The 2004-05 athletic year played out like an old-time western for Northeastern. The Huskies entered their final year as a member of the America East like a badass-gunslinger preparing for one final showdown with the rivals he spent the past 26 years learning how to hate (The ECAC North, which is now known as the America East was originally established in 1979).

Only this wasn’t a simple swan song for NU.

No, the Northeastern athletic program took their badass level up a notch.

Maybe each team just wanted to show the other AE schools that Northeastern’s move to the Colonial Athletic Association is a step above them or maybe they just wanted to go out with a bang. Either way, they went Jack Bauer all over the league, notching five championships and three second place finishes out of 12 eligible sports.

And I don’t care if the baseball team didn’t win the America East tournament this weekend. Their regular season title is good enough for me and if other AE schools wanna make a big deal out of it … fine, they can have that one. We’ll just hold up one middle finger instead of two as we ride off into the sunset.

In short, this was probably the most enjoyable year in the history of the world — well aside from 1963 when Ortho Pharmaceutical introduced the first oral form of birth control, years before the first case of AIDS was reported in America. Man that must have been great.

Just think of how the AE bosses feel right now. I bet they feel worse than the Big East did when Virginia Tech, Miami University (Fla.) and Boston College bounced for the ACC. Sure I can’t possibly compare Northeastern to those established major conference schools, but the biggest difference between the Big East and the America East is, well, the Big East is Big. Look who they got to replace the aforementioned schools: Cincinnati, Marquette, Southern Florida and Louisville.

Unless the AE can convince Quinnipiac to sign on for more sports than just men’s lax, they’ll have to hope the Great Danes of the University of Maryland’s Baltimore County campus (can you believe it’s already been two years since they joined the AE?) can do a little more than just wear the ugliest uniforms EVER (yup … they’re uglier than the University of Oregon’s.)

In Philly we call what the head honchos at the AE are feeling right now salty.

You know, like having three layers of unwanted back hair and being bald. Like having the girl you bought eight drinks for at the bar tell you her name is Jenny and give you a napkin with 867-5309 on it at the end of the night.

Salty.

However there is one thing that I will miss when we pop our CAA cherry this fall: that would be the inter-conference battles with Boston University.

Bye-Bye BU

While Northeastern probably will still play them in every sport at least once a year (except football … hahaha), the matchups won’t have near the same impact as they have in the past.

Sure covering Husky sports for three years with BU as a conference rival was more than enough to make me a lifetime BU-hater. But I fear I may never feel the same way I did on Boston University’s men’s basketball team’s senior night. Watching the Terrier’s Chaz Carr and Rashad Bell desperately trying not to cry after losing to the NU was something future generations can only hope to experience (Seriously though, that was great. Along the same lines as watching Michael Irvin suffer a career-ending injury against my Eagles).

Despite that one sad fact, the bottom line is our move to the CAA just makes us that much better than BU, and that’s way braggable.

As it stands now, Northeastern has a better athletic conference, cuter girls, a better campus (oh wait, that’s not fair … BU doesn’t have a campus) and cheaper (barely) tuition. So if you add up all those factors its plain to see that Northeastern is a much superior university.

Parting Shots

Before we skip town and head for greener pastures there are a few things I’d like to say to conclude Notheastern’s run in the America East.

First I’d like to congratulate Vermont’s power forward Taylor Coppenrath, but not for winning his third straight AE Player of the Year. That’s obviously not that hard of a task for him to accomplish. The most impressive thing that low post mammoth added to his r