With Terrier Tip-Off commencing the BU basketball season tonight, now’s a good chance to provide some insight into the BU sports scene.

For starters, let me explain what exactly “Terrier Tip-Off” is. If you’ve heard of “Midnight Madness” at other schools, then don’t be fooled—this is the exact same thing, except it happens at 8 p.m. instead of at midnight. Both the men’s and women’s basketball teams celebrate that they can finally began “official” practice. With this comes a dunk contest, free T-shirts, and performances by the cheerleading squad and dance teams. If I had to choose based on entertainment value, I’d take the dancers.

Now that we’ve cleared that up, here are some basics you should know. First, BU athletics is all about hockey, hockey, and more hockey. The school built an arena mainly for hockey games, and your jaw would drop to the ice if you saw the locker room and workout facilities that exist for the sole use of BU men’s hockey. The 6,300-seat Agganis Arena is THE best arena in Hockey East for sure, and it could be the best in the country.

The single biggest Boston hockey event, however, is not played at Agganis but at the TD Banknorth Garden. On the first two Mondays in February, the Beanpot is held in the home of the Bruins and Celtics near the North End of Boston. It’s a tournament featuring BU, Boston College, Northeastern, and Harvard. BU has won the tournament 28 times overall and 11 times in the past 14 years, prompting many on our end of Commonwealth Avenue to call it the “BU Invitational.” Here’s a taste of what it’s like.

Currently BU men’s hockey is ranked sixth in the country, and I would not be surprised to see them as high as No. 1 at some point this winter. Beating the fifth-ranked Michigan Wolverines this Saturday would aid their climb in the polls. (Check in early next week to hear more about this game as I take you inside the student section of Agganis Arena.)

After men’s hockey, BU men’s basketball is the second-most popular sport on campus. Although they compete in the America East Conference—hardly a powerhouse conference in NCAA basketball—the Terriers possess a legitimate shot of advancing to the national tournament and being a part of March Madness. Zero key players graduated from last season’s squad, and, unlike in years past, no starters transferred to another school. John Holland is one of the most exciting players in the conference, and the same group of guys has been together for a couple of years now. If it doesn’t happen this year, then I’d expect major changes in the program, starting from the top.

I’d be remiss not to mention the women’s sports—like the four-year old women’s hockey team or the women’s basketball team—but the truth is that while both experienced some success last year, they just aren’t popular spectator sports. And with a few exceptions, this is the case at other schools as well. However, Agganis is hosting the 2009 Women’s Frozen Four, so I’m sure excitement will build if the Terriers make it that far.

Now, you may be asking yourself why I haven’t even mentioned BU football. Or BU baseball. It’s because BU has neither. As a student here, I guarantee that complaints of our lack of a football team (fewer complain about our lack of a baseball program) have come up this fall more often than complaints about Barack Obama’s lack of foreign policy experience.

If you want to know why BU football has been undefeated since 1997, let me pass along a story Ed Carpenter has told on many occasions. Ed was the sports information director here for 28 years, and he was in his office when a photographer from The New York Times came looking for a place to take pictures of student protests after the school cut the program (the program was supposedly cut to spare the athletic department a million dollars from its annual budget). Ed said there weren’t any students protesting; the photographer didn’t believe him. So he instructed the photographer to walk out to Babcock Street (the western-most point of campus), turn left onto Comm. Ave., and walk all the way down to Kenmore Square (the eastern-most point of campus). About an hour later, the photographer returned to Ed’s office, stunned. Not a single student could be found protesting.

And BU football remains a thing of the past.

We’re a hockey school. I didn’t particularly like hockey before I came to BU, but now I don’t mind it. Sometimes, I even really enjoy it. Either way, I’ve learned to love its presence in the BU experience and I will miss it after I graduate.