Good morning!
UMass quarterback Ross Comis’ mother walked briskly under the grandstand before the BC game at Gillette Stadium on Saturday. Her husband Lou was wearing a white UMass football jersey emlazoned in bright red with his son’s No. 2.
Comis was proud of how his son had played the previous week against 25th-ranked Florida. In his first collegiate start the redshirt sophomore had passed for 141 yards and scrambled for a 5-yard touchdown during the 24-7 loss.
The Minutemen had put up a good battle in the heart of SEC country. They beat the point spread and were competitive until the fourth quarter. “Here’s the thing,” said Comis. ” After the game he said, Dad we could’ve won. We’re going to go 11-1.”
Lisa Comis was more concerned that her son might not be able to go through the season unscathed. She stepped back, reached over and touched my sleeve. “Pray for him,” she said.
Three hours later the Boston College Eagles had shown why they were 16½-point favorites by rolling to a 26-7 win before a bipartisan crowd of over 25,000 fans in southeastern Mass. The Eagles’ defense had overwhelmed the UMass offensive line and sacked the 6-foot, 200-pound Comis eight times.
It was a fun game nonetheless, and the traffic on Route 1 was nothing like the gridlock that ensues before Patriots games. I followed a line of cars into a stadium lot ready to fork over $20, but the parking crew simply waved me into an empty spot and moved on to the next vehicle.
Gillette Stadium is the centerpiece of Patriot Place, an outdoor mall composed of outlets like Bed, Bath & Beyond, Trader Joe’s and CVS. It includes a Reaissance Hotel where rooms cost $499 on game nights, and restaurants that vary in quality from four stars to Five Guys.
I paid a scalper $30 for a ticket on the UMass 50-yard line but opted to sit on the BC side of the field. I’m weary of watching games at claustrophobic venues like Fenway Park and it felt liberating to be inside a 68,000-seat stadium that was barely one-third full.
I settled back in a comfortable blue seat that was about 10 rows from the field on the 10-yard line, put my feet on seats in front of me that will cost $300 for Sunday’s Dolphins’ game, cracked open the Boston Globe and watched two FBS football teams go toe-to-toe in a state-of-the-art facility.
My only other purchase was a Dunkin Donuts coffee for $4 plus the $1 tip and felt like getting in-and-out of Gillette Stadium for $35 was the steal of the century.
Nice as it was, thinking Gillette would work for the long term for UMass was a pipe dream. The team has never come close to matching the 35,000 fans who showed up for a UMass-UNH game several years ago, and administrators have realized that the once and future home of the UMass football team is McGuirk Alumni Stadium.
Indeed, if any school could reasonably consider calling Gillette Stadium its home it would be Boston College, which is 27 miles from Foxborough, not UMass, which is a 92-mile drive.
“For us, it’s the tailgating, and tailgating’s not the same if it’s not on campus,” said Marie Baker of West Hartford, whose daughter goes to UMass. Her husband Barry was grilling burgers for their friends Jon and Kaycee Blancaflor of Haddam, Conn. “Amherst is beautiful and easy to get to, we like the atmosphere in Amherst.”
It was oddly quiet prior to the kickoff. There wasn’t the raucus bedlam that precedes rivalry games. The size of the venue had diluted the game’s intensity. Pumped up BC kids in Doug Flutie shirts and UMass fans in tri-cornered hats were lost inside the cavernous stadium.
After the kickoff there was a moment when it seemed like Ross Comis’ vision of an 11-1 season might last another week. He completed four of his first seven passes for 84 yards, including a 58-yard touchdown pass for an early 7-0 lead.
In the press box, BC radio analyst Pete Sheppard called Comis’s first quarter “colorful and creative.”
In Ireland the previous week BC lost to Georgia Tech by three points when their kicker missed a pair of field goals. “Their offense has sucked for three years,” said a 1971 BC alumnus named John McGarrity (not his real last name). “It’s life and death to score a touchdown and I can’t believe they can’t get a good soccer style kicker. Give me a couple of weeks and I can probably do it.”
“BC’s a tough school academically,” I reasoned.
“Yeah, it’s hard to get into, but if you’re a football player you can get in if you’re reasonable, no genius.”
McGarrity harkened back to the days when his classmate Fred Willis became the first Eagle running back to rush for over 1,000 yards. “He had 129 yards against Penn State when they had Franco Harris and Lydell Mitchell and were No. 1 in the country. He coulda played in the NHL but said the Canadian players broke American players’ wrists so he went in the NFL and played for the Bengals.”
He saw me writing and said, “You a reporter?”
“Yeah.”
“Freddie Willis. Hey. The kid was un-f-ing-believable.”
This year’s Eagles quarterback is a Kentucky transfer named Patrick Towles. He’s the grandson of Hall of Fame pitcher Jim Bunning and and he had two long touchdown strikes that put BC ahead at halftime. Those scores were complemented by a pair of field goals and a late rushing touchdown that covered the 16½-point spread.
Comis will have to wait till next year for the Minutemen to go 11-1. The schedule’s easier and all six home games will be in Amherst against Old Dominion, Ohio, Hawaii, Georgia Southern, Appalachian State and Maine.
He’s risen from the canvas more times than Jerry Quarry, sacked a dozen times in two games. Only a cynic would think coach Mark Whipple is only using Comis to spare transfer quarterback Andrew Ford the punishment.
The schedule gets easier starting today against Florida International and the Minutemen could go .500 the rest of the way. The diminutive Comis has stood tall in his first two games, and he’s earned the right to be under center for the rest of the season.
Chip Ainsworth is an award-winning columnist who has penned his observations about sports for four decades in the Pioneer Valley.