Remember when debating whether to send Kreider to Hartford for the rest of this season was a thing? Is there any doubt that the New York Rangers made the right decision to call up Boston College's Chris Kreider for the Stanley Cup Playoffs?

Kreider scored yet another goal in Saturday's Eastern Conference Finals game three, giving the Blueshirts a 2-1 series lead over the New Jersey Devils.

Less than two minutes later, at 5:16, Kreider doubled the advantage. His drive from the left side snuck past Brodeur's glove hand to stun the Prudential Center. The rookie also continues to surprise his everyone on his bench, including Tortorella.

"I don't know the kid at all," Tortorella said. "I've spoken to him probably three or four times since he's been here. But he has a knack. The puck follows him around."

The goal was Kreider's fifth of the postseason (read: career) and third of the series. His goal on Saturday broke a 59-year NHL scoring record for the most playoff goals (5) and points (7) in a season without having played in a single regular season game. The previous record belonged to the Eddie Mazur, a forward for the Montreal Canadiens and Chicago Blackhawks. Mazur actually set the record over three different postseasons between 1950 and 1953 before appearing in his first regular season game during the 1953-54 season. He would go on to play just three regular seasons in the NHL, scoring eight goals.

Something tells me Kreider is in store for a few more goals over his career.

Game 1: Duke 7, Boston College 4
Game 2: Duke 4, Boston College 1
Game 3: Boston College 14, Duke 2

Season FIN.

The Boston College Eagles baseball needed a strong showing in the final regular season series and some help to make this year's ACC Baseball Championship. But after losing the first two games of the series to Duke, the Eagles were officially eliminated from the postseason (though they did send the seniors out with a big win).

BC finishes two games out of the eighth and final spot in the 2012 ACC Baseball Championship. Here are the final conference standings.

1. Florida State (24-6) -- Atlantic Division leader
2. North Carolina (22-8) -- Coastal Division leader
3. N.C. State (19-11)
4. Virginia (18-12)
5. Clemson (16-14)
6. Miami (16-14)
7. Wake Forest 13-17)
8. Georgia Tech (12-18)

Virginia Tech (11-19)
Boston College (10-20)
Maryland (10-20)
Duke (9-21)

Pool A: #1 Florida State, #4 Virginia, #5 Clemson, #8 Georgia Tech
Pool B: #2 North Carolina, #3 N.C. State, #6 Miami, #7 Wake Forest

This year marks the fifth time in seven seasons that BC has failed to qualify for the ACC Baseball Championship. In 2009 and 2010, the Eagles finished as the #8 seed.

2006: No Tournament
2007: No Tournament
2008: No Tournament
2009: #8 Seed, Finished pool play 2-1 but lost head-to-head tiebreaker with Florida State
2010: #8 Seed, Finished pool play 1-2
2011: No Tournament
2012: No Tournament

The Eagles finish the year with a record of 22-33 overall, 10-20 in the ACC.

Brian: The last time Boston College football had a season as bad as last year, the year was 1998. The program started that season 3-0 with wins over Georgia Tech, Rutgers and Temple, but stumbled down the stretch going 1-7 down the stretch including a six game mid-season losing streak. BC would rebound in Tom O'Brien's third season on the Heights, going 8-3 during the regular season before getting waxed by Colorado in the Insight Bowl (remember when Colorado was good?).

For the 1998 season, there were ~113 Division I-A programs.

In the years following the 1998 season, programs at Buffalo (1999), Middle Tennessee State (1999), Connecticut (2000), South Florida (2001), Florida Atlantic (2006), Florida International (2006) and Western Kentucky (2009) have all made the transition to Division I-A, swelling the total total number of Division I-A programs to 120. Over the next two seasons, as many as seven additional programs will make the jump to Division I-A, including Massachusetts, South Alabama, Texas-San Antonio, Texas State (all this season) as well as Charlotte, Old Dominion (2013, to Conference USA) and Georgia State (2013, Sun Belt) will also make the jump. Charlotte, Old Dominion and Georgia State will swell the total number of Division I-A programs to 127 for the 2013 season.

With an increase of more than 10 percent of the total number of DIvision I-A programs in a little more than a decade, I'm wondering if the college football landscape has changed to Boston College football's detriment. In the face of increased competition in New England, particularly with programs at Connecticut and Massachusetts joining the ranks of Division I-A programs, I'm wondering if you think the road back to respectability / bowl eligibility will take longer for the Eagles?

That is a significant amount of additional programs -- with a full compliment of added scholarships -- with two programs threatening BC's stranglehold more locally in New England. Not to mention the increased competition of the ACC over the Big East. Your thoughts?

Jeff: The road back to bowl eligibility is not that long of a road from where we are now. You make a fair point that there are potentially fewer gimmes going forward than there might have been back in 1998 but other teams have problems too and BC was only two wins away last season. Even in Nick Saban's first year at Alabama they lost to Louisiana-Monroe at home. Given the history of Alabama that was a monumentally terrible loss but they were back to winning national championships just a few years later. The real question is whether or not BC can get back to bowl eligibility year after year and right now I don't think anyone feels that we're close to that. With Chase Rettig being a third and fourth year starter at QB these next two seasons, you can't rule out the possibility of BC making bowl games both of those seasons, but do we have confidence that the will go well once we lose last years group of sophomores that will certainly not lack experience on the field heading into the next two seasons, no.

With the addition of another in conference game, the possibility of going 2-6 in conference and still going bowling no longer exists. Winning four conference games is likely what it would take to make a bowl and even though every year there are some struggling teams within the conference, the schedule might play out that we only see one of those teams or none at all.

Brian: When I say "return to respectability / bowl eligibility" I'm talking less about a return to a bowl game this year and more about a longer-term about face for the program, where a minimum of seven wins and an annual bowl game are the general expectation. I think that with an influx of new programs, particularly in New England, this will become more difficult for BC.

The conference competition is tougher in the ACC than it was in the Big East, and as you rightly pointed out, the ACC's move to a nine-game conference schedule makes the task even more difficult. Finally, with significant changes to both the BCS / playoff and the bowl structure (including possibly raising the bar for bowl eligibility), the road back may be even more uphill than fans are expecting.

Continue reading this post »

Today the SEC and Big 12 announced a very significant new partnership that will send a champion to the same bowl game if those two programs don't make the four-team playoff field. If the SEC and Big 12 champs do make the four-team playoff, another program from each of the conference(s) would be selected for the game. The deal is a five-year agreement that will start following the 2014 season.

Here's the quote from SEC Commissioner Mike Slive:

"A new January bowl tradition is born. This new game will provide a great matchup between the two most successful conferences in the BCS era and will complement the exciting postseason atmosphere created by the new four-team model. Most importantly, it will provide our student-athletes, coaches and fans with an outstanding bowl experience."

This is the Big 12 and SEC setting up a second Rose Bowl. No word on where the game will be held, with the likely destinations being either the Sugar Bowl or Fiesta Bowl. Maybe Jerry World?

But the actual game isn't the bigger news here. The big news is in what this agreement and partnership represents.

This arrangement, similar to the Big Ten and Pac-12's deal with the Rose Bowl, even further solidifies the Big 12 and SEC's seat at the table among the sport's power brokers. This is a consolidation of power, and not for the better if you are the Atlantic Coast Conference. The Big East is already in another ZIP code when it comes to the true power brokers of the college football world, but it looks as though the ACC might be wandering dangerously close to the outskirts of town.

The new SEC-Big 12 bowl partnership also is bad news for those ACC fans who want to keep Florida State in the conference. With room for expansion, supposedly a better TV contract and better non-playoff bowl destinations, this arrangement gives schools like Florida State and Clemson one more reason to bolt for greener ($) pastures.

Finally, this partnership shows that there will be significant changes to the bowl system outside of implementing a four-team playoff. While I'm thrilled that the college football power brokers have wised up and are going to put more marquee bowl games back on New Year's Day, I'm slightly less than thrilled that it looks like the ACC is getting further squeezed when it comes to choice postseason destinations.

[Ed. note -- Front Page'd]

I am fortunate to work for a company where trust and transparency are core values. My company was recently named in a Forbes Magazine article as one of the 100 Most Trustworthy Companies in America for 2011. This is something we reference with clients all the time as proof that what we talk about is what we deliver.

The same cannot be said for Boston College Athletics.

Today's post regarding former Women's Lacrosse Coach Bowen Holden and the secrecy surrounding her dismissal is just another of the many firings handled so terribly wrong by the athletic administration. Holden, Sylvia Crawley and Kevin Rogers' mysterious illnesses. Isn't it just enough to call a spade a spade and stop with the charade?

There have been a lot of people critical about those who refer to Boston as a pro sports town, but this is a classic case where that is proven out and most importantly is allowing the BC Athletic Administration to escape any scrutiny surrounding not only their decision, but the realities behind those decisions. This would not happen if this were a pro sports team or if the program was in a major college market. There would be a drastic rise in the level of accountability and transparency into the workings of the athletic department that just aren't there right now.

This carries right over into the football program and how it handled the Montel Harris situation and of course the continuing farce that is the Frank Spazani regime. How could a player who was never disciplined to the point of even a single play suspension, suddenly be tossed off the team for repeated violation of team rules? How can the entire world see one thing when it comes to Spaz and the administration see another. It's like the Emperor's New Clothes!

We all know the answer is that they just aren't willing to tell us the truth. They hide behind these flimsy stories and sit in ivory towers, virtually untouchable.

The saddest thing though is that this isn't a state university (no offense UMass, not directed at you), but it is a Jesuit Catholic institution of higher education. Wouldn't you think that honesty and transparency would be values espoused and demanded by the administration? Unfortunately, this has never been the case, not in the days of Bill Flynn and not in the days of GDF. In that way, BC is run no differently from so many businesses. BC has historically kept its skeletons and its problems completely in house, ignoring even the wishes of its students and alumni for information. The Rick Kuhn point shaving scandal, the Martin Clark expose surrounding the preferential treatment of athletes, anything that shows BC in a negative light is quickly squashed internally. It's done under the guise of student privacy rights, it's done under the guise of being a private and not public institution so not held to the same standards of information exchange. But the bottom line is...all they do is lie...it goes for the secular and non-secular...and it's a shame. The physical gates surrounding the university really do act as if it BC were a separate kingdom, completely beholden to it's own laws...they keep things in..they keep things out as well.

The call needs to go out from all of us to build back trust in the university and its athletic department. They can start by telling us the truth when you fire a coach. I think we can stomach those realities.

In the next installment of SBNation.com's college football relegation week, Bill Connelly went through every season since 2005 to see which schools would be relegated, which ones promoted and how the Atlantic Coast Premiership would look after the 2012 season.

Naturally, Duke was demoted after the 2005 season and replaced by West Virginia. The Mountaineers would go on to win the league title in 2006 while N.C. State was the second Tobacco Road school to get the boot in as many seasons. Thanks, Chuck Amato!

(Imagine for a second that this actually happened. Does Tom O'Brien then leave the Heights for Raleigh, or does he stick it out at Boston College? In this bizarro college football world, TOB never leaves, Jagodzinski never gets hired in 2007 nor fired in 2009 and Spaziani remains a career defensive coordinator. I digress.)

By 2007, Miami has been punted back to the Big East while West Virginia, Louisville and Connecticut have all been promoted. Louisville promptly gets Kragthorpe'd a few years later and is replaced by Cincinnati, who replaces Maryland.

And by 2012, Boston College, Wake Forest, Maryland and Duke are all playing in the Big East, replaced by UConn, Cincinnati, West Virginia and Pittsburgh. This coming season, the Eagles would find themselves playing in a conference that includes James Madison, Louisville, Maryland, Navy, New Hampshire, Rutgers, South Florida, Syracuse, Temple and Wake Forest. Joy.

Check it out here.