Step right up and give it a shot

Boston College has faced Football Championship Subdivision teams only three times since 1985, all from New England, all expected victories.

Last year, BC knocked off Maine, 22-0. In 2004, it was a 29-7 win over Massachusetts; in 1999, it was a 33-22 win over Northeastern.

College football has its own caste system. There's the Football Bowl Subdivision (formerly Division 1-A), the Football Championship Subdivision (formerly Division 1-AA), and Divisions 2 and 3.

Rarely are there crossovers and even more rarely does David beat Goliath. But it happened this season, of course, when FCS national champion Appalachian State stunned then-No. 5 Michigan in the Big House in Ann Arbor.

In 2005, in another startling upset, Cal-Davis, a former Division 2 school making the transition to 1-AA, stunned Stanford, 20-17, in a game that probably had some impact on the negative turn Stanford coach Walt Harris's career took. (Harris was fired at the end of last season.)

And while tomorrow's game between UMass, No. 2 in the FCS national rankings, and No. 12 BC features two unbeaten Massachusetts teams, it is a definite negative risk-reward game for the Eagles.

"The good thing about scheduling games like that is that you don't have to return the game," said BC athletic director Gene DeFilippo, who has the Eagles hosting Rhode Island next season.

"Most of the time, you try and get seven home games. And if you can schedule some games which you don't have to return [play at the other team's field], it can be good.

"And I think it's good for high schools and colleges in New England to have games like this. It helps promote college football in New England."

The way it works is that BC will offer a guarantee - with UMass, it is $225,000 - for an FCS school to get on a bus and make a trip to Alumni Stadium.

DeFilippo says he tries to rotate games among the FCS New England schools. New Hampshire had not wanted to play in the past, but now wants to get back into the rotation, he said.

Absent from this mix is Harvard, which does not offer athletic scholarships. NCAA rules do not allow games against nonscholarship schools to count toward the minimum total of six victories required for bowl eligibility.

The bottom side is obvious. Just ask Michigan, whose season may have been ruined in its first game, even though the Mountaineers are two-time-defending FCS national champions.

"The bad point is that we're expected to win," said DeFilippo. "And the general public doesn't realize how good some of those teams are.

"For them, it's their game of the year. They come into the game with an attitude of, 'We've got nothing to lose.' They have a chip on their shoulder. Some of their players want to show the bigger schools they deserved to be recruited.

"Your team has to be sure it's ready to play. What the Michigan game taught everyone is that you can't just put your helmets on and expect to win."

It wasn't always that way between the big boys and their cousins. A generation ago, the service academies and Ivy League schools were regarded as more than equals. BC has an overall record of 1-10-1 against Ivy schools, including an 0-8-1 mark against Harvard and Brown. But the last time BC met Harvard was in 1944, and the last time the Eagles met Brown was in 1945.

And the embarrassment factor of losing is significant for teams from Bowl Championship Series conferences who routinely go to non-BCS leagues for games. BC, for example, has dipped into the Mid-American Conference the past few years, with games against Central Michigan, Ball State, and Buffalo. Next week, it meets Bowling Green.

Losses (or scares) can happen at that level in a heartbeat.

Ball State went to the final seconds before losing to Nebraska last week and Bowling Green has already beaten Minnesota and given undefeated Michigan State a major scare.

Dropping down a level is a different matter. While it has happened - Maine beat Mississippi State, and New Hampshire beat Northwestern in the past few years - it is still a real risk for a victory that could come just as easily by trolling the bottom of the FCS conferences.

And it is one reason BC is hardly taking the Minutemen for granted this week.

With a month of games played, it's time to take a realistic look at the Top 10:

1. USC

2. Oklahoma

3. Florida

4. LSU

5. Ohio State

6. West Virginia

7. California

8. Texas

9. Wisconsin

10. Boston College

Mark Blaudschun can be reached at blaudschun@globe.com.