A few weeks back Jeff and I noted the decided lack of buzz, attention, anything really surrounding Boston College spring football. It was more than a little curious that with Eagles spring football in full swing, there was little to no media attention given to Boston College football. No buzz. No reports. Nothing.
I say it was curious because BC's spring football has been going on since February 18. Boston College was actually the first ACC program to open up spring camp and will be the first program to wrap up this Saturday with the Jay McGillis Spring Game.
Weren't there any number of storylines to report on this spring? Coaching staff departures, new coaching hires, installing a new offense under first year OC Doug Martin, numerous position battles and roster turnover.
I set out to quantify just how little attention the Boston media has paid to BC football this spring. I turned to ESPN's ACC Blog to arrive at a highly unscientific answer to my question.
You see, every day from Monday-Thursday, Heather Dinich (and recently, Matt Fortuna who's been filling in for HD while on leave) compile their "ACC's lunchtime links" post that gives a rundown of the day's headlines across the conference. Dinich and Fortuna rarely stray from the mainstream media's coverage of the ACC, so that means that any BC-specific daily links are usually sourced from either the Herald or Globe.
Going back to Feb. 21 (BC practiced started 2/18, and 2/20 was President's Day), I tallied each of ESPN's daily ACC links by program to see just how much mainstream media BC football was receiving relative to the rest of the conference. Here are the (highly unsurprising) results, with number of daily links totals by week:
| Start | End | Totals | Week of Feb. 20 | Feb. 27 | Mar. 5 | Mar. 12 | Mar. 19 | Mar. 26 | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Virginia Tech | 3/28/2012 | 4/21/2012 | 25 | 4 | 7 | 3 | 4 | 4 | 3 |
| Clemson | 3/7/2012 | 4/14/2012 | 20 | 3 | 3 | 7 | 3 | 2 | 2 |
| Miami | 3/3/2012 | 4/14/2012 | 18 | 4 | 3 | 4 | 1 | 4 | 2 |
| Georgia Tech | 3/26/2012 | 4/21/2012 | 17 | 3 | 3 | 5 | 2 | 3 | 1 |
| Florida State | 3/19/2012 | 4/14/2012 | 12 | 4 | 2 | 3 | 1 | 1 | 1 |
| Maryland | 3/10/2012 | 4/21/2012 | 12 | 3 | 2 | 3 | 3 | 0 | 1 |
| North Carolina | 3/14/2012 | 4/14/2012 | 7 | 0 | 2 | 0 | 2 | 3 | 0 |
| Duke | 2/22/2012 | 3/31/2012 | 6 | 2 | 2 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 2 |
| Virginia | 3/19/2012 | 4/14/2012 | 5 | 0 | 2 | 1 | 1 | 0 | 1 |
| Wake Forest | 3/1/2012 | 4/14/2012 | 5 | 0 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 |
| Boston College | 2/18/2012 | 3/31/2012 | 3 | 1 | 2 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| N.C. State | 3/23/2012 | 4/21/2012 | 3 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 1 |
So despite being first out of the gate for this year's Spring football and given the fact that N.C. State only started spring practice this past Friday, the Eagles were tied for last in the ACC in terms of total number of different daily links posted on ACC. Further, there hasn't been a link or an article about Boston College football since March 1.
Here were the three Eagles headlines:
It's not even September yet, and BC already has a loss. -- Feb. 22
Boston College quarterback Chase Rettig is learning yet another offense this spring. -- Feb. 27
Athlon says BC coach Frank Spaziani has the hottest seat in the country this year. -- Mar. 1
Not exactly the type of positive press you want to see written about your football program.
Other highly disorganized thoughts on the above numbers:
-- It's easy to point the finger at ESPN here and claim some Virginia Tech, Clemson, Miami and Florida State love fest, but really Dinich and Fortuna are just aggregating links from various mainstream media sources. And like I said, they don't tend to stray far from the established papers. So while this is a highly unscientific straw man poll, you can get some sense of the buzz (or lack there of) across the conference.
-- Of note is the start date and spring games for each of the programs. Despite starting spring game very late in the year, both Techs enjoy plenty of media attention.
-- Virginia Tech has been the class of the ACC for football since 2004, so it should come as no surprise that the Hokies garner a lot of the media attention. Virginia Tech has several good beat writers that cover the program. There's basically been at least one link a day on the Hokies; all despite the fact that Tech opened up spring camp ... yesterday.
-- Clemson, Miami, Georgia Tech and Florida State obviously get a lot of play in the local papers, but so does Maryland. Though a lot of the links had to deal with Randy Edsall's botched transfer restrictions placed on QB Danny O'Brien. Who DIDN'T end up at Vanderbilt, after all.
-- Wake Forest may be the smallest school in the BCS, but they still manage to garner more of the spotlight than BC.
For a program that doesn't enjoy many natural advantages over peer ACC programs, the last thing BC football needs is to remain irrelevant in its own backyard in terms of media coverage.