That the Big East is doing fine thus far this season. The loses so far have been expected loses and no team really embarressed the conference. Plus we won all of the games we should have. And the other major conferences have really looked suspect, even the mighty SEC.

Looks like we could have 2 ranked teams tomorrow.

Exactly. And we'll have 2 teams just outside of the Top 25 (WVU and USF assuming the Bulls take care of business).

A conference that isn't taking care of itself right now is the ACC. Their Top two teams have looked shaky, and right now, with 2 minutes left, Jacksonville State is leading Florida State 9-7, and with 5 minutes left Maryland is in a fight for its life with James Madison, tied at 35.

As a league we let two winnable games against BCS teams slip through our hands, Minnesota and North Carolina. But we have beaten who we are supposed to beat.

Our FG kicker wants to keep it exciting.

Syracuse keeping Penn State to 4 TDs, and actually scoring a TD themselves, is almost as good as a win for new SU coach Doug Marrone. Nobody expected the game to be this close...

UConn should've won. They had that game, and let it slip away at the end...

USF isn't going to gain any respect for their performance so far. The Bulls are only leading 14-6 over WKU in the 3rd quarter?

The Big East is doing "fine", but, given the constant criticism, "fine" is not good enough. This conference has no margin of error as far as escaping its critics.

(09-12-2009 08:46 PM)BJUnklFkr Wrote:  The Big East is doing "fine", but, given the constant criticism, "fine" is not good enough. This conference has no margin of error as far as escaping its critics.

My sentiment exactly. I've always been an advocate of taking care of business on the field. We have to in order to survive...

(09-12-2009 08:46 PM)BJUnklFkr Wrote:  The Big East is doing "fine", but, given the constant criticism, "fine" is not good enough. This conference has no margin of error as far as escaping its critics.

Unfortunately, I think BJUnklFkr hit the nail on the head. Next week, IMO, is going to be a "proving week" for the conference.

BCS games
WVU @ Auburn
UConn @ Baylor
Cincinnati @ Oregon St.
Northwestern @ Syracuse
Louisville @ Kentucky

UofL is going to lose and probably lose big, but going 4-1 would go a long way in silencing the critics (especially since three of the games are on the road). I'm not likely WVU's chances as I think they haven't played great so far this season and Auburn is a very hard place to play. However, I think UConn, UC, and Cuse all have great chances to beat their opponents.


Big Non-BCS games
Navy @ Pittsburgh

Pittsburgh can make a statement by besting the midshipmen. Navy will be no pushover (took OSU to the wire). I think the Panthers are going to win and put on another dazzling offensive display.


Gimme Games
FIU @ Rutgers
Charleston Southern @ USF

Two gimme games that we should easily win.

I'm not sold on WVA just yet.....if they can go into Auburn and somehow pull that one out, no matter what it looks like, that will go a long way with me.

UC at Oregon State....I can see this one going either way as well as UCONN at Baylor and NW at Cuse...

I don't see UofL beating UK...hope I'm wrong.

(09-13-2009 05:33 AM)UofL07 Wrote:  I'm not likely WVU's chances as I think they haven't played great so far this season and Auburn is a very hard place to play. However, I think UConn, UC, and Cuse all have great chances to beat their opponents.

WVU has been steadily improving as the season goes on, and the Mountaineers can go down to Auburn and pull out the win. No West Virginia player is scared of the SEC, and Jarrett Brown's undefeated record as a starter is still intact. Don't bet against WVU, or you'll be sorry...

if everything goes perfectly, in 4 or 5 weeks we could have Cincy in the top 10, Pitt around 15, and USF and WVU in the 20s. If that happens all heat should be taken off of us

thats best case scenario though

No matter what Big East teams do, short of winning every game, the critics are still going to keep trotting out their same tired old recyclable ammunition because they are not smart enough to rethink the garbage included in their totally misinformed talking point memos. We simply can't let winnable games like Minnesota and North Carolina get away from us, especially not when our teams are home, which Syracuse and Connecticut were. I am having trouble remembering the last time I was so frustrated about a game as I was with the Huskies offensive ineptitude yesterday. The defense did everything they possibly could, prior to the last half of the fourth quarter, but another touchdown, or even a field goal, and it would not have mattered what the Tar Heels managed to do. Now, however, the Big East has been forced into a position where our teams need to pull off a couple of upsets in order to get the media to back off again. Always being behind the public perception eight ball -- despite three BCS bowl victories in four years, a winning overall bowl record, an impressive regular season non-conference record, a competitive record against other BCS league teams, and always exceeding the BCS requirements -- truly freaking sucks.

Its true the Big East will be critized no matter what.
Imagine if the BE had two top ranked teams and they lost to BYU and Houston like the Big12 has done this year. The crying about how the BE is no better than MWC and CUSA would had been deafening. Add that to another BE team losing to Colorado State and Toledo and another team losing to Louisiana Lafayette as Kansas state and Colorado have done. If those things would have happened to Big East I think the writers and TV analyst would have been pushing for the automatic bid to be removed right now. and yet have we heard much about the mighty Big12 falling all over itself?

How about if two or more of our teams lost to 1AAs like Duke and Virginia? and then the next week another (Maryland) needs OT to beat a 1AA and Duke struggles to beat army and Virginia gets trounced by an MWC team? How would that had played if it had been the Big East.

So my point is that BE will be picked at no matter what, like the stupid pre-season polls while others would not receive as much attention when they underperformed and yes both ACC and Big12 have underperformed and the Bigten is no better outside of Penn State