Four Students Tell Why Their Beantown College is #1

Sports fans around the country are suffering from Super Bowl hangover, but not in Boston. Tonight marks the opening round of the annual Beanpot Hockey Tournament, which pits squads from Boston College, Boston University, Harvard and Northeastern against each other. We asked a student from each school to present the case that his college is Beantown's finest.

Boston University

	The Walk-On Kentaro Yoshida is junior at BU and is the city editor at the Daily Free Press.
	Photo by Brian Babineau/Getty

The Terriers collect Beanpot championships the way the New York Yankees stockpile World Series banners. When you win 26 of 53 Beanpots, and 9 of the last 11, it almost makes you feel like taking pity on the other teams that work so hard just to make it to the rink only to meet their inevitable demise.

Consider, for instance, the Northeastern Huskies -- the Beanpot's equivalent of the Chicago Cubs. These loveable losers deserve a pot just because it'd make a decent back-page story. The papers would fly off the shelves as people saw the headline and thought, "What, BU didn't win again?!"

So why does the BU Dog Pound deserve another shiny pot to lift high? Because we know what to do with it. No college loves hockey as much as BU. We love hockey so damn much that we sacked our football team just so they wouldn't distract us from pouring our heart and soul onto the ice. Then we went and built a multi-bajillion dollar hockey arena that puts the TD Banknorth Garden (formerly the Fleet Center) to shame. If that weren't enough of a reason to root for BU Beanpot No. 27, a win will do wonders for U.S. international relations. BU is the most diverse school in the Boston area. I guarantee that with every BU victory, some student from some country you've never heard of will speak excitedly to an ambassador who will eventually side with America on important matters simply because his child experienced the wonders of winning the Beanpot at BU.

So show your respect for the hockey gods and help your country. Root for BU to take home the Beanpot.

Northeastern

The Walk-On Jeff Powalisz is a junior at Northeastern and is the men's hockey beat writer for The Northeastern News.

If any fans deserve to win the Beanpot, it's the humble undergrads who roam the streets of Boston's South End campus.

At Northeastern, we relish being out of the spotlight. While the national media harps on BC's move to the ACC, the storied hockey history of BU, and Harvard's status as the hub of the universe, hard-working NU students contently carry on with their business with nary an accolade.

Being a NU student means toughing it out in the gritty, blue-collar section of Boston. It means bellying up with the locals at Conor Larkins or Punter's Pub and chatting about the Huskies' power play over a cold one. It means patting the Husky statue in Ell Hall for good luck and walking every day on the grounds where baseball's first World Series championship was won.

And when the Huskies do take home the pot, as they've done only four times in 54 years, the taste of victory is that much sweeter.

Harvard

The Walk-On Alex McPhillips is a junior at Harvard and the sports chair of The Harvard Crimson.

It's called an H-Bomb and the fallout ruins the vibe of most social situations. We used to drop the H-Bomb -- "I go to Harvard" -- only when absolutely necessary. No mas. Unlike the Scarlet "A", the Crimson "H" is a badge to be worn with pride.

The knock on Harvard students is that we're socially awkward nerds. We prefer the term "Heir to the Tonight Show throne" (Conan O'Brien '85). They say our students don't know how to have a good time. George Plimpton ('48) wrote the book on hosting cocktail parties. No cute girls? How about Natalie Portman ('03) and the Gore daughters? Schwing!

Outsiders think we spend all day (and all night) cooped up in the library. Harvard has more varsity sports, and a higher percentage of students who play 'em, than any other school in the country. Heck, our dropouts do better than your grads (Matt Damon '92 and Bill Gates '76).

I could pin all kinds of unsavory stuff on the other three Beanpot entrants (Chris O'Donnell went to BC, BU literally can't play football, and half of Northeastern went to jail after the Red Sox won the Series), but I won't. As a Harvard student, I'm above that.

Boston College

The Walk-On Kevin Armstrong is a senior at B.C. and former sports editor of The Heights.

Question: What do BU football, pretty girls at Harvard, Northeastern's campus, and the Easter Bunny have in common? You guessed it; none of them exist. Well, OK, Northeastern's campus exists, but have you ever been there? Have you ever actually seen it?

The Heights are not technically in Boston, but BC is still the only Beantown institution that Bostonians actually rally around. In the fall, Chestnut Hill offers the picturesque setting of tailgating amongst the changing leaves. In the winter, our hockey and hoops programs give the nation's best a run for their money, as Coach K and Co. saw firsthand last Wednesday. In the spring, on Patriot's Day, BC students hang out of their apartment windows on Commonwealth Ave for a front row seat for the Boston Marathon.

Harvard may have its whiz kids, BU its Beanpot titles, and Northeastern it's ... whatever ... but when it comes to experiencing "college" as it was written across John Belushi's sweatshirt, BC is the only Boston school worth mentioning.