Boston College Football Recruiting: Eagles Lose Two As Marvin Ham And Maurice Smith Decommit

Boston College got some bad news yesterday as both linebacker Marvin Ham and offensive lineman Maurice Smith decommitted from the Eagles.

The loss of Marvin Ham is brutal for the overall strength of this class. After Tommy Eichenberg decommitted about a month ago, the 4* Ham was the highest commit in the class. The Michigan native recently visited the Colorado Buffaloes, and their new head coach former Georgia DC Mel Tucker. Clearly that visit went very well, and it appears like he will be committing to CU shortly.

Maurice Smith, a 3* offensive lineman from Florida is heading to Florida State. As I reported yesterday, this shouldn’t be seen as much of a surprise. Smith’s recruitment had heated up lately, and schools in his area like Miami and FSU had offered. Would have loved to see him stay at BC, but this was expected.

Now look, I know this is going to cause a big “Addazio is a terrible recruiter!!” explosion, but please take a wider look at this predicament. In year’s past BC have had tons of commits that were not seen as attractive to Power 5 schools. This year, it seems like almost every commit has at least a handful of Power 5 offers. Whether it is because of the Indoor Practice Facility or some other factor, Addazio has raised the profile of the typical BC commit (even if the Rivals rankings aren’t reflecting that). When you get kids like this, bigger programs are going to try and poach them, it’s just the lay of the land.

If Addazio wants to battle for some of these kids like Marvin Ham and Maurice Smith, he is going to win some of these battles and he is going to lose some. It’s great to get a class of kids that just stick with BC, but many times this happens because many of these kids aren’t getting strong looks from any other school. Yes, losing Ham and Smith is tough, and yes it doesn’t really matter because the onfield product isn’t improving, but from a strictly recruiting perspective this isn’t awful news. BC has a pretty solid class right now, and there could be more good news coming soon.