Krause: Excruciating loss to Miami shows BC has lost its way

If you’ve lived in this area for any amount of time, you’ve undoubtedly noticed this isn’t a hotbed for college sports in general and football in particular.It’s a pro town. A bad Patriots or Celtics team commands more interest than a highly competitive Boston College program in either sport.That’s how it is, and that’s how it’s always been – at least since the 1950s. College sports in this area had its heyday back in the days of raccoon coats and leather helmets.This was the thought that crossed my mind Saturday watching BC lose to Miami, 41-32, in a game it truly should have won. But it’s a testament to how far both college sports and BC have fallen that the loss barely caused a ripple as the Red Sox were losing their fifth straight game in a wretched season. If you picked up this BC team and transported it to Lincoln, Nebraska or Tuscaloosa, Alabama, and it blew a 14-0 first-quarter lead and played as sloppy as the Eagles did, they’d be calling for coach Frank Spaziani’s head.But nobody around here did that, because it would have meant less space for all the writers calling for Bobby Valentine’s head. Not to mention not enough people care about BC for it to merit that type of outrage.And that’s too bad. BC has had its moments. Doug Flutie was a cult hero in the 1980s and BC was the No. 1 story in town ? but that notoriety was brief. And as successful as BC has been in the years since – and it has been very successful – the program never achieved those heights (pun intended) again. Even in 2007 when BC reached as high as No. 2 in the AP poll, it happened during the World Series. Anywhere else, it would have been the biggest story around. The series ended, BC lost to Florida State, and its flirtation with such lofty heights ended.But we should be thankful for the folks in Chestnut Hill for giving us the occasional glimpse of what the rest of the country experiences every Saturday in the fall. The Eagles have come through often. They’ve been generally competitive, with the occasional year where they’ve been part of the national conversation.That’s why watching Saturday’s game was painful. It put into focus what was vs. what is. Simply put, the BC program has lost its way. It started in its last year in the Big East, when BC lost a game to Syracuse it was heavily favored to win ? and that cost it millions of dollars in potential bowl money (that’s the game where Everett’s Diamond Ferri ran them ragged).Within a year, Tom O’Brien – who was the author of one of the longest eras of sustained success in modern BC history – was out and Jeff Jagodzynski was in ? for two years. Then, Jags made the mistake of being successful to the point where the New York Jets pursued him ? which resulted in his being dismissed by athletic director Gene DeFilippo ? which resulted in DeFilippo being backed into the corner of hiring an uber-loyalist – Spaziani – who was in no danger of going anywhere anytime soon.This has set into motion a chain of events that has really put the program on hard times. There was no quarterback after Matt Ryan graduated (though Chase Rettig has improved a lot since last year), Spaz’s best player was stricken with cancer (Mark Herzlich) and Luke Kuechly committed to the draft after his junior season.What’s left is a bare cupboard and a coach who – for all intents and purposes – is even a lamer duck than Valentine. DeFilippo is retiring at the end of the month, and it doesn’t seem likely a new AD will keep Spaziani unless BC wins the BCS bowl. And that’s not going to happen.The lesson here is simple. BC is not a destination. It is a stepping-stone. There’s nothing wrong with that. As a friend put it Saturday, Tom Coughlin did more for that program in two years than any coach since. He gave it credibility. Every time a promising coach goes on to bigger and better things (such as Dr. Tom Davis and Gary Williams in basketball; Coughlin in football), it speaks well of the respective programs, and it gives recruits the knowledg