You think the New England Patriots are a dynasty, with three Super Bowl championships in four years?

That's chump change, compared with the team of Northeastern undergraduate business students who recently won the annual Business Beanpot championship. Again. For the seventh time in nine years, to be precise.

The Business Beanpot—named for the local ice hockey contest—pits teams from Northeastern, Babson College, Bentley College, Boston University, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and Suffolk University against one another. Their daylong challenge: Develop a business strategy for a particular company.

Coached by assistant business professor Ray Kinnunen, the Northeastern team has not only won seven out of nine trophies, but has reached the Final Four round every year since the Beanpot's inception in 1996.

This year, the contestants were charged with developing a business strategy for French outdoor advertising company JCDecaux, a competitor of Viacom Cable and Clear Channel.

The teams were given five hours in which to create a strategy and a strategy presentation, including PowerPoint slides. A panel of judges picked the best four teams, and those students actually made their presentations for the final round.

A returning member of the Northeastern team, Ted Kail, waxes eloquent about his experience. "Only one way to describe it," he says. "Winning the championship two years in a row are two of the happiest days of my life."

The Business Beanpot is much more than fun and games, though. Many of Northeastern's participants have gone on to work at such industry giants as Microsoft and General Electric, as well as several investment banking firms, Kinnunen says.

He believes the sports metaphor is apt for the Business Beanpot. "There has to be some form of competitive fire," he says. "If you think about it, these are the kind of people who survive, kind of like on The Apprentice."

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