Boston College needs to realize that with the phenomenon of Doug Flutie, they caught lightning in a bottle (“Reaching new lows at the Heights,’’ Page A1, March 13). With the ensuing national attention, BC chose wisely and invested in its academic infrastructure and built an institution it has every right to be proud of. In the rarefied atmosphere of Boston academics, the school moved from the JV to the varsity. It should have stopped there.

Unfortunately, memories of 1984 became intoxicating, and BC forgot who it is and where it lives. Whether we care to think of the university as a commuter school for Irish Catholic immigrants or a near-Ivy for white suburban kids, it ought to be clear to everyone that it doesn’t belong banging heads with the Clemsons and Florida States of the athletic world.

Read Boston papers and listen to sports talk radio, and you will learn that no one around here cares about college sports. In the Deep South, the heart of the Atlantic Coast Conference, college football and basketball are a way of life, an obsession.

BC’s president ought to sit in on a philosophy class discussion on the theme of “know thyself,’’ swallow hard, and give up this foolish ambition of big-time money from big-time football. There’s no shame or exploitation involved in sending your kids out to play Georgetown, Villanova, and Providence.

Tom Gotsill

Boston