The Rivalry between Wake Forest and Boston College finally gets real

The Hatfields and McCoys.

Palmer and Nicklaus.

Army and Navy.

The equivalent of a day care slap fight- all of them. Especially when compared to The Rivalry between Wake Forest and Boston College. There is nothing more combustible and filled with vitriol like athletic competition between the Demon Deacons and Eagles.

I mean, The Rivalry even has its own BINGO game.

Brian Favat and the guys from BC Interruption would surely agree, on this and other things. On that note, Blogger So Dear took a moment to hit up Brian and see what's up over in Chestnut Hill and talk about conference realignment, football, billboards and The Rivalry.

Mundy: You know, Brian, I've had better offseasons. While the rest of the universe has been watching the NBA and NHL or college baseball/softball, I've spent the last few weeks still answering questions about billboards, basketball and something called the APR. There is no joy in Winston at the moment, and it will take a good football season to start turning that frown upside down. I'm tired of bad news.

Do you have any good news? What's going on North of the Border? For starters, it seems like some old friends of yours have crashed our ACC party.

Favat: Good news? As you mentioned, it's been a bit hard to come by for Boston College. About the only good news we've gotten these days is on the football recruiting front. The Eagles football program has gone from trolling the MAC and the Ivy League for talent to once again competing with big boy programs for recruits in the span of a few months. New coach Steve Addazio has really breathed some life into a moribund football program that truly embodied everything that #goacc stands for.

There's that as well as some old frenemies in Pittsburgh, Syracuse and Notre Dame who have just joined the league. You guys will soon learn to love Pitt as the conference's next N.C. State. Both schools are decent at everything yet excel at nothing, continue to trade on National Championships won before you were born and are good for an early exit in whatever NCAA Tournament they are playing in.

Editors note: Yes, State, we're aware of your recent run to Omaha. This is just a better narrative. Go Pack.

I fashion Syracuse as a poor man's Duke with a slightly more distinguished football history. Feel free to make fun of these guys for billing their athletics programs as "New York's (City) College Team" despite Syracuse being located four hours from midtown Manhattan.

Of course with the good comes the bad. The ACC is set to lose Maryland -- always good for a win in the revenue sports -- and replacing the Terps with a clearly superior athletics department in Louisville. Oh, and Notre Dame is joining the conference for all sports except football and hockey. Notre Dame's non-revenue sports are very good, but not spectacular, and with the halvsies arrangement comes the opportunity for the Irish to get all up in the ACC's bowl lineup. That's an arrangement Boston College fans didn't miss while in the Big East and one that Wake Forest fans are sure to loathe in short order.

Mundy: That's the first time I've heard Pitt mentioned as the northern equivalent of N.C. State. I hope it's not the last.

Actually, I'm really hoping they ramp things up over there and decide what they are going to be. That's what State's main problem is- are they a football school? Are they a basketball school? Pick one, because the only Natty that school has won recently is in bass fishing, and you don't boost donations for catching a fish. The fans are well-meaning though. I really think they'd fit in better in the SEC, and it would make the above delineation a lot easier (translated: they'd be a basketball school right quick).

What scares me most is the arrival of Louisville. Their arrival will signify the ACC as the best basketball conference- men's or women's on the planet. It's sick. One league with these coaches: Rick Pitino, Mike Kryzewski, Roy Williams, Jim Boeheim, Sylvia Hatchell, Joanne McCallie, Muffet McGraw and so on. It's ridiculous, and I have a feeling that Wake and BC will be knocking on the door of the club, without the secret password.

I'm glad you mentioned Notre Dame, who basically have the NCAA football equivalent of a "Black Card"- there's no limit on what benefits they can take. Now, part of the venom there is created by my own jealousy, but I'm never going to be okay with the deal those guys get in football. Business is business, so I don't blame them for taking these opportunities. But like you said, this starts messing with the ACC bowl package.

Of course, Ninja Swofford somehow has finagled around 14 bowl tie-ins for the conference, which is a good thing. Where it will get ugly is when the Deacs have one less loss than the Irish and the Chick-fil-A Bowl takes ND instead.

I've grown more and more unbiased as I've gotten older, but when that happens I will throw stuff on principle alone. Just because every Catholic in a three-state area will come to your game doesn't mean they deserve it. Okay, I'm done.

Favat: The good news with respect to the Peach Bowl is that Wake Forest is still a southern school, which doesn't immediately disqualify the Deacs from consideration. Unlike Boston College and specifically 2007. When the Peach passed over Matt Ryan and a Boston College team that finished a game better than Clemson (and won the head-to-head in Death Valley), I vowed never to eat Chick-fil-A again. Nearly six years later and I've successfully upheld my Chick-Fil-A boycott. Now this is admittedly very easy considering I live in New York but I did do some work in Charlotte for about six months and held strong. So I deserve a little credit here.

Don't get me wrong though. If the Irish are within a game of Wake Forest come bowl selection, I hope you have the hook up for a good travel agent in places like Detroit and Shreveport, Louisiana. Because that's where you guys are headed.

Like I said, BC is no stranger to the deal that Notre Dame received with the ACC. It is what it is, I guess. If you want to know how it all turns out in the end, however, the ACC only need look at what happened with the Irish and the Big East. These guys will never join the conference for football. They got everything they could possibly want from the ACC and I'm not so sure the ACC got the same in return (it's not like Notre Dame wasn't going to play a number of ACC programs every season anyway).

ACC hoops is gonna be sick, no doubt. But I'm slightly more optimistic about Boston College's chances. This may be nothing more than unchecked optimism. It may also have to do with the fact that I've watched BC compete in arguably the only other conference that could rival the ACC 2014-15-. Whatever the case may be, I like the upward trajectory Steve Donahue has the Eagles' program heading. Certainly beats having to cover billboards calling for the head coach and athletics director to be fired, anyway.

But let's expand a bit on the Boston College-Wake Forest rivalry ... #TheRivalry, because the only legitimate rivalries in college sports are the ones with official BINGO games. What is it going to take to really stoke the flames and jumpstart The Freeloader (Tomahawk Nation TM) Bowl rivalry? Do the Deacons have to start up a men's varsity hockey program or something? Does BC and Wake Forest have to do something unthinkable like win three consecutive Atlantic Division titles in football? And most important:

How can we transform our fake Twitter rivalry into a full blown capital R rivalry?

Mundy: Funny you should mention this. The easy way to do this, mind you, would be to manufacture some sort of squabble with a North/South slant to it. Frankly, there are enough Southerners down here still upset with the blowout loss to Grant's Union forces that they'd sign up for a rematch in a heartbeat. However, that could get a tad messy. Further, if the South lost again President Christie may take away our Bojangles, so that's obviously out.

Let's be honest, here. Boston College is an ACC school located in an area that houses around 193 colleges but most Tobacco Road followers wouldn't blink if the Deacs were relegated to the Southern Conference. Fact is, nobody cares about Wake/BC unless Matt Ryan and Riley Skinner are involved. It's quite the dilemma, but I have an idea.

Let's use our powers for good instead of evil.

How about we use the Showdown on Chestnut Hill as a vehicle to fight hunger?

Using a crowdsourcing platform, we could ask alumni and fans of both schools to pledge any amount of money for the purpose of combating hunger in our local communities, with a target amount of $5,000. If Wake Forest wins the game on Friday, September 6, 60 percent of the money in the kitty will go to the Second Harvest Food Bank of Northwest North Carolina, with the remaining 40 percent going to the Greater Boston Food Bank. Obviously, the opposite will occur if Boston College wins.

This way, we can truly have a "civil" war and nobody gets hurt.

What say you, Mr. BC Interruption? You think that will work?

Favat: That, uhh, that'll probably do the trick.

So there you have it, folks. In the coming days we'll provide some information that details how exactly this project is going to work, and how you can contribute. Can we do it? I think we can.

After all, remember that an intelligent, enterprising group of Wake Forest fans raised thousands in a matter of hours.

For a billboard.

Surely we can raise $5,000 in a month to combat hunger. Yes, we can. Stay tuned.