SMU will face Boston College in the Fenway Bowl for its first taste of ACC play

Updated Dec. 27, 2023 5:16 p.m. ET

Associated Press

BOSTON (AP) — No. 17 SMU gets an Atlantic Coast Conference prequel when it plays Boston College in the Fenway Bowl on Thursday.

After winning the American Athletic Conference championship in their final season there, the Mustangs get a head start on their ACC membership when they face BC at the home of the Boston Red Sox in a preview of a new league rivalry set to begin next season.

“It’s a neat way to kind of start to welcome you guys into the ACC,” BC coach Jeff Hafley said Wednesday at the Fenway Bowl media day. “It’s not only a future conference opponent. It’s one of the top teams in the entire country who won their conference and would have had a very successful season in the ACC if they were already in the ACC.”

Conference realignment has shaken up college football, and perhaps nowhere is the shuffling weirder than in SMU's jump to the ACC. The decidedly not Atlantic coast Dallas school is joining along with California and Stanford to create a — for now — 17-team league beginning in 2024. (To garner the invite, SMU agreed to give up its share of the ACC's television revenues for years.)

In a quote that could only make sense in modern college football, SMU coach Rhett Lashlee said Wednesday: “Normally in bowl games, you don’t play conference foes. And while we’re not yet, we basically are now."

No one is suggesting that the Mustangs (11-2) won't be able to compete when they step up to the Power Five.

SMU has won nine straight games, including a 26-14 victory over then 17th-ranked Tulane in the AAC title game to reach a bowl game for the second time in as many seasons under Lashlee. A 12th victory would be the most since the 1935 team won the national championship.

The Mustangs were hoping for a spot in a New Year's Six bowl game. But with starting quarterback Preston Stone out — he broke his leg in the Nov. 25 regular-season finale against Navy — they were relegated to the Fenway Bowl against BC, the 10th-best team in the ACC.

(As one reporter noted: Getting disrespected by the college football powers because of an injured starting quarterback is the most appropriate possible introduction to the ACC.)

“We're trying to set a tone for the ACC,” said quarterback Kevin Jennings, who replaced Stone and made his first career start in the AAC title game. “It just really is showing a sense that we belong."

THE COMFORTS OF HOME

BC linebacker Vinny DePalma has spent six years in Chestnut Hill and never spent any time in the Boston Common, the 17th century cow pasture that is the oldest city park in the United States.

Defensive back Khari Johnson grew up in the Boston neighborhood of Jamaica Plain but had never walked the Freedom Trail, which winds through many of the city’s historic sites.

Center Drew Kendall, a native of suburban Norwell, had never been candlepin bowling.

Playing a bowl game less than five miles from campus has its advantages, and one of them is getting a new look at a city some of the players have lived in all their lives.

“I’m from here. I love it here. So I’m happy to stay,” offensive lineman Ozzy Trapilo said when asked if he was disappointed not to be heading someplace warmer for the week. “It’s awesome to be in Fenway. I mean, we’re basically home. So that’s always a good thing. We’re pretty familiar with the area. We don’t have to go far. We get to use facilities we’re familiar with. So it’s all been a great experience.”

The bowl week festivities included a visit to the home of the Boston Red Sox, where the players took batting practice and threw the horsehide – not the pigskin – around.

“It was cool for our guys to get to go there yesterday and run around and throw the ball around and see it and feel it,” said Lashlee, who was the offensive coordinator for UConn when it played BC at Fenway in 2017. “We found out real quickly, we aren’t a good baseball team.”

FINALLY

Boston College qualified for a bowl game in three of Hafley’s first four seasons in the Heights, but this will be his first time taking the field.

In the COVID-19-shortened season of 2020, the team voted not to accept a bowl bid. The next year, the team went to the Military Bowl, but the game was canceled the day before the game after more than 40 Eagles tested positive for the coronavirus.

“This means we’re close,” Hafley said on media day. “I’m going to maybe just go lock myself in the hotel room so nothing happens and I get a chance to coach in the game tomorrow, and these guys get a chance to play.”

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AP college football: https://apnews.com/hub/ap-top-25-college-football-poll and https://apnews.com/hub/college-football