While most colleges live and die by US News & World Report, the Washington Monthly is offering competition with what's really important--how much the students help the community when they get their diplomas. Here are the three criteria from the Monthly: The first is social mobility: does the school do a good job recruiting and graduating poorer students? The second is research: is the school supporting the scientific and humanistic study that is key to......

In between the drama of a pennant race and the pressure cooker of the playoffs, comes a day like today. A day when absolutely nothing is up for grabs. Yesterday the Red Sox won and the Indians lost, guaranteeing the Red Sox the best record in the AL (they'd win a tiebreaker with Cleveland) and Fenway-advantage throughout the postseason. The win yesterday (you might want to sit down) came largely thanks to J.D. Drew, who......

No lead is safe against the Yankees. In case 100 years of bitter history hadn't taught you that, the fiasco on Friday night illustrated the need to jump on them, as soon as possible, and stay there. These guys have more lives than horror-movie villains. The Sox apparently remembered that lesson sometime between Friday night and Saturday afternoon, as they used a Josh Beckett masterpiece and a barrage of timely hitting to rout the Yanks,......

According to the Globe, our own Holy Cross was "prepared to get physical" against Southern Illinois in the first round of the NCAA tournament, but that's not quite how things turned out. According to other coaches, the Southern Illinois Salukis are absolutely terrifying. One guy said a team could imitate their defense if "We run down to the police station and we get all the German shepherd attack dogs and we just bring them onto......

Day One is in the books, and sixteen teams have been given their handshakes and Certificates of Participation. Among them is Duke, who failed the reach the second round for the first time since '96. Since Duke-hate is second to only Yankee-hate in the land, that's going to make a lot of people happy. B.C. represented well in Round One, sending Texas Tech and mercurial coach Bobby Knight back to Lubbock with an 84-75 win.......

We're eagerly waiting to see how our local NCAA matchups shake out. Boston College takes on Texas Tech and Bobby Knight tomorrow, and Holy Cross faces off against Southern Illinois on Friday. In the other big college basketball tournament, the NIT, the UMass Minutemen defeated Alabama in overtime 89 to 87. They'll advance into the next round to play West Virginia. So let's not forget the NIT in the face of March Madness. Speaking of,......

We refuse - flat out refuse - to get emotionally caught up in a spring training game. Even if it's Sox-Yankees. Especially if A-Rod, Jeter, and Johnny Demon didn't make the trip down to Fort Myers. But if you saw a nuclear-bomb-like flash to the south yesterday evening, it may have been the million flashbulbs trained on the first U.S. meet-and-greet between the two Japanese superstars: Sox' Daisuke Matsuzaka and the Yankees' Hideki Matsui. "He......

It would be a complete lie if Bostonist said the Bill Simmon's column on ESPN.com's Page 2 wasn't a catalyst in our becoming more involved with this blogging + sports + (pathetic) attempts at buffoonery being funny endeavor. The weekly dispatches of obscure pop-culture references entwined with what are essentially rants about the sports world are one of the more common shared pleasures among the true, hard-core, sports fans (that spend their 40 hours......

Bostonist went over to the Cathedral of the Holy Cross in the South End yesterday to pay respects to Pope John Paul II at a mass offered in his honor at 4 p.m. It was only appropriate that we went, Bostonist felt bad when we missed out on the Easter services because we were too busy nursing 12 cavities after taking Gothamist’s advice on what to do with your candy. We liked Pope John Paul......