Tickets to the 135th Harvard-Yale game at Fenway Park on Nov. 17 are on sale and range from $25 for obstructed view to $125 for sideline seats.
No matter that a gridiron barely fits onto John Updike’s “lyric little bandbox of a ballpark” and that both teams need to stand on the same sideline, or that the Crimson play in one of the finest football venues in the world. The fans will flock over the Charles River to the home of New England’s beloved Red Sox.
If they think baseball in April is cold, wait’ll they get a whiff of football in November. The temperature at kickoff for last year’s Dartmouth-Brown game was 27 degrees and winds were from the northwest at 17 mph.
Hot cocoa, anyone?
****
With upcoming games against South Florida, BYU and Georgia, UMass (2-3) needs to beat Ohio on Saturday for a realistic shot at a 7-5 record. The Minutemen opened as 13-point underdogs against the Fighting Solichs.
Last week at Cincinnati the underdog Bobcats jumped out to a 21-0 lead and lost, 34-20, foiled by a 77-yard touchdown pass, a blocked field goal and an interception at the goal line on the game’s final play. A year ago at McGuirk Alumni Stadium, Ohio similarly had trouble putting away the Minutemen before prevailing, 58-50.
MINUTE NOTES: The announced crowd for Saturday’s UMass football game against the Charlotte 49ers in Amherst was 10,081. Last year, the Minutemen averaged 10,290 at McGuirk, fewer than any FBS team except Ball State (9,899) and Louisiana-Monroe (9,928). … UMass opens at Rutgers on Aug. 31, 2019. The game will commemorate Rutgers’ 100th anniversary of football, and nj.com reports that because it’s not a home-and-home series the Knights are cutting UMass a check for $1.3 million.
****
Clemson defensive coordinator Brent Venables has a 5-year deal worth $11.6 million. On the flip side, another defensive coordinator, Jay Sawvel, is looking for work. Wake Forest fired him in the aftermath of its 56-27 loss to Notre Dame.
BC fans are hoping Sawvel’s poor defensive schemes weren’t the reason Anthony Brown looked so good quarterbacking the Eagles to a 41-34 win in Winston-Salem two weeks ago.
Last week at Purdue, Brown was 13-of-27 for 96 yards, threw four interceptions and was sacked four times. It was the sort of effort that deserved a benching, and Brown’s replacement E.J. Perry completed both of his pass attempts for 48 yards.
The lopsided 30-13 loss has quieted the chatter about the Eagles being the “feel good story of the year” as ESPNU’s Mark Packer called them.
The Eagles were penalized seven times and controlled the ball for only 23 minutes. They fell out of the Top 25 and A.J. Dillon is off the Heisman radar screen after rushing 19 times for 64 yards.
BC hosts Temple on Saturday at noon. The Eagles are 13 1/2-point favorites to beat coach Steve Addazio’s former team. Addazio coached the Owls to a 13-11 record in 2011-12 before taking the job at Chestnut Hill.
****
The Eagles’ loss as seven-point favorites paled in comparison to Virginia Tech’s shocking loss to Old Dominion in Norfolk. The winless Monarchs were 27 1/2-point underdogs and coming off losses to lowly Liberty, 52-10, and Charlotte, 28-25. They pulled off the upset by scoring four fourth quarter touchdowns in front of 20,532 fans at S.B. Ballard Stadium.
It was a bad day in Blacksburg for Hokies fans who saw their 13th-ranked team fall from the Top 25, lose starting quarterback Josh Jackson to an ankle injury and hear that defensive end Trevon Hill was kicked off the team for failing to meet team standards.
The headline on roanoke.com: Shocker in the 757, Old Dominion sticks it to Va. Tech’s defense, stuns Hokies 49-35.
****
SHORT GAINS: True freshman Trevor Lawrence will be under center for Clemson against Syracuse on Saturday. Clemson is a 23-point favorite. Under new transfer rules, current quarterback Kelly Bryant can sit out the rest of the year and transfer to another school as a fourth year redshirt. … BC tight end Tommy Sweeney’s only other scholarship offer was to I-AA Delaware. Sweeney has 76 catches and nine touchdowns at the Heights.… Tom Gilmore has been moved into a fulltime coaching role at Wake Forest where he’d been a defensive analyst. Gilmore was the head coach at Holy Cross for 14 years and his name was being bandied about in Amherst until Mark Whipple signed a two-year extension in April. … After getting drubbed by the Boilermakers, BC fell to 36th in the ESPN Power Rankings. UMass is ranked 109th and UConn is 126th of the 130 teams in the FBS. … After stints at Miami and Texas Tech, Vincent Testaverde is at Albany. Son of Vinny, the younger Testaverde is 75-of-132 with eight touchdowns and (like father, like son) eight interceptions.