Being two of the few power conference teams in the Northeast and ACC rivals, parallels are always made between Boston College and Syracuse football. The perception has always been these teams can’t win on a national level, and that firing Dino Babers was a mistake and he did about as good as anybody could at Syracuse.
Going to be tough for the next coach too. I thought Dino did about as good as you could there
— Joe Broback (@joebroback) November 19, 2023
The story is similar for Boston College and its previous coach, Jeff Hafley. He reached bowl eligibility in three of his first four years, including going 7-6 in 2023 before taking a job as the Green Bay Packers’ defensive coordinator.
Hafley didn’t like the changes happening to college football, including the transfer portal and NIL, and how he would have to spend more time recruiting and retaining players and spend less time on coaching. Hafley’s first season was 2020, heavily affected by the pandemic. The next year, transfer rules changed, allowing for any player to have a one-time transfer.
On those challenges and the changing landscape, Hafley stated, “the transfer portal came in, which was like, ‘All right, now I have to recruit players, but I also have to keep the guys that are on my team from leaving.’ There’s no contracts, so you recruit a guy and develop a guy and, all of a sudden, he can leave. And then came paying players, NIL, so it was a storm basically since I got the head job, of things that kept getting thrown at you.”
It’s a problem that hurts a school like Boston College harder, who doesn’t have the NIL war chest like others, and a head coach that focuses on the Xs and Os. This time, the perception was largely that Boston College was irrelevant, and what Hafley, whose career record was 22-26, did was the ceiling. However, for both Syracuse and Boston College, that has proven to be far from the case.
Syracuse and Boston College football are both on the rise.
With the departures of Babers and Hafley, both programs had to replace their head coach. Both have hit a home run. Fran Brown won 10 games and finished the season ranked #20 in his first season, neither of which has happened since 2018. Meanwhile, Bill O’Brien and Boston College exceeded expectations, going 7-5 for their best regular season since 2018, although they lost the Pinstripe Bowl to Nebraska, 20-15.
Both coaches have a Northeast background, but that’s where the similarities stop. Coming into Syracuse, Brown was touted as an expert recruiter and a fantastic defensive backs coach, but his in-game coaching, with no experience as even a coordinator, was a question mark. O’Brien’s background is offense and the NFL.
He spent seven seasons as the Houston Texans’ head coach and six more years in various assistant roles with the New England Patriots. At the college level, O’Brien was the Penn State head coach in 2012 and 2013, the Alabama offensive coordinator and quarterback coach from 2021 and 2022, Duke’s OC from 2005-2006, and other position coach roles.
Despite that, both coaches have a similar understanding of what it takes to win in the Northeast: recruiting, more specifically, keeping local kids home. In the class of 2026, Boston College and Syracuse are currently tied for sixth in the country and first in the ACC with nine commits.
Of Boston College’s commits, five are from Massachusetts, two from Connecticut, and one in New York. Syracuse, three commits from Florida and one from California, is a little more varied, but the Orange have two commits from Delaware and one each from New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Maryland.
Both programs are early movers in the class of 2027 as well, as Boston College has three commits, including powerhouse Mater Dei starting QB Furian Inferrera. Syracuse has two commits meanwhile, ATH Tank White and QB Justin Dixon. It’s a sign of things to come as Brown’s staff has already given Syracuse its two highest-rated recruiting classes ever (per 247Sports), and O’Brien is improving Boston College’s recruiting, too.
Recent Syracuse/Boston College football games have been competitive.
We know what happened in 2024: Boston College took care of Syracuse, winning 37-31 on the backs of 313 rushing yards in a vintage BC performance. A win there means Syracuse would have ended 2024 on a five-game winning streak and finished the year 10-2, a mark the Orange haven’t reached in the regular season since the undefeated 1987 season. The win was impactful for Boston College; it snapped a three-game losing streak and it used that momentum to win three out of four and reach a bowl game. The bragging rights are nice, too.
Back in 2023, Boston College came into the Dome and won 17-10, controlling the clock with 42:16 time of possession and timely conversions (9-20 on third down, 3-4 on fourth down) while Carlos Del-Rio Wilson and Syracuse’s offense struggled. That win was BC’s fifth in a row and helped the Eagles get to the Fenway Bowl, which they won to finish with a winning season.
With all that behind and two fantastic coaches leading growing teams ahead, Syracuse and Boston College games will mean more and be fun to watch going forward. The teams will meet in the JMA Wireless Dome to close out the 2025 regular season on Saturday, November 29. Will something be on the line? Bowl eligibility is always a possibility, but if either team can exceed expectations again, reaching the ACC Championship could be in the balance, too.
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