About eight hours after Boston College announced the hiring of Haub Vice President for Mission and Ministry Rev. Jack Butler, S.J., as its new president, BC men’s basketball held Virginia Tech to 11 points in the entire first half of its ACC matchup.
It might be a bit early to say a curse has been lifted off BC’s athletic program considering Butler hasn’t even taken office yet—and won’t until the summer of 2026.
But for many BC Athletics fans, just saying goodbye to University President Rev. William P. Leahy, S.J., is a sign of hope in itself.
To be fair, Leahy’s term hasn’t been horrible by most standards. In fact, BC Athletics has seen its fair share of success in the past 29 years.
Men’s hockey has gone to nine national championships during Leahy’s tenure. The women’s lacrosse team has made the NCAA tournament every year since 2013 and advanced to seven straight national championships, winning two.
Those sports have brought some pride to the University’s students and alumni. But BC fans want to be good at the sports that bring in the most publicity and revenue—in other words, they want the Eagles to dominate on the gridiron and the hardwood.
And besides, those limited successes in hockey and lacrosse have not come from Leahy hiring highly qualified athletic directors—BC is on its eighth AD during Leahy’s tenure, as the position has become somewhat of a revolving door.
And they surely haven’t come from keeping good coaches around.
After the 2023 season, BC lost two of former head baseball coach Mike Gambino’s key assistants due to “budgetary constraints.”
Gambino left to coach at Penn State soon after that. That was the year after the Eagles went 37–20 and made the NCAA tournament.
Last year, BC baseball went 22–31 and 8–22 in conference.
Losing, seemingly because of inadequate funding for athletics, is frustrating, to say the least.
Not to mention that as a BC fan, it’s easy to fall into the trap of comparison.
It can be disheartening for BC fans to see the only other Catholic Division I FBS program (cough cough, Notre Dame) attracting top-tier football recruits and making a national championship appearance when BC football hasn’t won eight games in a season since 2009.
And it’s hard to play basketball in the ACC, where the likes of Duke, Clemson, and Louisville are all current top-25 teams in the nation and could blow out BC by nearly 30 points on any given night.
Conte is mostly empty for the majority of men’s basketball games and the visiting teams’ fans are frequently louder than the nonexistent home crowd. The team itself is 12–16, has won four conference games all season, and has a real chance of missing the ACC tournament.
The tension between men’s basketball head coach Earl Grant and BC’s fan base is at an all-time high—many are calling for him to be fired while others have stopped attending games altogether, either in protest of the product on the floor or out of sheer boredom.
No matter how much fans love the team, watching the Eagles get blown out and even beat by Ivy League teams such as Dartmouth—at home, no less—gets old eventually.
In other words, this leadership change couldn’t come at a better time.
“There’s a whole lot of change going on in the world of intercollegiate athletics today,” Leahy said before BC’s 2024 bowl game loss.
No kidding.
“How it’s all going to work out—I don’t know, but I want Boston College to have a significant role in whatever happens,” he said.
Leahy can say that he wants BC to have a place in the changing world of collegiate sports, but his time as president has left many wondering if he really means it.
Fans are tired of watching the Eagles lose. Especially when BC has proven in the past that it can be successful. Just before Leahy arrived, BC football upset No. 1 Notre Dame and BC men’s basketball made an Elite Eight run.
In 1995, following the start of Leahy’s term, The Heights published an article calling his first season at BC “anticlimactic,” athletics-wise. That’s a good way of describing his tenure as a whole. Not terrible, not completely stripped of success, but overall underwhelming.
College athletics has changed since the last time the Eagles were able to dominate on football fields or basketball courts.
Success in today’s environment requires strategy and, more than anything else, money. If Butler can grasp that, then great.
If not, BC fans could be in for another 30 years of mediocrity.
And if that’s the case, maybe BC would be better off joining its neighboring Boston schools and resorting to the Patriot League.
The pressure’s on, Butler. Let’s see what you’ve got.
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