A Jersey Guy: BC giant step in right direction

The call was made on Wednesday by the newest Boston College football coach to an estranged BC alum and booster who had taken his support south to the state of Rhode Island.

It was a pleasant conversation, encouraging, and in the generally clandestine and compartmentalized world of BC athletics, eye-opening simply because it had taken place.

The coach, of course, was Bill O'Brien

The booster was named Greg Barber, BC 69.

For context, the press confefence where O'Brien was offically introduced.as the Eagles' coach is named the Barber Room, the coaching position is named the  Gregory P.  Barber and Family Head Coach.

At the press conference, a  Boston guy who had made pit stops with the Patriots (twice) Alabama, and Penn State as well as the Houston Texans in his 30-year coaching career said the right things, acknowledged the right people.

It felt like a good fit and is a good fit.

BC striving for the level, where The Heights was regarded as Power 5 bustop for coaches enroute to better places, it would mean a significant change.

"Eight wins,'' said former BC player and current football radio analyst,Pete Cronin "makes you relevant.''

BC has gone through a pandora's box of coaches and athletic directors since reaching that level--in 2009.

O'Brien said it was his destination job and he sounded believeable and considering the bright lights and big city of the NFL and schools such as Penn State and Alabama, you tended to believe him.

Barber, who like many die-hard BC boosters who simply had walked away after more than a decade of treading mediocre waters (7 wins max), says the words he heard from O'Brien were reassuring

But BC has been down this road  before--many times from Tom O'Brien to Jeff Jagodzinksi to Steve Addazio to Jeff Hafley and now Bill O'Brien in a 17-year stretch of mediocritiy. BC is a tough sell. 

And now with the era of NIL and transfer portal college football, where even the Alabamas work for virtally unlimited budgets, BC's chances of success seem slim.

Relevant? That may be achievable. BC will get 37 million dollars in television revenue this spring, 39 million next spring and 54.3 million in two years... enough revenue to compete.

BC President Father William J Leahy has chosen not to do so and BC has paid the price of athletic mediocrity in the two prime revenue producing sports--men's basketball and football.

But the game is changing. It's either all-in or drop down to a level in which a 5-year, $25 million-a-year contract for O'Brien puts you.

For O'Brien to have a chance to compete, Father Leahy must change BC's policy of taking all the money earned from the television contract and put it directly into a general University fund, with the money given to atletics as needed.

The problem with that system is that the administration seldom feels that the athletic department deserves as much money as it asking to be distributed.

If O'Brien can change that pattern and BC can compete with real NIL funding and has NIL and transfer portal departments in the athletic department, he has more than a chance.