Boston College’s return to work this week had a very different feel than the celebration that followed the Rutgers win. Bill O’Brien wanted his team to enjoy that moment, especially after the buildup around the Friday night Red Bandanna Game, but once practice resumed, the focus had to flip fast. By Tuesday morning, the Eagles were already locked onto Maine.
That reset came with a simple message inside the program: don’t let last week linger. Marcus Upton put it plainly when he said, "We're just looking to stay 1-0,'" He added, "Maine's a good team.
We have to watch film and stay on top of things to make sure that we prep the right way. This is just like every other game, so we need to make sure we take baby steps at a time while working hard and taking Maine seriously.
You don't look at any opponents differently. We need hard work to get ready to go."
Saturday’s meeting in Chestnut Hill is part of the long-running FBS-FCS setup that has made these kinds of games standard across college football. After the bowl subdivision moved to a permanent 12-game schedule in 2006, the old divide between the higher-level teams and championship subdivision schools shifted again.
The rule changes built on a 1998 adjustment that let FBS teams count one win over an FCS opponent toward bowl eligibility, so long as the FCS school met financial and scholarship requirements. Once the 2006 schedule expansion arrived, the one-FCS-game pattern became the norm, and by the late 2010s it was explicitly locked in.
Boston College has been part of that trend for years, usually lining up against regional opponents. There have been a few notable exceptions along the way: the 2010 game against Weber State, which came when Mark Herzlich returned from cancer and marked the first time the Eagles had played an FCS opponent outside New England since the rule began evolving; the 2013 matchup with Villanova, which recalled older meetings from the 1960s and 1970s; and a 2015 scheduling oddity that left Boston College with two FCS opponents for the first time in school history. The eventual eligibility of the Patriot League also helped bring back the Holy Cross series in a limited way.
Maine is back on the schedule after a long break. The Black Bears opened the 2015 season and also met Boston College in 2012 and 2014 before the seven-year gap.
Their only win over a power conference team came in 2004, when a Maine squad ranked No. 15 in I-AA beat Mississippi State, 9-7. That Mississippi State team had also beaten nationally-ranked Florida that season.
More recently, Maine has been pushing toward .500 the last two years, including a win over No. 5 Villanova and several games against FBS opponents.
On the field, Maine brings enough to make this more than a routine tune-up. Eddie Buehler threw for 199 yards and two touchdowns in the season-opening win over Towson, then nearly matched that yardage against Appalachian State. Rashawn Marshall turned in solid work against the Tigers and averaged five yards per carry last year, while Nick Laughlin and Evan Wallace shared the top spot on the team’s receiving charts after giving Maine explosive-play options in the Towson win and last week’s game against Merrimack.
O’Brien didn’t spend much time dressing it up. "They do a great job [at Maine]," he said.
"They're well-coached. I think defensively, they're very good.
They're stout. They have good players.
Offensively, the quarterback can run. They have a good back.
They have good receivers that can run. They have good specialists.
They spend a lot of time on special teams. We better be ready [for them], and it's a big challenge."
Zeke Moore echoed that warning from Boston College’s side. "They're a good team from what I've watched," he said.
"They have some really good players. FCS has a bunch of talented players that might just get overlooked, and they're going to come in here with a great attitude.
They're going to want to [beat] us, so we have to take that same attitude that this is just like any other game and [become] extremely focused. I don't think anyone's looking at this one any differently than any other game."
In Other News...
Boston College Faces A Brutal Reality In The ACC Talent Race
The latest look at Power 4 roster spending paints a sobering picture for programs trying to keep up in the ACC, and Boston College is right in the middle of that conversation. The estimates show how donor motivation, athletic department priorities and even recent coaching changes can shape where a school lands in the talent race, with examples across the country underscoring how uneven the market has become. For a program like BC, the issue is not just whether it can find good players, but whether it can realistically match the kind of investment being made by the schools it sees as peers.
Boston Colleges challenge is especially stark because the margin for error keeps shrinking as the schedule turns toward higher-end opponents. Games against Notre Dame and Miami are reminders that roster-building is no longer just a long-term administrative issue, but something that can show up directly on the field when the spending gap is wide enough to matter. Even as the Eagles try to carve out an identity in a crowded conference, the broader ACC talent race leaves them facing a reality that is hard to ignore. [Read more 🡒]