50 Fun Facts About Boston College

Which Boston College quarterback's last-second 1984 touchdown pass gave his name to a surge in college applications?

Doug Flutie won the Heisman Trophy a week after the pass, and the 'Flutie effect' has come to mean any admissions bump that follows a sporting triumph.

Which defending national champion did Boston College beat 47–45 on a last-second Hail Mary pass in November 1984?

Miami lost at home in the Orange Bowl when receiver Gerard Phelan caught the 48-yard throw in the end zone as time ran out.

Which Catholic religious order, also behind Georgetown and Fordham, founded Boston College in 1863?

The Jesuits, formally the Society of Jesus, taught pupils whose average age in the early years was just fourteen.

Boston College graduate Tom McCarthy directed which Best Picture winner about Boston Globe reporters?

Spotlight also won McCarthy the Oscar for Best Original Screenplay, decades after he performed improv comedy as a Boston College undergraduate.

Which Parks and Recreation star joined the improv troupe My Mother's Fleabag as a Boston College student?

Amy Poehler graduated in 1993 and moved to Chicago, where she took her first formal improv class on the way to Saturday Night Live.

Boston College finance graduate Harry Markopolos warned the SEC for years about which financier's giant Ponzi scheme?

Bernie Madoff was reported to the SEC by Markopolos in 2000, 2001 and 2005, yet the fraud ran on until it collapsed in December 2008.

Which Martin Scorsese film follows Henry Hill, the mobster who helped fix Boston College basketball games in 1978–79?

Goodfellas tells Hill's life story, and his testimony at a 1981 trial helped convict Boston College center Rick Kuhn, who was sentenced to ten years.

Which viral 2014 craze did former Boston College baseball captain Pete Frates spread after his ALS diagnosis?

Ice Bucket Challenge videos raised roughly $220 million for ALS research after Frates, diagnosed at 27, helped the idea reach a national audience.

Which Celtic punk band recorded the Boston College fight song 'For Boston' on its 2001 album Sing Loud, Sing Proud!?

Dropkick Murphys covered a tune written by a member of the class of 1885, one often called America's oldest college fight song.

Boston College graduate Erik Weihenmayer became the first blind climber to reach the top of which mountain in 2001?

Mount Everest was only the start: by 2002 he had climbed the highest peak on every continent, and he later kayaked the length of the Grand Canyon.

Which architectural style, inspired by medieval Oxford, shapes Boston College's Chestnut Hill campus?

Collegiate Gothic arrived with architect Charles Maginnis, whose 1908 plan for an 'Oxford in America' went on to influence campuses across North America.

Which color names the MBTA subway line whose B branch ends at Boston College station?

Green Line streetcars have ended their runs at the spot since 1900, years before the college moved there, and the B branch is also called the Boston College branch.

Which annual February hockey tournament pits Boston College against Boston University, Harvard and Northeastern?

The Beanpot began in the 1952–53 season and usually fills TD Garden on the first two Mondays of the month, with city bragging rights at stake.

Which national title contender did Boston College stun 41–39 in 1993 on David Gordon's field goal as time expired?

Notre Dame had rallied from 38–17 down to lead before the 41-yard kick, which gave the Eagles their first win in the series and a Sports Illustrated cover.

Which Boston College quarterback went third overall to the Atlanta Falcons in 2008 and later won an NFL MVP award?

Matt Ryan, nicknamed Matty Ice, was the league's MVP for 2016 and took the Falcons to Super Bowl LI that season.

Which Speaker of the US House, a 1936 Boston College graduate, gave his name to the university's main library?

Tip O'Neill held the gavel from 1977 to 1987, the longest unbroken run of any Speaker, and the library carrying his name opened in 1984.

Which Massachusetts senator and presidential candidate earned his law degree at Boston College in 1976?

John Kerry entered the law school in 1973, two years after he testified to a Senate committee against the Vietnam War as a decorated veteran.

Which item inspires the special uniforms Boston College teams wear each year to honor 9/11 hero Welles Crowther?

A red bandanna shielded the 1999 graduate from smoke as he led people down from the 78th floor of the World Trade Center before losing his own life.

Which Boston Celtics legend coached the Boston College men's basketball team from 1963 to 1969?

Bob Cousy had turned the school down as a recruit because it had no dormitories, then took the coaching job the year he retired as a player.

Which Star Trek actor, raised in Boston's West End, took drama classes at Boston College before moving to Los Angeles?

Leonard Nimoy later paid his way into the Pasadena Playhouse with $600 he had saved from selling vacuum cleaners.

Which Boston College building with a 200-foot bell tower stood alone on the new Chestnut Hill campus for three years?

Gasson Hall opened in 1913 as the Tower Building, after construction costs outran the funds and left nothing for its planned neighbors.

In which Boston neighborhood did Boston College teach its first classes before moving to Chestnut Hill?

South End land on Harrison Avenue was bought for the school in 1857, and by 1907 a new president judged the cramped city site unfit for expansion.

Which priest, an Army chaplain in the Mexican–American War, bought the land for Boston College in 1857?

John McElroy, born in Enniskillen, served among the first Catholic chaplains in the US Army and lived to 95, long enough to see his college open.

Boston College's live 1960s eagle mascot was named Margo as a blend of which two school colors?

Maroon and gold gave Margo her name; the young bird lived at Franklin Park Zoo and came to home games until she died of a virus in 1966.

Which name does Boston College's costumed eagle mascot carry, played by students who stay anonymous until graduation?

Baldwin joins 'bald', for the bald eagle, to 'win'; the costume replaced live birds once eagles had become an endangered species.

Boston College's Greek motto, translated as 'Ever to Excel', comes from which ancient epic poem?

The Iliad gives the phrase to the warrior Glaucus, who tells Diomedes it was his father's instruction when sending him to Troy.

Which conference did Boston College help found in 1979 and then leave for the ACC in 2005?

The Big East began as a basketball league of seven Northeastern schools, and the Eagles were its only Catholic member to play football in the league.

Which future Batman Forever star finished a Boston College marketing degree in 1992?

Chris O'Donnell graduated the year Scent of a Woman came out, a breakout role opposite Al Pacino that brought him a Golden Globe nomination.

Which Boston College linebacker went ninth overall in the 2012 NFL draft and won Defensive Player of the Year in 2013?

Luke Kuechly was the youngest winner the award had seen, and the Eagles, for whom he was twice a consensus All-American, retired his number 40.

Which trophy for college hockey's best player did Boston College winger Johnny Gaudreau win in 2014?

The Hobey Baker Award followed a season of 36 goals and 80 points in 40 games for the New Jersey native, whom fans called Johnny Hockey.

Which Boston College coach became the first in college hockey to win 1,000 games before retiring in 2022?

Jerry York, once an Eagles player himself, won five national titles as a coach, four of them at his alma mater between 2001 and 2012.

Boston College softball captain Elisabeth Hasselbeck found fame on which reality show before co-hosting The View?

Survivor's Australian Outback season, where she finished fourth, aired a few years after she had captained the Eagles to consecutive conference titles.

Which Fidelity Magellan Fund manager, a 1965 graduate, gave his name to Boston College's school of education?

Peter Lynch bought 100 shares of Flying Tiger Airlines as a sophomore and later landed a Fidelity internship partly because he had caddied for its president.

Which phenomenon has Boston College's Weston Observatory been recording across New England since the 1930s?

Earthquakes are the observatory's specialty: it houses New England's seismic network and briefs the public after any significant tremor.

Boston College's Belfast Project secretly recorded the memories of paramilitaries from which conflict?

The Troubles interviews were meant to stay sealed until each speaker died, but police subpoenas from 2011 forced the release of some tapes.

Which name, also a nickname for the campus, does Boston College's student newspaper founded in 1919 carry?

The Heights debuted in November 1919 at just four pages, and a priest's letter to it the next year proposed the eagle as the school mascot.

Which street, linking the Boston College and Boston University campuses, gives the schools' hockey rivalry a nickname?

Commonwealth Avenue joins two campuses less than five miles apart, and a 2009 documentary about the feud was titled The Battle of Comm Ave.

Which defending champion did Boston College upset 75–72 in the second round of the 1994 NCAA basketball tournament?

North Carolina was ranked No. 1, and the Eagles then beat Indiana to reach the Elite Eight, a round they had last visited in 1982.

Which sport gave Boston College its first NCAA team championship outside men's hockey when its women won in 2021?

Lacrosse brought the title behind an Eagles attacker who won the Tewaaraton Award as the best college player that year and again the next.

Which first president of Boston College, honored by a campus library, had been tarred and feathered in Maine?

John Bapst, a Swiss-born priest, was attacked in Ellsworth in 1854 during the anti-Catholic Know-Nothing unrest, then robbed and ridden out of town on a rail.

A 55–12 loss to which rival led Boston College to cancel a 1942 victory party at the doomed Cocoanut Grove?

Holy Cross pulled off the upset at Fenway Park, and the fire that swept the Boston nightclub that same night killed 492 people.

Which coach led Boston College football from 1991 to 1993 and later won two Super Bowls with the NFL's Giants?

Tom Coughlin had coached the Eagles' quarterbacks from 1981 to 1983, and his success in charge got him hired to launch the Jacksonville Jaguars.

Which US president, an honorary Boston College graduate, spoke at the university's centennial in April 1963?

Kennedy, the first Catholic to hold the office, had collected his honorary degree in 1956, and his speech was the highlight of a week of events.

Despite the university's name, the historic heart of Boston College stands in which neighboring Massachusetts city?

Newton holds the six stone buildings of the campus historic district, and the marathon's Heartbreak Hill climbs through the same city nearby.

Which Boston mayor and later US Labor Secretary earned his Boston College degree through night classes in 2009?

Marty Walsh was a sitting state representative in his forties when he finished the degree at the Woods College of Advancing Studies.

The gilded bronze eagle statue on Boston College's Linden Lane was brought to Massachusetts from which country?

Japan was where diplomat Larz Anderson and his wife acquired the sculpture, which stood in the park bearing his name until it was donated in 1954.

Which late-night television sidekick studied at Boston College from 1940 to 1941?

Ed McMahon needed two years of college to qualify for flight training, and went on to teach Marine pilots to fly Corsair fighters.

Which future coach of the 1992 Olympic 'Dream Team' led Boston College men's basketball from 1969 to 1971?

Chuck Daly went on to win back-to-back NBA titles with the 'Bad Boys' Detroit Pistons in 1989 and 1990 before taking the Olympic job.

Which star of The Office met his wife, Boston College graduate Nancy Walls, while teaching her improv class?

Steve Carell was teaching at Second City, and Nancy later guest-starred on the sitcom as Carol, a girlfriend of his character Michael Scott.

Boston College graduate Maile Flanagan is the English-language voice of which hero of a long-running anime?

Naruto has been her role since the English dub began in 2005, and she has voiced the character as a kid, a teenager and an adult.