Revisiting Expectations: Where Do The Eagles Stand?

Being a BC football fan this year has been... something. There have been some pretty wild swings in optimism, and while I doubt anyone’s excitement level is nearly what it was after the Virginia Tech game (or even pre-season, really), BC now at least looks like they’ve got a halfway-decent season to play for.

There’s going to be a pretty good chunk of you who don’t care and think everything is terrible and think hoping to become bowl eligible is bad and embarrassing and WINNING IS BAD BECAUSE IT MEANS WE MIGHT NOT FIRE DAZ IMMEDIATELY. To those of you, I have a few comments:

• Football season is short, please just let the rest of us enjoy things
• Yes, obviously we all wish BC was 9-0.
• Given where we were a few weeks ago, getting back into hoping to get an extra game in December is good and fun and, again, football season is short.
• Why do you do things that you hate?

Anyway, let’s recap the season real quick:

Preseason: Hey, things might be okay!
BC 35, VT 25: HEY, THINGS MIGHT BE OKAY!
BC 45, Richmond 13: This game happened!
KU 48, BC 24: Whatttttttt theeee helllllllllllllllll
BC 30, Rutgers 16: Okay, okay, I’m fine, we’re fine, maybe we can...
WF 27, BC 24: ...SON OF A...
UL 41, BC 39: Okay no joke where is the 4th win coming from because I don’t see it.
BC 45, NCSU 24: Lol what?
Clemson 59, BC 7: I crashed my car a couple months ago and that was also bad.

And now we reach this week’s 58-27 win over Syracuse. I’m not really sure what to feel, because Syracuse is butt and the BC defense is still... well, they are on the field sometimes as far as I can tell.

But on the other hand, good Lord, 700 yards of offense and 500 yards on the ground is unholy. I don’t care who you’re playing, and Syracuse might be butt, but they’re ACC butt. Suddenly we’re at 5 wins needing just one of three to get the bowl berth (which I would very much enjoy, I’m sorry if you wouldn’t), and while BC will be a big underdog at Notre Dame, this weekend against Florida State and the final week of the season at Pittsburgh are both winnable games.

Before the season started we posed a couple polls to you all — what do you think would be a successful season, and what do you think will happen? What you thought would happen was all over the place (6-6 and a bowl win was the most popular option at just 21%), but “successful season” was a bit more coherent.

I know that’s a lot of options, but for the regular season it all kind of boils down to:

6-6: 11%
7-5: 31%
8-4: 53%
4% of you are insane and 1% of you vanished due to rounding. My condolences to your loved ones.

Somehow 8-4 is still possible, and I can’t imagine anyone who felt that going 8-4 was successful before would now think that going 8-4 would be a disappointment given that it would mean we win our last 4 games including beating the Irish in South Bend.

But what about 7-5 or even 6-6? Given the mid-season reality check(s) we got, would any of you be happier at 6-6 or 7-5 than you would have been at the beginning of the year? My vote at the beginning of the year was for 7-5 and a bowl win, and while I can’t say I would be happy only getting to 6-6, I’d at least feel... grateful that things weren’t a complete embarrassment? I guess? And grateful that I’d get to watch the team play in December? It’s a tough feeling to wrap my head around.

And so, let’s revisit those expectations. Where has BC fan sentiment moved since the beginning of the season?