OK. Full disclosure: I've never made it a secret that I'm a BC guy. It's my school. Thus, I am unapologetic for being a fanboy.

And so this is where I'm supposed to be weeping over the loss of AJ Dillon, the New London kid who only went on to become the career rushing leader at Boston College. Dillon announced Tuesday he would forgo his senior season and declare for the NFL draft. It means the beloved Eagles lose a young man who would have been in the Heisman conversation next year.

Know what, though?

This is no time to be sad, especially not faced with this cocktail of gratitude mixed with reality.

Gratitude: Mad props and bon mots to Dillon, not merely for being a horse, but for his enviable demeanor and comportment. I've sat through enough postgame pressers and heard plenty of athletes struggle, shall we say, with subject-verb agreement. Dillon is a humble statesman. Makes me proud to know that BC athletes actually open a book. His mom, Jessyca Gatewood-Campbell, an assistant principal at Nathan Hale School, did an exemplary job raising him.

Reality: There's no reason for Dillon to return, surely not to go 6-6 again and risk injury. Sure, the Heisman thing would have had some legs. Really, though, Dillon's departure underscores why BC just canned coach Steve Addazio.

Addazio wasted the talent and potential reach of BC's greatest running back ever.

I asked the guy who knows the most about BC sports, blogger and BC grad Bill Maloney, who authors the site "Eagle In Atlanta," to summarize Dillon's time in college. Bill writes:

"Dillon will own the BC rushing record book when he is done. He was also so uniquely powerful, I don't think any BC fans will ever forget him tossing tacklers," he wrote. "The only thing that might not have him at the top of the minds of BC fans was that his success came during a particularly unmemorable time of BC football. He wasn't part of any 'special' moment. No big prime time win. No huge upset. Nothing that caught the attention of nation or even the casual BC fan."

Perfectly stated.

The only thing that came close to such a moment was last season when College GameDay came to Chestnut Hill for the Clemson game. It was mid-November for first place in the ACC. An actual big-time atmosphere. Mike Walker — of the Niantic/Waterford Walkers — returned a punt for a touchdown early in the game that gave BC a lead. I learned what it's like to truly hyperventilate.

It wasn't long, though, until quarterback Anthony Brown got hurt and the night turned painful. Dillon was gimpy late last year from a heavy workload and BC lost its last four games.

Dillon's time was dotted with three years of nondescript bowl games and the program's inability to have productive offenses and defenses in the same year. Mediocrity. Except that AJ Dillon is hardly mediocore. Addazio should be embarrassed for wasting the talent of an NFL running back. And make no mistake: Dillon will make some NFL coach a happy guy, regardless of whether the running back position in the pros has been devalued.

Dillon said Tuesday he has a plan in place to finish his degree at BC. Education has always been important to his family. Even if the kid never plays a down in the NFL, he'd knock a job interview into the upper deck. Just a good, decent kid anybody would want on their team. Sports, business or otherwise.

In many ways, Dillon symbolizes the best and worst of Boston College. He illustrates the school's allure to high character kids that actually see the marriage between educational and athletic components. He also illustrates how some institutional incompetence — or perhaps institutional inertia — kept the wrong person employed for too long, thus creating this frustrating inability to capitalize on a marvelous talent who could have been a pied piper.

Anyway, it was fun to watch Dillon throw away tacklers, run them over and then sound like a diplomat explaining them to the media after games. He's on his way to the NFL now, a beacon for the unspoken effort of awesome parenting.

Good luck to him both in The Show and earning his degree. No better New London success story.

This is the opinion of Day sports columnist Mike DiMauro