BU football inches on

There was a time, now seemingly all but gone, when crisp Saturday mornings in autumn meant more to Boston University students than an opportunity to sleep in. There was a time when the stands at Nickerson Field were filled for more than just graduation, and when homecoming meant more than just an under-attended soccer game.

There was a time, not long ago, when football existed at BU.

Alan Rich, a graduate of the class of 1974 and a member of the Terriers’ football team for four years, fondly recalls crawling out of bed on Saturday mornings and marching across campus amongst swarms of fans clad in scarlet and white. As one of the only athletes to live in Warren Towers, Rich was able to see the phenomenon of football from a perspective different than that of solely a player.

“It was a nice atmosphere just to bring students from all over campus together,” said Rich, who played quarterback, wide receiver and halfback for the Terriers from 1970-74. “It’s not about the game of football for a lot of people. It’s about the camaraderie of just sitting down and blowing off a little steam from studying all week long.”

That camaraderie will be present once again this Saturday, as a group of alumni spanning the generations of BU football will participate in a touch football game to relive the memories of years gone by, and to raise hopes of eventually bringing the sport back to Commonwealth Avenue.

The game, an annual event sponsored by the Boston Terriers United For Football (BTUFF) organization, has morphed over the years from a chance for alumni to relax and reminisce to an opportunity for them to prove that football still deserves a spot on the BU campus.

“When football was cut … we thought it would be best to continue with the tradition of a homecoming game,” said Rich. “Obviously we’re getting older, but for the most part we’ve had a pretty good turnout over the years of guys from all different eras.”

This year’s game brings with it more optimism than usual, as the appointment of Robert Brown as Boston University’s president has infused BTUFF with new hopes of achieving its ultimate goal. Brown was the provost at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology when the school instituted its football program in 1988. He received an invitation to Saturday’s game, but declined to comment when reached via email Monday.

BTUFF has an appointment to speak with the president in the near future, though no confirmation of a date or time has been made, according to Rich.

The relationship between BTUFF and the administration was not always warm, however, as the two groups got off to a rocky start following the organization’s formation in 1997.

“The group was made up almost exclusively of former football players,” said Al Drucker, BTUFF’s current coordinator. “They were very angry, aggressive and hostile, and that didn’t work. It almost never does.”

During the group’s first few years on campus, it became tradition for members to fly over BU’s commencement ceremony in a plane carrying a banner that read “Bring Back Football.” One year, however, the plane soared over Nickerson Field right as the graduation speaker was giving his address, drowning out the speech and drawing the ire of school officials.

“It gave us a black eye,” said Drucker, who since then has helped to take the group in a different direction.

Rich agreed with his fellow alumnus.

“That was the kind of thing we didn’t need,” he said. “We were pretty much at odds with the administration.”

From that point on, BTUFF reconfigured its focus, dropping its hard-line stance on the football program and concentrating instead on supporting all BU sports with the overarching goal of eventually returning football to campus. The group now encompasses a large array of alumni that regularly give money to support all Terrier men’s and women’s athletics.

Regardless, BTUFF is still acutely focused on bringing football back to BU and sees the lack of a team on campus as a major detriment to the school’s college atmosphere.

“It just seems that the campus is dead on Saturdays,” Rich said. “Some of the other sports just don’t have the draw of the crowds.”

Drucker believes that football would add an element of prestige that has been missing from BU, allowing the school to better compete for potential high school applicants. A graduate of the class of ’66, Drucker lamented that BU and Boston College’s athletic programs spun off in different directions after being largely on par with one another during his time at BU, a change that altered both institutions in the public eye.

Central to Drucker’s argument is the “Flutie Factor,” a much-debated phenomenon that links increases in prospective freshmen applicants to increased athletic successes. The idea was conceived after a 1997 USA Today article reported that BC experienced a 30 percent application increase following Heisman Trophy-winning quarterback Doug Flutie’s legendary Hail Mary pass to beat the defending champion University of Miami in November of 1984.

“Athletics get your name out there,” said Drucker, who (along with Rich and five-time NFL Pro Bowler Butch Byrd) has met with then-interim president Aram Chobanian and Athletic Director Mike Lynch recently to discuss the issue.

“The feelings that we’ve been getting from the administration have been … not negative,” Rich said, noting that BU seems optimistic about the idea of football, but is not quite ready to take action. “They’ve been concentrating on [hockey and basketball] right now to try to solidify sports at BU. Those will have to be successful before they look at bringing back football.”

Drucker, who reported that the football team cost the school $2.9 million when it was cut in 1997, noted that BU has been more receptive to his organization in recent years. The decision to cut football added more women’s scholarships and thus complied with the regulations put forth in Title IX. Regardless, Drucker said the $2.9 million is “peanuts” compared to the school’s endowment.

Worse, he said, the school has lost the support of many multigenerational families who have bailed due to the lack of football, he said. Rich’s oldest son didn’t even apply to BU solely because the school lacked a football team, opting instead to attend Harvard University where he could play in a collegiate program.

“[Football families] don’t come back to BU like the Mike Eruziones do, because they don’t get the support like hockey does,” Rich said.

Rich also noted that BU lost vast sums of money from angry alumni after the school dropped football. He is confident that if the administration would give BTUFF its support, his alumni network would spring into action and provide a large monetary base out of which the program could grow.

“I know probably two or three hundred people that would donate immediately,” he said. “We could get a very large amount of people to donate large sums of money back to the university if we could get commitment. That’s all we need.”

For now, however, a couple of hours of touch football will have to do.

“When you cut football out of a school it really leaves a void, whether you go to one game or whether you go to all the games,” Rich said. “When you go to a school, there is an academic education and there is a social education – [students] are missing a good portion of that social education by not sitting in the stands.”