JACKSONVILLE, Fla. - One of the first things I learned when I arrived in Boston as a freshman college student 43 years ago was that when the subject was Boston College, very few people were neutral. It was pretty much a love 'em or hate 'em deal, and so it remains.
Neither the BC idolaters nor the haters are rational and this comes into play when you write about a BC athletic team. It's worse when people know you went there because each set of irrational readers brings the predictable biases with them. The haters are never satisfied unless you trash BC and the idolaters are never satisfied unless you venerate them. It's kind of amusing, actually.
I can deal with the idolaters because they are simply acting like proud parents who think their offspring can do no wrong. But the other people are annoying because they refuse to face a central fact, which is that Boston College is our sole local link to the big-time worlds of college football and basketball. With all due respect to Boston University, Northeastern, and Harvard, if we didn't have BC, the city of Boston would be an irredeemable wasteland when it comes to major college sports. If BC didn't provide us with that connection, half of "SportsCenter" would be an abstract.
We'll postpone the morality talk about the excesses of college sports for another time, if you don't mind. The college sports thing is peculiar to America and it is sometimes hard to defend. But, to borrow a phrase, it is what it is, and I am here because part of its reality is the Atlantic Coast Conference championship game, which today will feature Boston College against Virginia Tech.
BC is here, and that's a good thing. BC has enjoyed a very nice first season under coach Jeff Jagodzinski, who guided his team to a 10-2 regular season, including an 8-0 start that created a giddy stay in the top five. The top two, to be accurate. Only people gazing at the world through maroon-tinted glasses actually believed BC was ever good enough to be the No. 2 team in the country, but it was fun while it lasted.
Whether BC proves to be the eighth-best or 10th-best or 20th-best college football team in the country, here is something you should know: It's a great achievement. Boston College is the only private school in the top 15 teams in the BCS standings, and only one of two (Brigham Young being the other) in the top 20. All the rest are well-supported state U's, and, in case you didn't know, that includes Clemson and, yes, Virginia Tech, the original name of which was Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University.
I'm not putting down state universities. But it is far easier for a mammoth state U to construct a successful football program than it is for a private Catholic university - particularly one not located in South Bend, Ind. The BC idolaters may think far too much of the school and its athletic program, but the local haters don't appreciate it nearly enough.
In the last four years, while playing in two BCS conferences, BC is 38-11. I'm as guilty as the next thousand people you're going to meet for dwelling on the 11 far more than the 38. We all take BC's high-level competitiveness for granted.
This has been going on for a long time. In my time, BC has beaten the likes of Texas, Texas A&M, Clemson (back when it was coming off a national championship), Penn State, Alabama, Miami, California, Stanford, BYU, and Air Force. They have gone into Clemson's Death Valley in two of the last three years and won. They won in Tallahassee, Fla., last year, and that's never easy.
Oops, almost forgot. They've also won five straight against That School From South Bend, the one that takes both itself and football verrrrrry seriously.
So, let's cut the nonsense. Against very heavy odds, BC has made itself into a meaningful football school.
But BC will always be BC, which means not everyone it likes is going to get in and it will not accumulate the press clippings and air time that a school playing to a captive audience in a 100 percent collegiate atmosphere will. It was BC's grave misfortune to pick the absolute worst possible year to have that 8-0 start. We were all preoccupied with a baseball team and a football team. BC will never get back the ink it didn't get.
That's a shame, but I doubt it will be weighing on the Eagles' minds as they take the field against Virginia Tech today.
BC is here because it is a team with some spunk. Losing back-to-back games to Florida State and Maryland had to be painful, but BC responded with a terrific win at Clemson and a significant victory over Miami that snapped a 15-game losing streak against the Hurricanes. True, few of these BC players were even born when the losing started, but don't think they weren't keenly aware of the history. They were able to do what some pretty good BC teams couldn't, and that makes them a special group.
They defeated Virginia Tech Oct. 25 in a storybook finish, but they are underdogs today. Virginia Tech has four straight convincing wins since that loss to BC, and now boast a two-headed quarterback monster in Sean Glennon and Tyrod Taylor. The Hokies come in playing their best football, and they have a strong revenge motive.
BC has a very good quarterback of its own, a young man who has been in the Heisman Trophy discussion all season. Matt Ryan would enhance any college football program in the land, but he chose BC. It has been a mutually beneficial experience.
If BC wins, it goes to the Orange Bowl. Any BC hater trying to dismiss that will look and sound very foolish.
Bob Ryan is a Globe columnist. He can be reached at ryan@globe.com.
Correction: Because of a reporting error, it was misstated that Boston College was the only private school in the top 15 of the Bowl Championship Series rankings in a column in Saturday's Sports section. Southern California is also a private school in the top 15.
