Should Spaziani Be Fired Midseason? Will He Be?

Brian: The Boston College football team dropped another winnable game on Saturday to the Northwestern Wildcats. What's incredible about the game is that the Boston College defense gave up 560 yards and allowed the Northwestern offense to run 100 plays. Despite giving up 560 and 100, BC was in a decent position to win the game with a few less drops, stupid penalties and costly turnovers.

Spaz has now lost five straight non-conference games against FBS opponents. He's 1-6 against BCS non-conference programs.

After the game, you surprised me with this Tweet:

I really hoped for a better season for the #BCEagles. #Northwestern was very beatable as was #Miami #FireSpaz

— Jeff Martyn (@BCIntJeff) September 16, 2012

You are generally far most positive than I am so I was surprised that you threw around the #FireSpaz hashtag. Simple question: should Spaz be fired mid-season, or should he be given the benefit of the doubt to finish out the season? Related: if Spaz "should" be fired mid-season, will he be, considering the department will install a new Athletics Director in the next month, give or take. Your thoughts?

Jeff: After the loss to Miami, there were a lot of positives to take away from the loss. At least, it seemed there might have been at the time. After we got to see Miami go on the road the following week to take on Kansas State, we realized that Miami was not a very good football team at all. BC meanwhile handled Maine despite getting off to a really slow start. At this point you could overlook some turnovers and the slow start and say, well, it was just Maine and they probably did not give their best effort. Watching on Saturday, it is pretty clear that the fumbles so far this season are not just flukes, and the dropped passes are not flukes either.

For whatever reason, coaching or talent, many members of the team struggle to catch and hold onto the ball. This theme was not just first game jitters or anything. It is going to be a trend we see throughout the season. If it were just one player, then maybe that player needs to sit a little while a give someone else a chance. But when all of the running backs and several wide receivers are struggling, we have a coaching or recruiting issue that is not going to go away in one bye week or when a few players come back from injury.

We saw Syracuse and Vanderbilt have their chances to beat Northwestern and they did not. Then on Saturday, BC had their chances and they did not either. If we schedule a home and home with Northwestern, we have to take one out of two. If we start the season with an FCS team and two FBS teams that are unlikely to compete for their conference championship, we need to win 2 of 3. If we miss a bowl game one year, in the third year of a coaches tenure, we have to make a bowl the following season.

Unfortunately at this point, Spaz will be fired and the AD change might actually let him stay an entire season. If GDF were not leaving at the end of the month, there would be too much pressure to make a mid-season move that we might not see Spaz last until October. Since a new AD is on the way, it might wait until the end of the season instead. But I would say Spaz should be fired or announce that he'll step down at the end of the season as soon as we are eliminated from bowl eligibility. Then, we can have a proper search and hopefully find the right guy for this job. Even though everyone knows the temperature of Spaz's seat, some other candidates out there might be courted by other schools sometime before the season's end if we do not make an official announcement until after the season ends.