CFU Week No. 9—“Under Pressure”

It’s a pretty good time to be a fan of Boston sports. The Patriots are nothing short of dominating the NFL, the Pierce-Allen-Garnett trio has the Celtics eyeing the Eastern Conference, and I even hear that the Bruins are doing pretty well. But most important, for our purposes at least, is that Boston College is ranked No. 2 in the BCS.

I wonder if Matt Ryan is a Queen fan. If so, he ought to put “Under Pressure” on his iPod and cue it up.

I can hear it now.

“bah-dum dah-dah, bah-dum dah-dah-daaaah…”

In a season where it seems that the higher a team is ranked, the more likely it is to lose, a quick glance into the past few weeks shows that being ranked No. 2 comes with a big ol’ bag of bad luck.

The No. 2 team in that nation has fallen each of the past three weeks: USC to Stanford, Cal to Oregon State, and South Florida to Rutgers.

“Pressure pushing down on me…”

I’d like to say that Boston College will put a halt to this No. 2 taboo. But, I’m not sure. They play on prime-time television on a Thursday night under the lights in Blacksburg, Virginia against Beamer Ball.

Yikes.

“Under pressure, that burns a building down…”

Boston College is feeling the pressure.

No doubt about it.

Coach Jeff Jagodzinski is about to be in the biggest game in his first season. But the pressure can come up just a bit.

While the Hokies are 13-2 in their last fifteen Thursday night games, those two losses were to Boston College. That, and the Boston Red Sox stomped Colorado last night in the game one of the World Series.

But what offsets pressure the most is confidence, and with the way Boston College and Matt Ryan have played all year, they ought to have plenty of it.

Getting Kevin Garnett to play wide-receiver and channeling Tom Brady, who doesn’t know what pressure is, wouldn’t hurt either.

—R. Cooper