Hafley Responds to Drinkwitz’s Comments About BC Trip
Boston College and Missouri have never played, but that doesn’t mean there’s no animosity leading up to Saturday’s ACC-SEC showdown in Alumni Stadium.
Missouri head coach Eli Drinkwitz told reporters Tuesday that he’d rather have a non-conference regional rivalry game than a trip to BC.
“That would be maybe a little bit more exciting for recruits to watch,” Drinkwitz said, per ABC17 News. “From a TV perspective or maybe we’re playing in front of your family. I don’t know the last time Missouri signed a kid from the great state of Massachusetts.”
Granted Drinkwitz prefaced the statement with complimentary remarks about Eagles head coach Jeff Hafley and making the point that BC will be a “tremendous test” for the Tigers this week, but his stance on the Northeast road game didn’t fall on deaf ears.
Hafley said to the media Wednesday that “about 500” people had sent him the clip of Drinkwitz’s comments. He noted that he doesn’t think Drinkwitz “meant anything by it” before launching into his opinion.
“Truthfully, you guys asked me how I felt when we had to go and play UMass, right?” Hafley said. “And we had to go to Temple and play Temple. Shoot, if Colgate wanted us to go play ’em there, I’ll go play there. If [Drinkwitz] really didn’t want to come to Boston, he should have called me up and asked me, and I would have gotten on a plane and flew out to Missouri to play.”
Hafley continued: “I don’t care where we play. I don’t. The football season, for me, is about getting our team games, getting better every day and having a great time doing it with each other. So, it is what it is.”
The home-and-home series was scheduled in 2016 when Brad Bates was BC’s athletic director and Jim Sterk was at the helm of Missouri Athletics. BC is onto its second AD since Bates, and Desiree Reed-Francois replaced Sterk this summer.
When the series was scheduled, both teams were in their own conference cellars, with BC and Missouri trying to bounce back in 2016 after limping to 0-8 and 1-7 league records, respectively, the year prior.
BC is slated to play Missouri on the road on Sept. 14, 2024.
If things get chippy Saturday, that matchup could be a mini rivalry of its own, even without regional ties.