Boston College Sports: Hoffa's Mid-Week Thoughts

Birdball Back in Business

As you all know by now, BC was selected for the NCAA Baseball Tournament for the first time in seven years. I won’t even try to pretend and break down the team because BCI baseball expert Dan Rubin did a fantastic job right here

Hats off to coach Mike Gambino for resurrecting the program to this point and  most importantly to saving us at least a year from having the discussion about BC dropping baseball for lacrosse.

I am pretty amped to check out projected MLB top round pick Justin Dunn and his league leading 1.20 ERA.

Turner Doing Work

Former BC and NFL coach Jim Turner is back in football after a two year hiatus. In February, Turner landed in the SEC back at his old stomping grounds and back in his old coaching position in College Station. Turner will be trying to replicate the success that he had a few years ago in churning out NFL offensive linemen like Jake Mathews and Luke Joeckel.

Turner has shown in just a few short months on the job that he still has a great skillset as a recruiter. Two weeks ago, he flipped four star offensive tackle Grayson Reed from Oklahoma State and last week he grabbed the Rivals 16^th ranked guard in the country, Adrian Wolford.

Turner is trying to rebuild his image after being part of that Miami Dolphins bullying scandal two years ago. If you recall, Ted Wells was the gumshoe on that case and determined that Turner lied during the investigation and participated in the harassment of Jonathan Martin. Turner ended up being the fall guy as a result of Wells’ report and was fired by the Dolphins. Last August, Turner’s lawyer announced that Turner would be filing a Defamation Suit against Wells. The suit had some harsh criticism for Wells including, "The Defendants, reflecting the NFL’s and Commissioner Goodell’s mindset, ignored and simply did not care that they were sacrificing the reputations and careers of people like Jim Turner in order to fashion a public relations campaign designed solely to ‘protect the shield.’ It takes someone like Jim, with courage and conviction, to stand up against the NFL machine and its law firm hired guns.""

Turner’s lawsuit and harsh words for the NFL likely bought him a one way ticket to never coaching in the NFL again or at a minimum for the foreseeable future. It’s good to see that he is off to a good start in his new gig at Texas A&M though. You have to respect a guy that isn’t afraid to speak against the machine.

Hoops Schedule Coming Together

Jon Rothstein reported this week that BC will face Kansas State and then either Maryland or Richmond in the 2016 Barclays Center Classic in Brooklyn. That was followed up by Zack Spears reporting that a few other non-conference opponents will be Towson, Harvard, Auburn, Fairfield and Providence.

With Harvard and Providence rebuilding, the most interesting game locked in stone is probably against Bruce Pearl and Auburn at MSC in December. Pearl of course was the dream candidate of some BC fans after Steve Donahue was fired. Unfortunately that was a pipe dream since the BC has never really opened up the wallet for a big time coach and thinks it is above hiring a coach with past NCAA sanctions. In any event it will be an interesting match-up in an otherwise pretty boring non-conference slate so far.