CHESTNUT HILL — If you’re looking for someone who embodies the seismic shifts in the college football landscape, you’d be hard-pressed to find a better example than Barry Gallup.
Gallup, 75, a Swampscott High graduate, was a wide receiver for the Eagles from 1964-68, an assistant coach and recruiter from 1970-1991 and assistant athletic director for football operations from 1999 up until this year — a total of 43 years.
In between, Gallup was a head coach and athletic director at Northeastern University.
He has seen it all, and, more importantly, done it all. Now, he figures it’s time to step away.
“When I went to BC, we were a regional school,” said Gallup, who was a prolific receiver for the Eagles 87 catches in three years playing for the varsity. (freshmen weren’t eligible in his era; both the widely-heralded Brian Brennan and Gerard Phelan had more, but freshmen were eligible in those years).
“Freshmen weren’t eligible,” he said. “The Holy Cross game was a huge one for us. And you liked those rivalries. You knew everybody.”
That hominess of Eastern Independent football (better known as the East Indies) changed incrementally, beginning in 1973, when then-Coach Joe Yukica and Athletic Director Bill Flynn brought Texas and Darrell Royal to Alumni Stadium. From there, it was Penn State, Notre Dame in 1974 in Foxborough. Then Ed Chlebek and the 0-11 season. Then Jack Bicknell. Then Flutie. Then Alabama, the Hail Mary and the Cotton Bowl.
By the time these, and other, changes were fait accompli, BC had joined first the Big East and then the Atlantic Coast Conference, which is where the Eagles are today.
He remains philosophical about all of it.
“I’ve seen lots of changes at BC,” he said. “I’d worked for 10 different coaches, five different athletic directors, including three in the last five years. There have been a lot of changes, mostly good. Some I don’t agree with, so what can you do?”
And even though he’s retiring, you can count him as a big fan of current Coach Jeff Hafley.
Gallup is not sure he likes the new set of changes charging down the pike — alterations like West Coast teams UCLA and USC joining the Big Ten.
“I just fear you’re not going to have a chance to control your destiny,” he said. “All these changes are about money. TV contracts, things like that. We’re in a major metropolitan area. That’s why the ACC wanted us. We’re from Boston.”
But then, he looks back to who the opponents were in his earlier years.
“We had UMass, Penn State, Syracuse, and Pittsburgh. Those were the teams fans wanted,” he said. “There were names on both sides. Now, you’re playing teams with whom you have nothing in common.”
He likes the composition of the ACC, however, with private schools such as Duke and Wake Forest.
But then, he said, “I look at a school like Clemson. I don’t know one kid on Clemson. We don’t recruit against them. Still, it’s good to play a big-time school. Notre Dame is a huge game whenever we play them.”
He couldn’t have predicted this for himself back in the late 1950s when he was growing up in Swampscott, three doors down from fellow Big Blue luminary Bill Adams, and getting ready to play for the legendary Stan Bondelevitch at Swampscott High.
“My mom and dad lived in Swampscott their whole lives,” he said. “I had such a great experience playing football for Stan, and basketball for Dick Lynch. Thanksgiving Day games against Marblehead were a great memory.”
“A lot of kids if you were to ask them what their greatest memories were, they’d go back to their high school days,” he continued.
Gallup was among the initial wave of Big Blue football heroes who made the name Bondelevitch so famous. As an employee for the Parks and Recreation Department in the summertime, he was an instructor for the next wave — players such as Dick Jauron — arguably among the top 10 all-time football players in Massachusetts — Sandy Tennant, Tommy Toner and Mike Lynch.
“Dick was probably the most humble student athlete/person I’ve ever known,” Gallup said. “He never wanted to talk about himself. He was always there as a friend. And he remembers where he came from.”
And this wasn’t just when he was lighting up football fields on the North Shore, either, Gallup said. It was when he was playing for Yale, the Detroit Lions, Green Bay Packers, and then coaching the Chicago Bears and Buffalo Bills.
“He’s an unbelievable human being.”
It’s natural, of course, to try to compare Jauron with Flutie in that they were both defining players for their respective teams, and both came in contact with Gallup during their collegiate careers.
Flutie led BC to an Orange Bowl victory over Houston on New Year’s Day 1985. Gallup’s late son, Darren Douglas Gallup, was named for the Flutie brothers. And even now, you can’t miss the awe in Gallup’s voice when talking about Flutie, even if it’s over the phone.
“He never came into the locker room expecting to lose,” Gallup said. “He loved to be challenged. He loved to practice. “He never hung his head. He was always positive. He really believed we could beat anyone, any place.”
Gallup also rubbed elbows with Lynn’s Tony Thurman, another all-American from that Flutie era.
“He was a great college football player,” Gallup said. “He probably didn’t have the speed to play in the NFL.
“He used to give me a hard time about being from Swampscott.”
And, of course, there were the Brothers DeFelice — two of Gallup’s favorite people.
“Bobby kind of got me into coaching when he asked me to come over there (Winthrop) and coach to be his drug and alcohol counselor,” said Gallup. “I saw the influence he had on kids like (1980 Olympic hero) Mike Eruzione, who was a senior at the time.
“And Frank came over here and I think he thought we were all soft. But he soon saw that wasn’t the case. I say he brought a little bit of Winthrop to Swampscott.”
