Terriers

Every autumn once mattered more than the others: from 1954 to 1962, Boston University and Boston College played for the Sacred Cod Trophy, the Green Line Rivalry. Northeastern and Holy Cross filled out the rest of the calendar, and it was Northeastern who got the last word — a 28–7 win in 1997, the final game the program ever played.

The team had been going since 1884, long enough to outlast most of the sport's changes around it, before Boston University shut it down after that 1997 season. It spent its later decades in NCAA Division I-AA, out of the bowl picture almost entirely; the one exception came far earlier, a trip to the 1969 Pasadena Bowl that ended in a 7–28 loss to San Diego State. Nickerson Field held the home crowds, 9,871 of them at capacity, watching a team in scarlet and white chase five Yankee Conference titles between 1980 and 1993, the last of them won outright in 1993 after three straight seasons of sharing the crown.

Rick Taylor ran the program from 1977 to 1984 and left with 55 wins, the coach most associated with that Yankee Conference run. But the name that outlasts the program itself is Harry Agganis.