There is a great article about Tom Coughlin in USA Today.
In it, Lou Holtz recalls “”All the fans and all the media were talking about games in the past,” Holtz said on the telephone this week. “I was scared to death of Boston College. You could tell Tom Coughlin was a tough coach. I remember watching him against Penn State — and I have a world of respect for Joe Paterno — and it was like watching twin teams.”
There is a lot of insight in it about Tom Coughlin’s style. He is a living legend at BC.
Reid Oslin, then BC’s sports information director worked with Coughlin’s schedule so he understands the perfectionism that would one day lead to a Super Bowl. “He’d leave his house at 5:20 every morning to arrive at his BC office at 5:45. If traffic was bad and he got there at 6:01, he’d be unhappy…. I’d set up interviews for him and ask him later how they went. He’d say, ‘OK, but some of those radio interviews you said were going to be 10 minutes went 11 and 12 minutes. We have to watch that.’”
In 1993, with five seconds left to play, a walk-on named David Gordon kicks a 41-yard field goal right into the face of Touchdown Jesus to beat #1 Notre Dame. Coughlin hurries for the locker room to congratulate his players. Nobody there. He is so focused, he doesn’t notice they have stayed on the field. Gordon was watching Sunday night when Lawrence Tynes missed two field goals “If I were to talk to him, I’d say stay as far away as possible from Coach Coughlin at that point…I can relate to what he went through.”
“His game-day speeches, every time you left the locker room, you were ready to kill somebody,” Glenn Foley said from the Philadelphia radio station where he hosts a talk show. Foley was the Boston College quarterback who threw four touchdown passes that day.
January 25th, 2008 at 1:56 pm
The greatest moment in BC history . . .wrecking somebody ELSE’s championship season.
This game sucked so bad. Not only does a walk-on make an impossible kick, but we end up losing the national championship to a team we beat (FSU), all because our resume had the unforgivable stain of a loss to BC of all teams.
January 25th, 2008 at 2:29 pm
We?
Actually the ‘93 ND game is really no where near the “greatest moment in BC sports history”. It’s far from even the greatest moment in BC football history. It is only perceived that way by the South Bend crowd. The football teams of the early 1940s coached by Frank Leahy, who Notre Dame lured away with money after he proved his value at BC, were much bigger. Unfortunately there is very little film of what Grantland Rice called “the greatest game ever played”. (He never said that about the four horsemen, did he?) So were the early 1980s, culminating in Doug Flutie’s Heisman trophy win. And this past 11-win season was also a greater moment.
In basketball, the years when Cousy coached in the early 1960s were bigger. There were the early 1990s when Bill Curley and Alonzo Mourning went head-to-head in a 1992 BC, and then again in 1994 when BC toppled #1 UNC and finished in the elite eight.
There were the two national championships in hockey, both bigger moments.
I think it also may have been a bit bigger moment when President Kennedy called BC “the Jesuit Ivy”. (Hey, Rob, did your dad write that?)
Contrary to the way Notre Dame alumni and hangers-on think, other schools have history that DOES NOT INVOLVE NOTRE DAME. I realize that is very hard for the Domers and Domer-wanna-be crowd to comprehend.
For people who are not part of the self-absorbed Notre Dame crowd it was a great game, and the fact that a walk-on was given a chance by a coach as exacting as Tom Coughlin says a lot about his character and the Boston College program. We have a walk-on kicker now, by the way. And guess who has led the charge and the fund raising for a Boston College Football Scholarship Fund that provides scholarships to walk-ons? It’s the Jay McGillis fund, started by Tom Coughlin and named after a BC football walk-on who died of leukemia.
And by the way, I love the whole concept of a Providence and UConn alum using the second person plural pronoun when referring to Notre Dame. THEY aren’t YOU. YOU aren’t them. Read your diplomas sometime.
That is just a delightful example of how Notre Dame is all about public relations and how they capitalize on suckers who didn’t even go there. The way they used the trappings of anti-intellectual superstitious Catholicism instead of solid theology is just disgusting.
Go put on the gear you bought from the school you didn’t attend and light a candle, Friar Mike.
January 25th, 2008 at 2:31 pm
The Patriots might need that candle against Coughlin. Of course all the candles lit by all the superstitions Catholics in the grotto in 1993 didn’t do much good, huh? Maybe God is a Jesuit.
January 25th, 2008 at 2:37 pm
I get a little emotional on this topic huh? I didn’t mean to attack you ad hominem, Mike, but “we end up losing”? Come on.
January 25th, 2008 at 3:02 pm
Wow Bob, I missed all those National Championships BC won. I missed all teh New Year’s Day Bowl wins. I missed all the conference championships and BCS games. I missed all the first overall NFL draft picks. I missed all the top-10 rankings.
What I DIDN”T miss is you, and every otehr insufferable Fredo alum/fan, bringing up 1993, Coughlin, Foley, and that kick at every possible moment.
If it wasn’t taht big of a deal, why do you bring it up so often? If it isn’t that big of a deal, why is Coughlin so revered. After all, he never won anything else here.
Is an 11-3 record and victory over a putrid Michigan State squad really anything to celebrate?
I think thou doth protest too much.
January 25th, 2008 at 3:08 pm
And by the way, I love the whole concept of a “Providence and UConn alum using the second person plural pronoun when referring to Notre Dame. THEY aren’t YOU. YOU aren’t them. Read your diplomas sometime.”
Bob, I don’t tell you how to lead your life, you shouldn’t tell me how to live mine.
I say “we” when discussing the Red Sox, even though I don’t have a ownership interest, am not from Massachusetts, and don’t have season tickets. Same with the Celtics.
I say “we” becausde I have donated money, bought merchandise, cheered on teh team, and supported teh program. I wil say “we” anytime I want to.
Can all the rednecks in Kentucky not say “we” when watching Wildcat basketball because they didn’t go to the University? Ditto the construction workers in Columbus rooting on the Buckeyes, uneducated Mormons who like BYU, or the legions of Duke fans who have never even been to North Carolina?
I understand why BC frauds have no understanding of why people other than alums would support a team, because only an alum could root for Fredo.
“That is just a delightful example of how Notre Dame is all about public relations and how they capitalize on suckers who didn’t even go there. The way they used the trappings of anti-intellectual superstitious Catholicism instead of solid theology is just disgusting.”
Notre Dame may or may not be all about public relations. I don’t care. I like the football team. So do millions and millions of people, mostly Catholic, who didn’t go there. Get over it. I also happen to appreciate the way they proceed in a moral and idealistic fashion in a sport that many consider morally bankrupt. The same can’t be said for the other “Catholic” school who sold its soul and betrayed its history and integrity for football riches.
That’s for calling me a “sucker.”
January 26th, 2008 at 8:28 am
You’re welcome. It seemed like a reality check was in order, so I was happy to oblige. I mean, “sucker” is defined as “a person easily cheated, deceived, or imposed upon” and you give money to The School You Didn’t Go To.
I really loved your comment about how “Notre Dame proceeds in a moral and idealistic fashion”. That is as funny as Democrats who think their party is morally superior to Republicans or vice versa. When The School You Didn’t Go To uses the Big East for its own purposes is idealistic and moral huh? When The School You Didn’t Go To abandoned the College Football Association in 1991 to sign a $9 million per year TV deal that was moral and idealistic? But when BC left the Big East after formally complaining for three years that was a betrayal for riches? In addition to having allowed yourself to get sucked in by the public relations myth and aura of The School You Didn’t Go To, you are also blind about it.
I think it is astounding that you feel comfortable insulting the alma mater of other people with such vigor just because you have jumped on the bandwagon of The School You Didn’t Go To.
I wonder how Providence College feels about its alumni (and by the way, the plural of alumnus is alumni not alums) donating to The School You Didn’t Go To.
I am beginning to really like the Fredo thing. I am pleased we (see I went there so I can say that without misusing the language) are able to annoy Notre Dame Wannabes so acutely.
I can’t wait for four years from now when we dump the fake Irish for their Californian rival. God knows the weather in L.A. will be better, and it’s a better trip than going to that crap town in Indiana.
January 26th, 2008 at 11:06 am
Didn’t the college football season end… like 3 months ago??
Go G-Men.
January 26th, 2008 at 1:08 pm
Yes it did, but the Super Bowl is next week, and hence other people, not me, like sportswriters, are bringing up the obvious comparisons between Coach Coughlin’s college coaching career and his current success bringing the New York Giants to the Super Bowl.
However it seems that one of our SIMP contributors is so obsessed with an overrated School He Didn’t Go To that he needs to go on yet another unfounded tirade, rudely insulting the alma mater of another contributor, namely me, and I have had it.
I have not previously insulted an alma mater of one of my fellow SIMP contributors, but my restraint is giving way.
Has any one else on SIMP visited Providence College? It’s academically decent, but I found the place so physically unappealing that I left the campus tour in the middle, turning to my parents tell them I would rather wait out a year than use PC as a backup school. (We pretended to have a flight to catch in order to be polite to the tour guide.) I cannot tell you how many PC alumni I meet when I am home in New England who bitch about BC. If anyone needs to get over anything it’s Providence alumni with inferiority complexes.
As for Connecticut, what did they do when they decided they wanted to challenge BC’s position as the only 1-A football school in New England? They spent other people’s money by the boatload. They gave United Technologies a whopping tax write off to donate land for the stadium, then poured millions in tax dollars and bond revenues into building the facility. Then, when BC decided it had had enough of the Big East’s unresponsive bull, their Attorney General wasted millions in a money-losing multi-year lawsuit. But hey, in Friar Mike’s eyes it’s only all about money when BC does something.
Go to hell.
January 27th, 2008 at 9:01 am
Oh Bobby please . . .
First of all, relax. You need to bring it down a few notches.
Second, I’m pretty sure you’ve insulted EVERYONE’s alma mater, home town or state, education level, religion, and income over the past 18 monthes. Those in glass houses . . .
Third, speaking of irony and hypocrisy, I find it really funny that you, a Fredo alumnus, talk about ANYONE else having an inferiority complex. “BC, faking like we’re better than you since 1863.” Please, this school completely definies itself athletically, socially, academically by comparing itself to Notre Dame, Harvard, and Miami.
Fourth, get over the UConn lawsuit. Blumenthal is one of the most respected AGs in the nation and it was the right thing to do. Miami completely lied to Tranghese and the State of Connecticut. That’s fraud. Had the Big East lost its BCS slot, the State of Connecticut would have been out BILLIONS of dollars over the long run. Oh by the way, they are about to pass BC as the preeminent New England power. At least they have won a conference, something BC didn’t do in 100 years of football.
Fifth, I’m glad you and your parents are such wannabe snobs, yet of such low breeding and class, that you would lie to get out of a 1-hour tour. It’s too bad really, while you were having no fun at Fredo wishing you went to Harvard or ND and getting beat by BU in hockey and ND in football, I was going to keg parties at PC watching PC beat Duke and go to the Elite Eight, or going to the beach with RI’s finest young ladies. Meanwhile, my PC “Safety school” degree served me well, geting in to a top-40 law school and launching a succesful legal career.
Sixth, again, cheer up and chill out. You are gonna have a stroke for God’s sake . . .
January 28th, 2008 at 9:08 pm
Clearly, anyone who knows me is aware that I consider choosing Boston College to be one of the best choices I have ever made. Your suggestion that it was no fun or that I would have preferred going to Rhode Island keg parties rather than living next door to a Heisman winner, meeting the President of the United States and Speaker of the House, living in America’s largest college town, and going to black tie parties with the ladies of the seven sisters and little sisters, is prima facis absurd. On top of all that, our rugby parties and tailgates were a hell of a lot of fun.
I have never once wished that I went to Harvard, though I think it is a great school, and respect my friends who went there.
I suppose you have disdain for schools like Duke or Stanford that are sometimes called the “Harvard of the [south, west, etc.] At least you don’t have to worry about anyone calling Providece College the “Harvard of Rhode Island”.
I have never wanted to go to school in Indiana. I ever been impressed with Notre Dame when I gone there for football games. While I understand why people choose Harvard, I have been consistently perplexed as to what impresses people about Notre Dame.
As for Mr. Blumenthal is only respected by leftists who are fans of an activist judiciary.
Mike, I am never going to respond to anything you write here again. It has been suggested to me by other SIMP contributors that ignoring you is the best policy, and I intend to join them in that.
All the best to you, and goodbye.