If there is progress, it is coming very slowly with the Boston College offense. The Eagles completed their second scrimmage of training camp tonight. Tonight's scrimmage was slightly more than 100 plays with David Shinskie running the first team offense and Michael Marscovetra running the second team offense.

Neither QB was able to put together a scoring drive until the last series of the evening when the Eagles scored their first touchdown of the season on three yard run by Jeff Smith. Fumbles, sacks, dropped passes were all part of the play chart. Clearly the defense was ahead of the offense, but with two and a half weeks remaining until the regular season opener on Sept. 5th against Northeastern, the Eagle offense will have to make a quantum leap forward.

The Eagles did manage field goals by Ryan Quigley and Steve Aponavicius before the only offensive drive of the evening was engineered by Marscovetra, the 18-year old true freshman who is contending with Shinskie, the 25-year old true freshman. And that folks was it in terms of offensive highlights until the final series when Marscovetra, who had allowed the first touchdown of the evening when freshman linebacker Andre Lawrence picked off his pass and returned it for a touchdown.

"The quarterback situation is murky at best,'' said Eagle coach Frank Spaziani, who will give the team off tomorrow before they begin preparing for their next scrimmage on Sunday. "We're improving by inches.''

***

Too early to have some bowl talk? Apparently not as conferences and bowls are firming up deals for the next four year cycle of games beginning at the end of the 2010 regular season.
The Atlantic Coast Conference is right in the middle of this mix of course. Currently, the ACC has deals with 8 bowl games.

1. BCS
2. Chick-Fil-A
3. Gator
4.Champs Sports
5. Music City
6. Emerald
7 Meineke Car Care Bowl
8 Eagle Bank
9. GMAC

That's nine slots for 12 teams, which means that if you 6-6 you are probably almost guaranteed a bowl slot. Should a 6-6 season be called a reward. During the past decade, Boston College hasn't had to deal with that issue. The Eagles' are working on a school record of 10 consecutive bowl game appearances. Whether it reaches 11 is very iffy right now, but with nine bowl slots available for ACC teams, a 6-6 record will probably get it, although the ACC had 10 of its 12 teams with six regular season wins and all of them made it into bowl games. If the ACC closes a deal with the Sun Bowl, it could even get 10 bowls, but that remains to be seen.