Boston College had become the first college in the country to make history.
The play is well known. The old Orange Bowl will be Doug Flutie's final chance to beat Miami. He dropped back, zeroes on the clock, and launched aHail Mary. The Hurricanes' defensive backs didn't think he had the ability to throw the ball over their heads and into the waiting arms of a receiver. It becomes part of college football lore.
Hundreds of Eagles fans are waiting for the plane to land at the airport. Boston is a college football town for a short time.
Flutie said that the excitement was real. The people cared. We were on par with the pros in this town.
It's rare for the Eagles, or any of the other programs along the Northeast's I-95 corridor, to get noticed in the sports world. New England, New York, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Delaware, Maryland and Washington, D.C. are all home to roughly one-fifth of the country's population.
Without the Northeast, the story of college football wouldn't be possible. In the 70s, northeastern schools averaged at least one team in the top 10 every week. Only Penn State has cracked the top 10 in the past 13 years.
Between 1987 and 2001 Syracuse was ranked in the Top 25 nine times. Since then, it has happened once.
In six of seven seasons between 1976 and 1982, Pittsburgh finished in the top 10. Since 2009, it hasn't spent a lot of time in the top 10.
Maryland won eight or more games 11 times in the 70's and 80's. In the past decade, it has won less than seven times.
Three of the nation's four teams don't have a winning percentage in the playoff era. The job of building a winner in college football's least successful region is even more difficult because of the rule changes.
Lance Leipold was the former Buffalo coach. We needed to be good evaluators and take players that would take time to develop. There are things that make that difficult.
New coaches are eager to sell fans on a brighter future despite the trends. Rutgers, Maryland, and Boston College have recently hired people who believe they are building the foundations of successful programs. Pitt is coming off a 10-win season for the second time in three years.
Is it possible for a team in the Northeast to win and win consistently enough to get fans and recruits from across the country?
One administrator said that anyone can have a special year. Is it something that happens on a regular basis? I don't know if it does. The game of college football is evolving.
Flutie remembers flipping through the paper. Boston College was one of the top programs. The Eagles had a star quarterback in Matt Ryan, and they had won their first eight games. They were going to Virginia Tech to play the second ranked team.
The type of game that Flutie would've covered would've been front-page news.
Flutie couldn't find an article about the game in the newspaper.
On November 23, 1984, Doug Flutie and Boston College defeated Miami.
There was a moment when Joe Paterno tried to get the Northeast's place in the college football hierarchy. In football, most of the region's top teams were still football independents, despite the formation of the Big East. Paterno wanted to form an alliance, build on regional rivalries and make big games in the Northeast.
Immediate problems were present. Syracuse, Pitt and BC were members of the Big East in other sports, which made them hesitant to join a startup. The Big Ten and the Atlantic Coast Conference were interested in Penn State. Paterno was a coach and not an administrator. The idea didn't come to fruition.
If someone had been able to put together the right football league with the right concepts, it could have been done. The world would change if there was a Dave Gavitt on the football team.
After Paterno proposed the idea, Penn State joined the Big Ten and the Big East started sponsoring football but never fully embraced it.
The turning point was at that point. Northeastern schools won more than half of their games before Penn State joined the Big Ten.
They have won just 45% in the 29 years since. The losing caused the Northeast to move into a seemingly endless chase of dollars.
The Big Ten and the Atlantic Coast Conference wanted to add teams in the New York and Washington, D.C. markets to increase their geographic footprint. Even if most of the TV sets weren't watching college football, more cable subscribers would mean more revenue.
Rutgers, Syracuse, Pitt, West Virginia and Louisville all left the Big East to join the American Athletic Conference.
In a place where college football had competition in the pro ranks, history and rivalries were lost.
The percentage of households tuning in for a show is tracked by ESPN. Boston was ranked 54th for the college football broadcasts. New York was outside the top 50. D.C. was outside the top 40. Pittsburgh was the only Northeastern market to make the top 20.
One of the sport's signature events will be played this year for the first time in four years. In the race for more money, it's one of many northeastern rivalries that have ended.
Rutgers coach Greg Schiano said that they lived and operated in an event driven area. Pro sports are fighting for entertainment dollars. The event of your game is packed with ticket holders and celebrities. Everyone will be present if you are the event. It gets harder if you are not winning.
The impact of realignment has not worked well for the Northeast.
Rutgers was better than Michigan, Florida State and Miami over the course of a six year period. Since leaving for the Big Ten, it has a record of 29-66.
Since it joined the Big Ten, Maryland is 37-55.
In the last three years, Syracuse is 43-66 in the conference.
West Virginia, which had finished in the Top 25 in six of its final seven seasons in the Big East, is 44-45 in Big 12 play.
"If you look at how things have changed since the Big East split, I don't know if that was a good move for northeastern football," an AD from a former Big East school said. I don't believe anyone has been successful in a competitive way. The loss of rivalries didn't help the cause.
The question was going to come.
He was the head coach at Buffalo from 2015 to 2020 and was responsible for the best era of football in its history. He asked the same question from his first call. It snows a lot in Buffalo.
Leipold had a lot of small animals. He noted that the pre-season camp in August was better than the one in Florida. The majority of games were played inside. If you're drafted by the Buffalo Bills, did playing in the cold weather prepare you for the game?
"You say Buffalo, people think cold immediately," said Leipold. You're always discussing it.
The winters are cold in Syracuse and Boston, but that's just the beginning of the challenges to build a winner in the Northeast.
While the I-95 corridor is densely populated, it's hardly a high school football hotbed for a variety of reasons, from the cold winters that impact off-season training to an increased emphasis on academics to high school calendars that run deep into June.
The high school ranks in western New York were doing things similar to what they were doing in California two decades ago.
The problems are illustrated by the numbers. More than 170 four- and five-star recruits have been produced by the Northeast in the last two years, with most coming from Maryland and Washington, D.C.
David Benedict is the athletic director at the University of Connecticut. What drives youth sports? The interest in high school football in the South is vastly different from that in the Northeast.
Quality players are not guaranteed to stay close to home for college. The SEC has played just four true road games in the past decade, but 38 of the blue-chip players signed with the SEC.
Kwity Paye, Andrew Stuber, and Ben Mason were some of the diamonds in the rough that Don Brown was able to find. The problem is that Brown was the defensive coach at the University of Michigan. It may be more difficult to get them to the University of Massachusetts.
One magical player can change expectations for schools in the Northeast, but it's rare that they stay. The New Jersey, Connecticut, and Washington D.C. players are all expected to be in the race for the award. There are no players playing for schools in the Northeast. More of the 19 blue-chip QB recruits to come from the Northeast in the playoff era signed with Notre Dame than with Northeastern schools.
Phil Jurkovec, a Pennsylvania native who signed with the Irish out of high school, eventually transferred to Boston College. I wanted to play at Notre Dame.
It's easy to suck talent from New England and Michigan when you're working with the UM team. The quarterback at NC State, who was once a four-star recruit from New Jersey, chose the school because another South Jersey native had success there before. Four players from New Jersey are on NC State's roster.
"People that I haven't talked to in a long time are following NC State, and that's because of the work done by the head football coach at NC State, and that's because of the work done by the head football coach at NC State, and that's
Success in the Northeast is mostly about stealing talent from other parts of the country, something BC's Jeff Hafley has made a priority.
Hafley said that he is going national because of his academics. I don't think you can do that in a region. There are more football players in the states of Florida, Texas and Georgia.
That leads to more challenges. Florida is where one of Hafley's best players is from. If he decided to transfer, he had NIL offers in the mid-six figures, and he had more than 1,500 receiving yards and 14 touchdown over the last two years. He said that the value of a BC education was more important to him than staying.
The Biletnikoff Award was won by Jordan Addison at Pitt, and he was a part of the team that won the conference title. He switched to USC at the end of spring practice, a bigger market with more NIL money on the line.
James Franklin said, "You'd always see guys getting drafted from all different schools." The transfer portal will make it easier to find talent.
Hafley is unsure. Boston College has something unique to offer, that's what he thinks. For the right guys, it's more valuable than any NIL deal.
BC is in a difficult space because money talks the loudest.
Hafley said that no one would have a chance if that happened. If people are allowed to call my players and recruit them and pay them, then shame on them.
The governor of Connecticut started a Q&A with the #AskNedAnything because he wanted to engage with voters on the social networking site.
Is the University of Connecticut joining a Power 5 conference?
The answer seems obvious for anyone who doesn't need to appeal to voters. The University of Connecticut has a dismal 21-76 record in the playoffs. Since the beginning of the year, the Huskies have only one win against an FBS opponent.
There was no fear in the air.
They're good enough to join any conference they want, unless other teams are afraid of them. https://t.co/V7kuOdUrRi
— Governor Ned Lamont (@GovNedLamont) July 12, 2022
The responses were very funny. The jokes are written by the students at the University of Connecticut.
Since the program's high-water mark in 2010, when it won the Big East and played in the Fiesta Bowl, they have been a national laughingstock.
Jim Mora, the new football coach at the University of Connecticut, has made a lot of noise in both recruiting and the transfer portal. Fans of the University of Connecticut have heard this song before. The losing is the only thing that remains.
Benedict said it's not easy to sustain a successful program year after year. It's more difficult because every coach has new ideas and relationships.
The successful schools in the Northeast often lose their coaches to bigger jobs. After Al Golden left for Miami, a number of successful coaches left for Power 5 jobs, too. Wisconsin has a new football coach, Paul Chryst. Doug Marrone left Syracuse for the NFL. After two years at Penn State, Bill O'Brien did the same thing. When Dana Holgorsen left West Virginia for a Group of 5 job in Houston, he was met with surprise. Leipold left Buffalo to become the head coach at Kansas.
The coaching carousel has plagued the Northeast for years despite the transfer portal upending rosters. Career-enders or stepping stones can be found in the jobs.
"There needs to be a commitment by the university that you're at," said Brown, who coached the Minutemen from 2004 through 2008. "You have to have everyone pull from the same rope and then as a head coach carry that message to families across the country."
The Nittany Lions have a recipe for success in the Northeastern region. Since 2000, Penn State's neighbors have mostly ebbed, but they still jam 100,000 fans into seats for every home game and contend for Big Ten titles.
Where everyone else seems to be struggling, how has Penn State succeeded?
"If you want to win at the very highest level, there isn't one area that you can say we don't have to compete in," Franklin said. You have to compete in all areas. All the areas. You have to be willing to fight in order to win.
After being voted out of the Big East, Temple almost stopped playing football. The school decided to invest more in the program's success instead of voting to continue it. The program went on a run of eight winning seasons after Golden was hired.
The athletic director is trying to find a conference home for the team. The football performance center and stadium renovations are close to being completed.
"We're taking the steps necessary so that our players and fan base can have great pride in what our campus looks like." There is no doubt about it.
Schiano came back to Rutgers in 2020 because of the school's commitment to football. Money was tight when he was in the Big East.
Schiano said he felt like we were building it with one arm behind his back.
Rutgers is all-in on football now that the Big Ten revenue is flowing.
Maybe a few of the programs around the Northeast can join Penn State as genuine college football brands?
Hafley said that college football needs the northeast.
Schiano said to look at the population, potential audience, money and the other factors. The Northeast has everything except the product on the field. Maybe that is the issue. The dollars seem to be more important than the wins when it comes to football in the area.
Is it possible that that will change? Is the Northeast capable of reviving Paterno's dream of becoming a college football powerhouse?
If you went to sleep 30 years ago and woke up today, you would wonder what happened. The person said, "Travhese said." I don't think you could explain it to people. I don't think it will happen right now. I never say never.
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