Boston College fired longtime MBB broadcasters because new coach Luke Murray didn’t want anyone tied to old staff

Boston College fired its longtime men’s basketball radio broadcasters, telling both that the decision came directly from new head coach Luke Murray, who didn’t want anyone in his program’s orbit who’d been associated with the previous coaching staff.

Kevin Collins and Josh Maurer had called Boston College basketball together for nine years, with Collins in the booth for 13 seasons total across three head coaches and five athletic directors, and both learned just days before Aug. 1 that they weren’t being retained, leaving them little runway to find another full-season broadcasting job elsewhere this year.

“He’s a young head coach, no experience, and he’s being given the power to take two guys’ careers away from them who have done nothing but try to serve the program and promote the program,” Collins told Awful Announcing in a phone interview of the first-year Eagles’ head coach.

Murray, most recently an assistant under Dan Hurley at UConn, was hired by BC in March to replace Earl Grant, who went 72-92 in five seasons in Chestnut Hill.

Both broadcasters had spent the spring and summer trying to introduce themselves to Murray or arrange even a brief call after he was hired in late March, and were kept at arm’s length each time. Neither broadcaster ever got that meeting.

“I was always told either Coach Murray is off recruiting, or we have an official visit today, and it’s not a good day, we’ve got a lot going on,” Collins said.

When that didn’t work, Collins said he tried again through his boss at Van Wagner, offering to have a catered lunch delivered to the coaching staff in exchange for 15 minutes to break the ice.

“That angle didn’t work either,” Collins said. “We didn’t get any reply on that.”

That distance from the new staff wasn’t for lack of trying to clarify their status, either. In the months following Murray’s hire, both broadcasters repeatedly asked their boss, Mike Winn, to relay word from Van Wagner, which owns the multimedia rights to BC basketball games, whether the new coaching staff wanted someone who could commit to calling every game, given the heightened attention the coaching change had brought to the program. Each time, they were told the current arrangement was fine (Collins would handle broadcasts solo when Maurer’s role as Milwaukee Brewers play-by-play voice overlapped), and no change was coming, an assurance that held from the end of March all the way until last week.

The reasoning delivered to the pair, relayed through the Deputy Athletic Director, was that Murray didn’t want anyone in the travel party who’d been part of what was described as the program’s “losing mentality” under the previous staff, despite neither broadcaster having any real relationship with the coaching staff itself beyond showing up to call games. When pressed on why the decision took months to reach them given how long Murray had already been on the job, the answer was that the administration had only recently had the actual conversation with him about it.

“The reasoning that I was given was that Coach Murray basically wants a whole new fresh coat of paint on the entire program and wants no remnants of the past around the program,” Collins said. “We have nothing to do with any of that. But he wanted us removed. Didn’t feel comfortable being around a link to the past, if you will. My challenge was, well, how can he not feel comfortable around us? He hasn’t even given us the chance to meet us.”

Collins said he even offered to stay on purely as an engineer with no on-air role at all, and was turned down.

“I asked that question, and he just wants everybody new,” Collins said. “It doesn’t matter who it is. It just seems like even though he hasn’t met you guys, it’s like anybody but you two.”

Easily the hardest tweet of my career. Love you @JoshMaurerPxP and sorry it had to end this way

Huge thanks to Mike Winn, Josh Maurer, and Danya Abrams for supporting and empowering me over the last 13+ years.

I will always be an Eagle #WeAreBCpic.twitter.com/NoLKNhUN43

— Kevin Collins (@BC_Radio_Kevin) August 3, 2026

Collins escalated the issue to Craig Anderson, Boston College’s deputy athletic director and the team’s basketball administrator, someone Collins said he’d built a genuinely friendly relationship with over the years. Anderson, according to Collins, pushed back on Murray’s decision internally before ultimately being overruled.

“You just allow this guy to come in and demand our jobs and our livelihoods without any real fight,” added Collins. “It seems like without giving us a chance to perhaps speak up and defend ourselves, or at least try to build some type of connection with Coach Murray before he was allowed to make that decision. It just seems really unjust to me.”

Boston College has not named a replacement broadcast team and is reportedly running an open search for the roles, without any specific candidates lined up ahead of the firings. Beyond the loss of the men’s basketball games, the pair had also picked up additional assignments tied to their roles over the years, including ACC Network appearances on Boston College women’s basketball broadcasts and select hockey games, all of which are expected to end along with the job that made it possible.

Collins said he’s already begun looking for freelance work to fill the gap, leaning on connections built over more than a decade in the business.

“I do a lot of freelance work for Westwood One, for example, doing some national stuff on their college basketball platform,” Collins added. “I’ve already got a call into them. They were super shocked and stunned to hear of what happened at BC. Had never heard of it happening in their experience nationally elsewhere.”

Collins handled engineering, color and play-by-play duties for the cost of a single position for years, occasionally working entire road broadcasts solo when Maurer was away with his radio gig with the Brewers. Replacing that kind of value on the same budget, Collins said, was not going to be simple.

“His budget’s not going to change,” Collins said of his boss, Mike Winn. “He expressed basically that he’s going to be looking for another version of me in this media market of Boston, and there’s not that many out there, especially that would be available and that would travel with the team and do that type of commitment to schedule.”

Money was never really the point for Collins in the first place. He grew up a Boston College fan in Plymouth, Massachusetts, and has said calling games for the program was something close to a childhood dream come true. His connection to the team outlasted three coaching staffs, five athletic directors and, evidently, whatever goodwill he’d built up with the current one.

“It was never about the money. I never asked for a raise,” Collins said. “It’s also a monetary loss, like that can’t get lost in this either. But I love that program so much, and I always will love that program, and I’ll always be a fan of it.”

Even with all of that behind him, Collins said he doesn’t hold it against whoever ends up in his old seat.

“I don’t blame the next set of broadcasters one bit for jumping at a great opportunity to broadcast a Power Five ACC program,” Collins said. “Those jobs do not grow on trees. It’s a great opportunity for me, it was a great opportunity for Josh, and it will be a great opportunity for whoever is fortunate enough to be given the chance to call Boston College basketball this year.”

Collins said he would even be willing to help whoever gets the job, though he can’t offer any real insight into the man who got him fired. He’s had zero contact with Murray, not even secondhand, despite reaching out to UConn’s own radio broadcasters in search of some sense of who he actually was before the season began.

Their accounts, filtered back to Collins, described a coach who’d been cordial and kind as part of the traveling party, though their interactions were mostly peripheral, since most of their real exposure had been with Dan Hurley, not Murray himself. When Collins relayed what had happened at Boston College, the reaction he got back mirrored his own disbelief.

“They are in an absolute state of amazement and shock as well,” he said. “Can’t believe it.”

It’s that disconnect, between the mild-mannered picture painted by people who’d actually spent real time around Murray and the abrupt, unexplained decision to sever two broadcasters he’d never even met, that Collins says makes the entire ordeal so difficult to reconcile with.

“I’ve never heard of a head coach, whether it be college or professional, hiring or firing the radio broadcast team,” Collins said. “Never heard of it.”

Murray was hired in March, arriving at Boston College from UConn, where he spent five seasons on Dan Hurley’s staff and was credited as one of the architects of the offense that powered the Huskies to back-to-back national championships in 2023 and 2024. He’s the son of actor Bill Murray, who was a regular presence at UConn games throughout his son’s tenure there. This is Murray’s first job as a head coach, taking over a program that finished 11-20 last season and hasn’t reached the NCAA Tournament since 2009.

Boston College declined to comment when reached by Awful Announcing.

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