It used to be so simple. Once a year, the Boston University Terriers would come to town to play a bit of hockey, and Maine fans would summon up every ounce of bile and venom, head to Alfond Arena, and vent it all on one man.

Jack Parker.

Simple. After all, Parker had a long list of transgressions working against him: He was successful. He wasn’t Shawn Walsh. And he was a litterbug.

Remember that night, do you? Jeff Harris certainly does.

Harris is the fan you always see on TV, waving his UMaine flag. (Actually, he has two Black Bear flags – one for hockey and one for every other sporting event he attends … of which there are plenty). And he was there a decade or so ago when Parker decided to do a little premature spring cleaning and tidy up the visitors’ bench.

Out came the water bottles. And clipboards. And whatever else a riled-up Parker could get his hands on.

“It’s easy to hate somebody that’s good,” Harris said on Friday, as he sat in his customary seat in the back row of Section FF and waited for the renewal of one of college hockey’s most bitter rivalries, 40 minutes away.

“And when he chucked that stuff out on the ice, that just added fuel to the fire.”

Simple.

Parker was the bad guy. BU was the hated opponent. End of story.

That, however, was before. Before everything changed. Before Shawn Walsh found out he had cancer. And before Walsh found out he had a friend he’d never counted on.

Among all the coaches he’d competed against, Walsh kept getting phone calls from one a bit more often than the others. Just to check up. Just to talk.

His name was Jack Parker.

“He has been a good friend throughout this,” Walsh said a year ago, less than 11 months before he’d eventually lose his battle to kidney cancer.

Friend? Jack Parker?

Back in 1995, Parker summed up his relationship with the fiery and abrasive Walsh in a few succinct words.

“I have a professional relationship with Shawn Walsh. … I have no other relationship with him.”

Parker was the man brash enough to point out, back in 1994, that UMaine’s NCAA violations “put a black mark on the league.”

And he was the guy who, on Sept. 28, drove up to Bangor with two of his captains and attended the wake of a man he’d learned to call a friend.

And people noticed.

Just ask Nonni Daly. She’s been watching college hockey for years, and worked in the Hockey East office for a few years. She’s also a UMaine fan.

“[This rivalry has] gone way beyond the Jack-and-Shawn thing because they mended a lot of fences and became pretty good friends,” said Daly as she leaned on a rail at her customary game-night post, guarding the tunnel that leads to the Black Bear locker room. “I think they realized that what they didn’t like in each other was what they didn’t like in themselves.”

So without a Walsh-Parker duel, the game fizzled on Friday night. Right? Without all that venom, all that bile, all that hate? It couldn’t be the same.

Not the same, perhaps. But one thing remained.

It was Maine-BU. All you had to do is walk across the parking lot to realize that.

Fifty minutes before game time, eager fans queued up in a line that snaked down the side of the building and into the darkness.

Afterward, after the Terriers had knocked off UMaine 3-2 in overtime, Parker admitted that coming back to Orono is different. But he said the way the Black Bears are playing are a tribute to their former coach.

“The Maine seniors, especially, have been doing a great job of leadership and keeping these guys focused,” Parker said. “[Walsh’s death] has been an awful hard thing for me to go through. I can’t imagine what it is for the Maine community, the friends of Maine hockey, and especially the Maine hockey team.”

No, Parker’s no longer the bad guy. He even didn’t even get booed during introductions on Friday night. But that doesn’t mean fans can’t good-naturedly hold on to the bad ol’ days.

“You want to still dislike him, and you still can,” Harris said, pointing out that Parker’s compassion during Walsh’s illness would probably keep him from aiming his own vocal jabs at the Terriers’ coach.

But that doesn’t mean Harris wasn’t ready for the game.

It is, after all, Maine-BU. Harris is an honest-to-goodness, flag-waving Bear-backer.

And things aren’t that different.

“I can still dislike the team,” Harris said with a mischievous grin as boos greeted the red- and white-clad Terriers.

Maybe it’s still simple, after all.

John Holyoke is a NEWS sports writer. He can be reached via e-mail at jholyoke@bangordailynews.net.