TALLAHASSEE, Fla. – Boston College Athletic Director Gene DeFilippo sounds just like the 8-year-old on Christmas Eve he says he feels like, the child who starts marking off the days to Christmas with the first one after Halloween.

“It seemed like it was forever,” he said this week.

His office was bustling, his secretary laughing, his own voice running off at the other end of the line like a man who has so much going on these days he hardly has time to talk about it-although that has been half the fun this week. It’s rare in a media market dominated by pro teams that anyone calls wanting to talk college football.

“Then when you came down on Christmas Day, you had to pinch yourself to believe Santa Claus had come,” he was saying. “Just before kickoff Saturday, I’m going to pinch myself to believe it’s finally here.”

This moment – Boston College’s debut as the newest member of the Atlantic Coast Conference – has been two painful years in the making. There were lawsuits, accusations of back-stabbing from the Big East, angry e-mails to DeFilippo and jeers at his players, 20-year-olds who really had nothing to do with the school’s decision to defect to a more prestigious conference.

“I think this game here might undo a bit of that,” Florida State Coach Bobby Bowden said with the fatherly assurance that comes from his 50 years of coaching.

Every detail about this game has been scripted around the celebration, right down to the opponent. Each ACC school is allowed one scheduling request of the conference office, although they can’t always be honored. DeFilippo wanted to open conference play at home and against FSU.

The strategy sure enough has swelled the national attention. After FSU won its opener against Miami two weeks ago, the conference announced this game would be played in prime time, with a 7:45 p.m. kickoff. Then, with both teams 2-0 and ranked in the Top 20, ESPN announced this week it would send its College GameDay crew to Chestnut Hill.

Gainesville may have the most enticing football matchup this weekend. But Boston has the weight of a first-ever event on its side and the blessing of the GameDay crew, which carries with it the epicenter of the college football world every weekend.

FSU is delighted to play its part in the pageantry.

“We just want to let them know that this . . . is . . . not . . . the Big East,” tailback Lorenzo Booker said. “If you’re just in, we need to let you know about the years to come.”

The game will kick off with the flip of a commemorative coin by ACC Commissioner John Swofford – BC’s logo on one side, FSU’s on the other.

Every fan who comes into the stadium presumably will leave still clutching a keepsake ticket bearing the faces of Coach Tom O’Brien and BC seniors Mathias Kiwanuka, Quinton Porter, Will Blackmon and Ray Henderson.

For those Eagles who have been at BC the longest, Saturday finally will arrive with a mix of jitters and relief.

The biggest casualty of the transition has been BC’s relationships with the other schools in the Big East, who felt abandoned and betrayed.

“The Big East, they could live with Miami leaving and Virginia Tech,” O’Brien said.

“But (with BC) being one of founding members of the Big East, there were a lot of hard feelings. I’m just happy that’s over.”

The worst part – or, rather, the price they had to pay-was that the Eagles had to play those ticked-off schools last season. No one at BC could disparage the Big East while they technically still were in it, but BC essentially had declared it didn’t want to be in the league any more.

Miami and Virginia Tech went through rough transitions, as well, but at least they went through them together. And it was hard to fault Miami for feeling as if it belonged in the same conference as Florida State and Virginia Tech as Virginia. BC, on the other hand, was so far removed from the ACC’s traditional geography base the conference had to redo the entire map on its logo.

“Just the atmosphere in general-a lot of the things we heard coming from all directions, not just the fans but other players and anyone associated with the Big East, was disappointing,” said Kiwanuka, an All-America defensive end. “We’re players on the field. We have no call or say in what happens in the front office, what conference we’re in. Anyone taking aggression out on us was ridiculous.”

Porter had a unique view on the taunting and jeers. He redshirted last fall because the Eagles had a surplus of quarterbacks and O’Brien preferred to save Porter for the team’s first season in the ACC. Porter watched it all from the sidelines. His wait for this Saturday felt even more like forever than it did for an athletic director fending off angry administrators.

Now that the moment has arrived and Porter is back on the field, he feels a shift in the air. People know his name, if not his classic-quarterback, tall-dark-and-handsome face.

“We have a great stadium here and we sell out, but if we step a mile away from campus, nobody cares about Boston College football. Everyone lives Patriots and Red Sox,” he said. “That’s starting to change.”

That is what’s on the line Saturday. FSU will be playing to stay on the path to Jacksonville for the ACC’s inaugural title game. BC will be playing for respectability in its new conference, to prove to those left behind in the old one that this was the right move and to maybe remind New Englanders what a big stage in college football looks like.

A close game with FSU will be a step toward accomplishing all those goals. But a victory?

“We try to win every game. It’s a big game because it’s the next game on the schedule,” DeFilippo said, laughing.

But the commemorative coins and ticket stubs, the national TV presence and the reporters’ calls from 1,500 miles away all belie that coaching cliche. This is more than just the next game on the schedule.

“I was a coach for 11 years,” DeFilippo said, laughing even harder. “So that’s what I’m going to say.”



(c) 2005, The Orlando Sentinel (Fla.).

Visit the Sentinel on the World Wide Web at http://www.orlandosentinel.com/.

Distributed by Knight Ridder/Tribune Information Services.

AP-NY-09-15-05 1924EDT


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