Flying High

Frustration is the foundation of sports in Boston. Sure, the Hub is treated to an occasional championship team, but the famous losses are what stand out most in local memories: the seventh games of the '67 and '75 World Series, the '78 Red Sox playoff, the Bruins' seventh-game overtime loss to Montreal in '79.

What's really amazing is how Boston teams stay close at all, since they're relatively underfinanced operations, using old, undersized arenas and usually avoiding high-priced superstars. When the Red Sox, relying on hustle and enthusiasm, take on the Yankees, relying on a big payroll, there's probably no more obvious case in sports of good guys versus bad guys.

At Boston College, Boston's athletic outlook has reached collegiate sports, as well. Emphasizing local talent and disdaining high-powered national recruiting, the Eagles have developed spirited, exciting teams with reputations like those of the local pro squads: good except in the clutch, or no good at all.

Four years ago, the B. C. football program was definitely no good at all. The Eagle gridders went 0-11 in 1978, and the athletic department infuriated alumni by hiring Coach Jack Bicknell, author of a 15-38 record in five miserable seasons at UMaine. Apparently, football was no longer taken seriously on The Heights.

Well, things have changed. The Eagles started this season by clobbering Texas A&M (led by the highest-paid college coach in the country). The next week, they stunned Clemson when they rallied from a 14-0 deficit for a 17-17 tie. Two weeks ago, B. C. almost stumbled against against 18-point underdog Rutgers. But quarterback Doug Flutie (from Natick, Mass.), B. C.'s chief miracle-maker this year, led an 87-yd drive in the final 1:18, passing for a touchdown, a two-point conversion and a 14-13 victory.

It's this Saturday, though, that the 5-1-1 Eagles, ranked twentieth in the UPI poll, have really been waiting for. Seventh-ranked Penn State is at Chestnut Hill this weekend, favored by more than a touchdown. The Nittany Lions haven't lost to a New England team since Harvard beat them in 1932. It's a crucial game for B. C.'s bowl invitation chances more important it's a chance for a team riding high on its spirit and hard work to show what it can do against one of the perennial national powers that treat college football like a semi-pro sport.

If that's not enough to make you root for B. C., remember Penn St. is couched by the man who pushed last year to demote the Ivies from Division I-A to I-AA, Joe Paterno, Brown '50, who said. "The Ivy League is living in its own world, while we deal in the real world."

Of course, if you must root for the "real world" big-time football powers over the underdogs, fine. You can write some fan mail to the Yankees after the game.