Boston College isn’t just hiring a football coach to replace Jeff Hafley, who is leaving to join the Green Bay Packers staff.
For the Eagles, this hire is about positioning themselves for what lies ahead in the changing face of college football in a landscape that’s very uncertain for BC.
This is a different hire than when Jeff Hafley was brought aboard after the 2019 season. The interconnected web of conference realignment, transfer legislation and athlete compensation are rapidly changing college athletics and especially football. BC has to make decisions for both now and with real vision down the road.
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Since leaving the Big East for the ACC in 2005, BC has lived in the lower middle-class district of power conference football. They’ve reached bowl eligibility in 15 of the 19 seasons. They’ve been reliably solid and rarely great or terrible. They’ve won 10 or more games twice and lost 10 once. They haven’t finished above .500 in ACC play since 2009.
They’ve operated as if they’d like to be good but haven’t been fully committed to getting there at the same level as so many of their conference peers. But the security of the ACC has allowed them to maintain their status quo by drafting behind their more invested rivals.
Upheaval is coming. Florida State wants out of the ACC, and until it does, it wants a larger percentage of the league’s revenue. Clemson, North Carolina, Miami and Virginia are following FSU’s legal maneuvers and could follow along.
Conference realignment already killed the Pac 12. The ACC isn’t on the ropes yet, but the league is in a defensive posture.
At some point, there’s going to be a reckoning. BC leadership should already be considering who they want the Boston College athletic department to be when that day arrives. The better their football program is the more choices they’ll have. That means, not just hiring the right coach, but upgrading their NIL collective. BC might decide that the changing face and increased costs of college football might not be something they want to prioritize. That’s perfectly reasonable, but making smart, aggressive decisions now will give them more choices down the road.
ESPN’s Pete Thamel reported that Hafley chose to leave not just BC, but college football because he’d grown disillusioned with so much of what makes the sport’s wheels turn.
“He wants to go coach football again in a league that is all about football,” a source told ESPN. “College coaching has become fundraising, NIL and recruiting your own team and transfers. There’s no time to coach football anymore. … A lot of things that he went back to college for have disappeared.”
Hafley’s departure was bad timing for the Eagles on so many levels. National Letter of Intent signing day is next week and unless Boston College is promoting from within — which seems unlikely and at this point probably unwise — BC won’t have a coach by then.
On top of that, the NCAA allows a program’s players to transfer outside the normal portal window when their coach leaves. Other programs can poach BC’s experienced players while the Eagles don’t have an avenue to replace them with other transfers.
Because of his timing, BC could be awful in 2024 no matter who they hire if their roster gets raided and they struggle to bring in a freshman class. That will scare off some candidates unless BC is prepared to offer more money and more security to its next coach.
Candidates are going to want to see real commitment from BC’s NIL collective too. That’ll be critical in any year, but especially now as next year figures to be a big year for them in the transfer portal.
Bill O’Brien, may or may not be a candidate at BC, but he makes for a good example of where BC is.. Last year’s Patriots offensive coordinator was just hired as Ohio State’s offensive coordinator. He’s previously been the head coach of Penn State and the Houston Texans and Alabama’s offensive coordinator.
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He’d be a good candidate who’d check a lot of boxes in Chestnut Hill. For BC, the challenge is making sure its head coaching position is a better job than an Ohio State coordinator job.
Even if it’s not O’Brien, BC can’t nibble around the edges. It needs to identify a small group of dream candidates and figure out what it actually requires to land them and figure out if they can make it happen. This isn’t a five-year decision, it’s one that will affect the next 25 years and perhaps beyond.
Follow MassLive sports columnist Matt Vautour on Twitter at @MattVautour424.
