1. Florida State at Boston College in a conference game Saturday night. What's wrong with this picture?

	Fifth-year senior Quinton Porter leads Boston College into its first ACC game when the Eagles host No. 8 Florida State on Saturday. George Frey/Getty Images
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I hear you. Two teams with a shade of red in their uniforms and a shade of gold on their helmets, but little else in common. (Except perhaps a historical link to Miami; BC because Doug Flutie -- well, you know why -- and Florida State because the Seminoles have alternately bedeviled and been bedeviled by their Dade County rivals). This is life in modern college football, where over the past decade geographic reliables have been rendered meaningless. Boston College winds up in the Atlantic Coast Conference not because it is, literally, on the Atlantic Coast, but because the ACC needed 12 teams to become a true superconference and because the conference sought a partner in the Northeast corridor. After an acrimonious stop and start courtship, BC signed officially on July 1 (although the deal was closed long before). This week I sat in BC athletic director Gene DeFillippo's office. The man remains weary and vaguely bruised by the process that landed BC amongst the likes of Duke and Georgia Tech (and despised by the likes of natural-New England rival Connecticut, not to mention out a reported $5 million in the settlement of a lawsuit for bailing on the Big East). "It was a very difficult process to go through,'' DeFillippo said. "I believe it is the best thing for Boston College.''

There's little doubt about that. BC is a private university (read: more expensive tuition than public schools) that funds 29 men's and women's sports. In revenue sharing alone, the school stands to jump from $6 million to $10 million by changing conferences. Exposure will increase proportionally, since you've got Bobby Bowden coming to town every other year instead of UConn coach Randy Edsall (nothing against Edsall).

Charter members of the Big East will despise BC. DeFillippo says there are no plans to play Connecticut in any sport in the near future. The Eagles will continue to play Providence in basketball every year and hope to play Syracuse in football. Either way, society moves quickly. Who remembers when there was no 12-team SEC? No Big 12? No Internet? The only time is the present time.

2. All that is just fine, but can BC make the jump up to the big leagues and compete with Florida State?

Let's be clear on one issue: BC has been in the major leagues for a long time. Maybe not at the level of Florida State, which finished in the top five in the country 14 consecutive times, beginning in 1987, but nobody has ever been at that level. Boston College has been to six consecutive bowls under head coach Tom O'Brien. All six were played in December, not January, but if you go to a bowl every year, you can play. Still, O'Brien is a realist. When I talked to him earlier this week on the BC campus, it was he who pointed out: "We haven't beaten Miami since 1984.'' It was he who pointed out that when the Eagles get a prime player, it's because of hard recruiting work and also serendipity. "Kiwi [gifted pass rusher Mathias Kiwanuka] was 6-foot-5, 200 when he came here,'' O'Brien said. The message is this: Florida State selects players every year; BC -- and many others -- fight for them.

Yet, that's what's intriguing about this game. Intersectional super matchups are cool in one way. But when it comes to the likes of Ohio State-Texas or Oklahoma-UCLA, these are all Big Dogs eating out of the same dish. They get blue-chip recruits and benefit from top level facilities and dollars. It's what legendary USC assistant coach Marv Goux used to call, "The best against the best.''

BC-Florida State is a different deal. BC is loaded with kids who never made Florida State's recruiting radar. "I do remember watching them on TV a lot,'' says linebacker Ray Henderson, who weighs 227 pounds after a big meal. BC's best athlete, corner-turned-wideout Will Blackmon, never got a call from the Seminoles. Only BC offensive tackle Jeremy Trueblood was offered a scholarship by Florida State, while Kiwanuka would be a star anywhere. They are the exceptions.

The differences leave the field, too. BC-Florida State is a big game in Boston, but Red Sox-Oakland is much bigger, and the Patriots are back in action on Sunday. It's a pro sports town. The Seminoles rule the Florida panhandle. FSU's Doak Campbell Stadium is nearly twice the size of BC's 44,000-seat Alumni Stadium. It's a different deal altogether.