It's the offseason and there isn't much in the way of actual Boston College athletics news these days. To fill the dead period of college athletics, all sorts of rankings and discussion topics crop up from time to time.
Today's thought exercise: "bad" college basketball jobs.
Now I don't know about you, but when I think "bad jobs" I think of programs in the Great West Conference (R.I.P.), a bad Ivy League program (Cornell?), a transitional Division I program like Lowell, Rutgers or DePaul. Not, like, a major conference program competing in one of the nation's top men's basketball conferences averaging, since its first NCAA Tournament appearance in 1958, roughly a tournament berth once every three seasons.
As you can gather from the lead in, ESPN.com's Myron Medcalf disagrees, listing Boston College as one of the nation's eight worst college basketball jobs.
After an 8-24 finish, Steve Donahue was fired by BC. It wasn't unexpected. The Eagles had a strong run in the 2000s (seven NCAA tourney appearances from 2001-09). They also boast a list of former college standouts such as Reggie Jackson, Craig Smith, Troy Bell and Jared Dudley. But Boston is one of the most successful sports climates in America. The Bruins, Celtics, Red Sox and New England Patriots have all earned titles in the past six years. Championships are the norm for the city. An average Boston College basketball program that hasn't contended for the ACC title in years gets lost each season. Doesn't help that Boston College's hockey team has won three national titles in the past six years. Boston College basketball isn't even a top-two on its own campus.
Apparently the Bruins, Celtics, Red Sox, Pats and York's proclivity for winning championships has placed a cap on the amount of success and fan support Boston College basketball can enjoy. Got it.
It would seem the internet has the memory span of a fly. It was only a few years ago that Boston College basketball was winning more games than any program not named Duke or Carolina; coming within a bucket of winning the whole thing in their first season as a member of the conference. The program has certainly fallen on tough times under Donahue, and the program may not enjoy the financial support that others do in the conference, but one of the country's eight worst jobs? Out of 351?
Boston College wasn't the only ACC program to make the list as both Clemson and Florida State also cracked the top eight. The reasons both programs crack the list seem a bit more substantive than the ones offered up for BC. Both place a big emphasis on football, while Florida State has a 'meh' facility and steep in-state competition. I get that, but for not being a basketball school, Clemson has made the NCAA Tournament as recently as 2011 and is coming off a NIT semifinal appearance. Florida State also made it to MSG and won the ACC two years ago. These two coaching posts are among the worst 2% of jobs in college basketball?
I wouldn't rank any Atlantic Coast Conference job among the bottom eight in the nation. Then again, no one would read an article ragging on Cornell, N.J.I.T., Maryland Eastern Shore and something called "Incarnate World" either. But if you were to include a program from the ACC, wouldn't your first stop be the program that's finished DFL in each of the last two seasons? One that's made all of two NCAA Tournaments over the last 25+ years?
At least Medcalf got the Rutgers part right.