Florida State gets a chance to reset on Saturday at noon, when it meets Boston College at Alumni Stadium in Chestnut Hill, Mass., with Rick Stockstill in place as the Seminoles’ interim head coach. Florida State is trying to end a three-game skid and stop a three-year road losing streak away from Doak Campbell in the same game.
The matchup arrives with something concrete on the line beyond the record books. Florida State is 3-5 overall and 1-4 in the ACC, while Boston College is 4-4 and 2-3 in the league, and FanDuel lists the Seminoles as 5.5-point favorites in a game with an over/under of 52.5 points. That line suggests a relatively tight game, not a runaway, even with Florida State carrying the better all-time profile.
Saturday’s meeting will be the 23rd between Florida State and Boston College, and the Seminoles lead the series 16-6. They have also won the last three games at Alumni Stadium and own a 9-3 record in games played there, which makes the current road drought stand out even more. Florida State has not won a regular-season road game away from Doak Campbell in three years, so the setting in Chestnut Hill is more than just another stop on the schedule.
That is the friction in this game: the Seminoles have handled this venue before, but they have not solved the larger problem of winning on the road. Stockstill enters with a clean break from the past and the simplest possible target — start 1-0 in the Rick Stockstill era. If Florida State cannot do that at noon, the losing streaks keep growing; if it does, the day becomes a first step instead of another reminder of how long the road has been.
