowls. Only 18 teams made it to bowl games then, far fewer than the 80 teams that will play in bowls this season. Most of the teams playing in bowls in the Sixties were southern schools with the Pac-8 and Big 10 meeting in the Rose Bowl. (After the 1943 Orange Bowl, the Eagles didn’t play in a bowl until the 1982 Tangerine Bowl.)

Always the final game and against Holy Cross, the age-old rival from nearby Worcester, the Friday night before the game featured a rally, the most expansive of the year. In our first couple of years, at least, the rally consisted of a parade of vehicles “adapted” to be floats carrying large signs (some of which carried somewhat profane language, as at right). The parade would leave the area in front of McHugh Forum, proceed east down Beacon Street to Cleveland Circle, and return via Commonwealth Avenue to Upper Campus. (Permits? We don’t need no stinkin’ permits!)

The promo in The Heights for the 1964 rally promised “fiery speeches” and a bonfire in which the floats “will go up in flames and smoke.” I was home, in Western Mass, that Friday and didn’t attend the rally, so I cannot confirm the existence of a bonfire. We welcome any recollections of that rally, or any other Holy Cross rally.

That November 24, 1964 issue of The Heights (published on a Tuesday) also carried an edition of The Infidel, a purported edition of a Holy Cross student newspaper. The lead article announced that Holy Cross had once again sought to forfeit the game against BC because of “fright.”

In 1964, the Eagles avenged a shutout defeat (9-0) the previous year by winning another low-scoring game 10-8 to finish the season 6-3 (best season record while we were there).

Team, fans, everybody leave the field at Alumni Stadium following 1964 win over Holy Cross. Caption in The Heights: “On to the Victory Dance!”

As sophomores, we saw classmate Brendan McCarthy, playing his first varsity season, win the O’Melia award as top player in the BC-Holy Cross game. McCarthy’s 139 yards on 20 carries and 1 touchdown (on a very muddy Fitton Field) led the Eagles to a 35-0 rout of the Crusaders.

Preceding the 1966 game, Heights sportswriter and classmate Bob Ryan (retired Boston Globe sportswriter and 4-time national sportswriter of the year) penned a column for the November 18 issue entitled “Cross Game Ain’t What It Used To Be.” In it he opined that, at least that year, the BC-HC rivalry was better on the hardwood, i.e., between the Eagles’ and Crusaders’ basketball teams. Holy Cross, however, decided to make it a rivalry that year, securing their only victory over BC while we were students, 32-26, in a “wide-open finale.”

Heights sportswriter and classmate Reid Oslin, in his article on the 1967 BC-Holy Cross game, called Fitton Field “The World’s Coldest Place.” Oh, I remember that one! The Eagles won 13-7 and quarterback and classmate Joe DiVito took home the O’Melia Award.

We played Holy Cross in football four times while we were students. In basketball, BC and Holy Cross met eight times on the court, twice each year. The greater frequency, and probably the ability to see players up close, made the basketball rivalry seem more intense. You could really see “villainry” in the opponent, cf. Keith Hochstein. By the way, BC’s record against the Cross in our years — 7-1.

We’ll talk more about BC and Holy Cross in basketball in coming weeks.

The last BC-Holy Cross football game was played November 22, 1986. BC won 56-26 in its eighth-straight victory in the series. The Eagles had won 17 of the last 19 games in the series. The Crusaders had won two games in 1977 and 1978 by a total of six points.

There is, however, a next BC-Holy Cross football game. In January 2014, it was announced that BC and Holy Cross had agreed to a two-game series, both at BC, in 2018 and 2020. Those games, instead of completing the regular season for each team, will be in early September. What do you think of the renewal of this series? Is it again a “rivalry”? Or is it a restatement of Bob Ryan’s 51-year-old column — “Cross Game Ain’t What It Used To Be”?

‘Ivy Envy’

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Heights sports editors sometimes think alike, I guess. In October 1966, I wrote a column in the Heights entitled “Ivy Envy,” in which I extolled the virtues of football played in that league. The following year, Reid Oslin, previously sports editor, penned a column with the headline “Ivy Eagles?” and he went a little further, suggesting BC should consider emulating the league.

Both columns may have been inspired by mediocre football records for the Eagles in each of our junior and senior year seasons. Reid and I, however, had another perspective as well. We also had been classmates in high school and a fellow high school classmate, Gene Ryzewicz, was the all-Ivy running back and later quarterback for Dartmouth, then called the Indians.

Gene Ryzewicz leading Dartmouth players into Harvard Stadium, 1966.

As my column back then mentioned, the UPI New England coaches’ poll in October 1966 placed Harvard #1 and Dartmouth #2. BC was ranked 6th. Sixth . . . in New England! I attended the Harvard-Dartmouth games in 1965 and 1966. Those games were fun to watch. Football was less “professional” back then (the NFL was way short of being the center of American sports attention) and Ivy players, at least some of them, were as good as the better players at BC and other major teams.

Even now, some BC fans are not fans of the direction BC athletics has taken, i.e., joining the ACC. The feelings become stronger when BC teams are not especially competitive in the conference. Maybe the Ivy approach is no longer among the possibilities for BC, if it ever was, but the concerns about an institution that claims high academic standards competing with institutions, particularly public ones, with admittedly lower standards are not likely to disappear.

First and best

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Flutie had his “Hail Mary” against Miami. Bill Cronin will always have “the catch” against Syracuse. Sub Turri photo.

On this date in 1964, members of the Class of 1968 attended their first Boston College football game, at least as BC students. For me, it was the first ever and, to me, the best game I saw while a student at BC. And it’s top 10 among all the BC football games I’ve seen.

BC played Syracuse. The Orangemen were ranked in the top 10 pre-season and featured two future hall-of-fame running backs — Floyd Little and Jim Nance.

It was a nice September Saturday. Lots of excitement and cheering and a card stunt performed by the freshman class. At least, I remember being among freshmen training for it and doing it. I don’t know if other classes were involved. I also don’t remember ever doing it again. And don’t remember seeing any photographic evidence it happened. Anybody else remember?

Something worked for the Eagles. We’ll let classmate Reid Oslin (A&S), former BC Sports Information Director and BC sports historian, tell the story in an article he prepared for a reunion of that 1964 team.

“Boston College – like almost every college team in 1964 – opened its schedule on September 19. ‘Back then, college football teams could not even start football practice until after Labor Day,’ recalled Charlie Smith, an end on the ’64 club who would captain the BC team the following year. ‘Double sessions started the day after Labor Day and you had your first game three weeks later.’

“Smith noted that college football was a far different game back then. Not only were all fields made of natural grass, and Alumni Stadium was a wooden bleacher-type structure that held but 26,000 fans – but most players were expected to play BOTH offense and defense.  Specialists were few and far between – BC’s kicker of the day was Marty DiMezza, a hulking guard who kicked placements in between his blocking assignments.

Dick Powers (70) flanks an upended Syracuse player on the approach to Floyd Little. Sub Turri photo.

“The Syracuse team came into the opener ranked No. 9 in the national polls. And why not? The Orangemen had a dream backfield of Jim Nance and Floyd Little – each of whom would go on to a starry pro football career. (Freshmen running back Larry Csonka and a wingback named Tom Coughlin [editor’s note: BC football coach 1991-93] did not play in the game for SU.)

“The teams battled back and forth throughout the game, with the tough BC defense yielding but 2 touchdowns to the high-octane Orangemen. BC quarterback Larry Marzetti threw a 26-yard scoring pass to Bob Budzinski and fullback Don Moran bulled into the endzone from 4 yards out to give the Eagles a 14-7 advantage in the 4th quarter.

QB Larry Marzetti is tackled by Syracuse. Note the “height” of the Alumni Field stands. Sub Turri photo.

“Late in the game, Syracuse quarterback Wally Mahle scored on a 1-yard plunge to pull the Orangemen even at 14-14. BC got the ball on the ensuing kickoff with time slipping away, and BC coach Jim Miller mulled the possibility of running out the clock and escaping with an unexpected tie [editor’s note: no overtime then]. On the sideline, team captain Bill Cronin yelled to Miller, ‘Are we going to try to win this thing or not?’

Coach Jim Miller expresses his affection for Bill Cronin.

“In the meantime, Marzetti was driving the team up the field. With just seconds remaining and the ball 55 yards away from paydirt, Marzetti called his own play and lofted a ‘Hail Mary’ to Cronin, a lanky former high school basketball star from Reading, Mass., who leaped into the air to make the catch. Syracuse’s two deep defenders, Charlie Brown and Mahle, collided as they tried to defend Cronin. The SU players fell to the ground and Cronin caught the ball unimpeded, staggering into the endzone for the winning score just as the old Alumni Stadium analog clock circled to zero.

“Delighted fans, led by the BC Band, raced out on the field. The wooden goalposts were torn down. BC had a victory for the ages.”

Other recollections
Steve McCabe (A&S): “Coming to BC, I didn’t know a lot about college football, but I did know that Syracuse was a powerhouse with a great coach and was known for graduating great running backs like Ernie Davis and Jim Brown. I was in heaven when we won that game, and always felt that although the football season was a ton of fun, that first game was the highlight of our four years of football, and it was all downhill from there. I don’t remember any of the details, only that we won. Twenty years later, we were fortunate enough to have the ‘Hail Mary’ pass enter sports legend and to see it played over and over during subsequent televised BC games. BC football made me an advocate of ‘big time’ football at Rutgers, where I met my wife, and where my son David attended. It can change the fortune of a school for the better, as I believe Doug Flutie’s game did for BC, and it can be done without sacrificing academic standards. Just as important, it can make Fall a lot of fun for a campus town and its students and graduates.”

Tom Sugrue (A&S): “That was an amazing game — a great way to start our ‘careers’ as BC sports fans. Of course, we lost the next weekend against Army — I was at the game. I was so excited from the Syracuse win, I went home the next weekend and convinced my Dad to go up to West Point with me. So this too was a good lesson for 50+ years of BC fandom. As soon as they lift you up, the bottom can fall out! :)”

Here’s the article about the game that appeared in the next Friday’s Heights. There are other articles and columns related to the game in the same issue.