January 8

A few quick links...

Bruins

The Boston Bruins host the Carolina Hurricanes tonight. Gametime is 7 PM and can be seen on NESN. In the Globe's Notebook Fluto Shinzawa has Andrew Alberts still suffering from post-concussion syndrome, while Aaron Ward and Glen Murray are much closer to returning.

Soccer

Major League Soccer has received a transfer bid from a second division English Club for the Revolution's Taylor Twellman. The league has rejected the $1.6 million offer from Preston North End, (don't feel bad, I'd never heard of them either) and word is Preton North End may increase the bid to $2 million. Here's hoping Twellman remains in a Revolution uniform for many years to come, or at least until they finally win the MLS Cup.

Boston College

First, the good news. The football team finished the season tied for 10th place with Texas in the final AP Poll, and 11th in the final Coach's Poll. Notice that in the AP Poll Division 1-AA team Appalachian State finished with more votes than both UConn and Rutgers, and tied with South Florida. So much for the Big East being better than the ACC.

Now, the bad news. The mens' basketball team lost to Robert Morris last night, 57-51. The Globe's Michael Vega has the game recap. BC seems to have at least one of these losses every year, and this is a young team. Hopefully play improves for the conference schedule. The Eagles have to play North Carolina twice, and have road games at Virginia, Clemson, Duke, and Florida State.

In other College football news, Bob Ryan thinks that the bowl games themselves, particilarly the Rose Bowl, are the biggest stumbling block to a playoff system. I agree with most of what Ryan said, except when he says the BCS conferences aren't motivated by money in their stance against a playoff system. The current system guarantees the biggest bowl bids, and as a result biggest payouts, go to the biggest conferences. The excuses of academics are laughable at best. It's all about money.

Thursday, December 20

Boston College is already looking ahead to the 2008 football season, as some scheduling news was released today. Kent State has requested, and received approval, for their season opener be moved from Dix Stadium (capacity: 30,000) to Cleveland Browns Stadium (capacity: 73,000).

The Eagles are also still looking for a replacement for Army, as the Black Knights have asked out of next year's game. BC has sent a letter to all the Bowl Subdivision (Division 1-A) teams (with the exception of UConn, Rutgers, Pitt, and West Virginia, I imagine) to see if anyone's available. The Army game was a road contest for BC, so it would seem it'd be easy to find someone with an open slot looking for an extra home game so long as they are willing to come to Chestnut Hill for a return game. The only down side aside from this game BC's schedule is filled through 2014, so the second contest wouldn't be for a while. I'd love for the Eagles to pick up a big name opponent from the SEC or Big 12. If they want to take the easy way out I think BC still owes Baylor a home game from when they visited Boston in the late '90s, if that hasn't been scheduled already.

Also, Champs Bowl Ticets aren't selling too well from BC's side. This is disappointing. I remember during the '80s BC football was a pretty big. That hasn't been the case for a while, although I'm not sure why.