Editor’s Note: I. AM. A. FREAKING. MORON. But none of you actually read this site on Sundays anyway, so you didn’t see my previous gaff on the ranking numbers. Suckers!

Read this to understand what the glorious HLSTNHT25-PE actually is. Then toast those who were wise enough to procreate and spawn the creators of this…

Yeah. I know. I know! First we kick you in the gnads by ranking our and your beloved Irish at #23, and then while you’re laying there, stunned, we give you atomic purple nurples, backwash in your slurpee, and steal your girlfriend by ranking Boston Freaking College at #22. Death threats may be sent along to the address at the right.

Anyway, here’s the deal: it’s not that we expect BC to do anything this season. In fact, we expect their #22 ranking will be the highlight of their entire season. If there were a “Plateau Team Of The Year” award, we’d just go ahead and give it to the Eagles today. They return 16 starters this season (9 on a pretty darn nice looking defense), so losing their head coach to North Carolina State may not be too disruptive. This team is on a streak of 3 9+ win seasons, not to mention the NCAA’s best current streak of 9 straight bowl wins. They also play in the ACC, and, frankly, who the hell in that league besides VaTech and Miami will get in their way this year to a #2 ranking in the league? (Hint: Wake Forest didn’t even get a vote in our polls) Georgia Tech, maybe, but, let’s face it, it wasn’t all Reggie Ball’s fault.

Here’s the wild-card between a season that’ll just make me roll my eyes at BC’s good fortune for playing in a conference that might make the Big East look like a power and my feasting upon the misery of delusional BC grads everywhere as they suffer the trials and tribulations of a 3-10 season: Jeff “Just Call Me JAG, Like That Military Court Room Drama With The Hottie Marine Lawyer Chick” Jagodzinski. Let’s face it, the only people on the planet surprised to see Tom O’Brien take a higher profile job (haha!) at NC State last year were all affiliated with Boston College. So it also came as almost no surprise that BC ended up settling for a replacement who even professional analysts had to google and then re-google with the correct spelling once an intern could dig it up. Most of the NFL wouldn’t have even guessed that the Packers had an Offensive Coordinator. So how the hell did BC find him? Was he under a rock the BC admin picked up while looking for Gary Barnett?

Offense: With the return of 1st Team ACC QB Matt Ryan (presumably without any ankle issues this year), they should have some decent leadership, but I also just read in Phil Steele that JAG is having his offensive line learn a brand new blocking scheme this year. Uh-oh. Why did we rank these guys in the top 25 again?

Defense: Oh. Yeah. Because they get back 9 starters from a defense that only gave up 15.7 a game last year. They’ve got 6 guys who’ve started at linebacker returning. Let’s just say we tend to think defense is important to this game of football, and by mid-season these guys will probably be looking pretty good.

Special Teams: Well, since it doesn’t look like the hex I placed on all past, present, and future kickers at BC a little over a decade ago ever took, we guess they must have someone playing the position this year. In fact, it may be a kid who played his first football game of any kind ever, ever, ever last year. I’m not sure, and I don’t think I’ll look it up because it’s B Freaking C, so who really cares, right?

Facts:

• JAG spent exactly 1 year as the offensive coordinator at Greenbay. And we’re guessing Favre had a lot more to say about the offense than he did. Before that 1 banner year, JAG was the TE Coach.
• The ACC are a bunch of Thursday Night Football whores. This season marks the 3rd straight BC/VaTech Thursday Night Match Up. It’s Must See TV if there are no local High School JV games in your ‘hood.
• If you moved BC to the midwest, people would call them Purdue.

HLS Top 25 Meta:

• Highest spot on a HLS ballot: 16th
• Lowest spot on a HLS ballot: Not Ranked
• Average rankings on HLS ballots: 22

Why Alex Trebek Loves Them:

• There are a lot of really good schools near Boston College.

HLS Tracker 10 Forecast Technology Says:

Look for Mark May and his ilk to be talking these kids up during the early part of the season. By October 13th, they’ll be claiming that JAG is the second coming of Charlie Weis. And then Notre Dame will kick their tails right out of Notre Dame stadium and into Granger, and they’ll just never recover from that point on. By the time I write up the final HLS Poll results for the offseason, we’ll have forgotten so much about BC that we’ll have to be reminded that O’Brien took that better job in North Carolina.

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