Terrier Memoirs
Our Legacy Behind Boston University Football
by
Book Cover & Preview Text
I love football. More specifically, I loved Boston University Football. It almost seems fitting that our colors were Red and White, because BU football is something that flows through you like blood.
Football by its very nature is at once an intensely physical, spiritual and emotional experience. Your body “feels” football. On any given play there are grunts and growls similar to gladiators at the Roman Coliseum, fighting unto death. Football players fight in a never-ending struggle to master their opponent, and defeat his spirit.
There are horrifying injuries of every kind and yet players still stay in the game. Many might inquire why players subject themselves to such medical and physical calamity, and the reason is quite simple; it never enters the mind of the athlete, there is simply no fear or recognition that one might get hurt.
I saw a picture of Harry Agganis flying through the air making a play at defensive back. His entire body was nearly horizontal five feet off the ground, and the receiver he was covering was standing, frozen in a defensive posture out of fear at the reckless abandon Harry displayed. This was in an era when helmets were without face masks to protect them. The respect something like that commands is demonstrated by a fact that I know I cannot prove; but ask 100 players today whether they would like to play rugby and likely 99 out of the 100 would decline out of respect and a healthy serving of fear.
My feelings about football rest on the classic nature and brutality of the sport, which essentially separates men from boys. I don’t harbor derogatory thoughts for those who are not up to the challenge by courage or skill; it’s just the nature of the game.
I tell high school players today to stand tall when in school or about town. They are not just a member of the football team, representing each other, their school, and their community; it’s because they are a rare and courageous breed of athlete.
The field of competition should be considered hallowed ground. Indeed it is a special place where amazing feats of skill, strength, stamina and brute force are measured, noted, and saved for posterity.
Remarkably, there isn’t a football player alive today, when looking back upon his time playing football, who can remember all the scores, the touchdowns, the receptions and so on. What they remember is how they played the game.
What they remember is giving all they had in a valiant effort toward victory. By game’s end, they knew they could not have played one more play; for they were completely spent. It is this condition that Vince Lombardi immortalized in describing a lineman’s toil, at the end of the game, knowing he did his best to secure victory. Lombardi also said something even more eloquent which many people are not aware of because he said it publicly only a few times, but Jerry Kramer captured this in one of his books about Vince, who said: “The will to excel, the will to win; they endure, they are more important than any events that occasion them”.
People often ask me why I have campaigned for so long (to reinstate football at Boston University) in what has been a fruitless experience in battling a billion dollar enterprise with only $10 in my pocket. The first part of the answer is that I simply don’t know how to quit. I refuse to accept things as they are. In my experiences playing football at Boston University, among the many things I did learn was that you get knocked to the ground and you must get up ready to go to war again…against a bigger, stronger and faster opponent; and yet get up I did and I learned how to overcome the obstacles to achieve my goals. This has transcended into my professional life with great success.
This project, Terrier Memoirs, is me emptying my tank of every last drop of energy I have to make certain that Boston University Football continues to live on in posterity, instead of fading away into the sands of time.
My hope will be to capture the stories of players and their experiences and bring them to life so that our families and friends know that Boston University Football did exist, and thrived, and that each of us had a hand in its history, both in terms of what has been reported and what stories lie dormant about BU Football that most people in, and around Boston University never heard.
It is here in these stories about how we came to Boston University, what we studied, how we played football, and how these experiences transcended into our adult lives sheds light on its true value to the school. Football at Boston University indeed had a purpose. It changed lives. It taught lessons to boys who graduated as men full of goals, dreams and talents waiting to be perfected in society. Many of us here and those we know of, have uniformly become people of substance. We have gone on to accomplish great things and perhaps too, it is important to consider the fact that were it not for football at Boston University, that much of what we did accomplish may never have come to pass.
The legacy of 91 years of Boston University Football now resides with us, the players, coaches, cheerleaders, trainers, and friends of football. We are the keepers now. This book honors our legacy.
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About the Book
Terrier Memoirs paints a mosaic that these players, cheerleaders, coaches, trainers, and friends of football were universally affected by the presence of and participation in Boston University Football. They came from all walks of life, were unified as a team toward common and lofty goals, and emerged as educated men prepared to begin their professional lives not just with lessons from the classroom but those on the field of competition. Their stories are personal, comic, heartbreaking, and poignant. They speak of accomplishments where it could be argued that were it not for football and the opportunity it provided in obtaining an education, their professional accomplishments may never have come to pass. Their stories are proof that football indeed has a value on college campuses and should be considered an investment, not just a cost.
About the Author
T. J. Hartford was a former "blue Chip" recruited athlete in high school who chose Boston University to play Division 1-AA football and was a member of three Yankee Conference Champion teams in the early 1980s. Upon the termination of football at Boston University in 1997, he formed a nonprofit organization called Boston Terriers United for Football, BTUFF, at first to campaign for football to return to BU and, later, to prove that a football program can be maintained at BU by writing a series of case studies. In 2001, he formed a risk-management company that serviced the Fortune 2000 companies nationwide and successfully sold the business to a public company in 2007. He resides in Massachusetts with his wife, Susan, and three children, Chris, Cathryn, and Laurel.