Lucas: Healey hoping for a Miami miracle

Boston College football fans ought to be concerned over Gov. Maura Healey’s mocking attacks on Gov. Ron DeSantis and Florida.

That’s because her criticism of the Sunshine State is only providing coaches of the Florida State Seminoles and the University of Miami Hurricanes — two football powerhouses — with locker room material to use against us.

When it comes to Florida, Massachusetts needs a win. It appears we can’t beat Florida in anything.

Perhaps the Bay State needs a miracle, like Doug Flutie’s “Hail Mary” pass to Gerard Phelan that gave BC a miraculous last-second victory over Miami in the 1984 Orange Bowl.

That win raised the spirits of millions of people. Something that no politician since JFK has been able to do.

Football guru John Madden said of the height-challenged Flutie, a one-time New England Patriot, “Inch for inch, Flutie in his prime was the best quarterback of his generation.”

But while there is a statue of Flutie, once a Natick resident, at Boston College he, like many other people, left for Florida.

This includes Tom Brady, formerly of Brookline and the New England Patriots. The team has never been the same after he left to join the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. He even came back with the Bucs to beat the Patriots in 2021.

The U.S. Census Bureau estimated that some 60,000 Massachusetts residents left the state in the 12 months between July 2021 and July 2022, most of whom, seeking lower taxes, less crime and a better quality of life, joined Flutie and Brady in Florida.

And while Gov. Maura Healey has launched a $750,000 billboard campaign in Florida and Texas featuring photos of smiling LGBTQ couples to lure people to Massachusetts as a place “for all of us,” it will take more than that to stem the tide.

Healey on Boston Public Radio called DeSantis’ policies on education and LGBTQ issues “really shameful.” She charged that DeSantis was “out to punish people. It certainly does a disservice to the people of Florida.”

You can’t tell that to people abandoning high-tax states like Massachusetts and New York for Florida.

What Massachusetts really needs is a few meaningful wins.

Forget DeSantis’ grandstanding, in-your-face play to embarrass Massachusetts, a sanctuary state, by flying in a couple of planeloads of illegal immigrants, mostly Venezuelans, into toney Martha’s Vineyard. He’s only lucky Gov. Charlie Baker did not ship them back. But that would have been out of character.

As it was, the islanders could not get them off the island fast enough and quickly shipped them to the mainland. So, chalk that up as a win for Florida.

Massachusetts can’t beat Florida in anything.

The Miami Heat routed the Boston Celtics in the climactic seventh game of the Eastern Conference final playoff game in May.

The Boston Bruins, who broke the record for most regular season wins, were beaten by the Florida Panthers in game seven of the first round the National Hockey League playoffs for the Stanley Cup in April.

The Boston Red Sox seem to lose every time they play the Tampa Bay Rays, and the Super Bowl New England Patriots always have problems when they go against the Miami Dolphins, especially without Tom Brady.

As far as Major League Soccer is concerned Inter Miami was given a tremendous boost over the New England Revolution when superstar Lionel Messi, the world’s best player, joined Inter Miami this past week.

So, all we have left is Boston College.

And it is not as though the BC Eagles will be facing off with pushovers early in the season, like UMass and Holy Cross.

Florida State and Miami play serious football, as BC sometimes tries to do.

Underdog Boston College plays Florida State on Saturday, Sept. 16 and Miami on Friday, Nov. 24. Both are Chestnut Hill home games.

Both teams will be tough to beat, but miracles do happen.

And Massachusetts badly needs a win over Florida.

Gov. Healey for old times’ sake ought to ask Doug Flutie how to do it, even if he does live in Florida.

What have we got to lose? Go Eagles.

Peter Lucas is a veteran Massachusetts political reporter and columnist.