Compliments of OrangeEyes from the SU Scout Board:


Big East forced to be second-rate
By Tony Dobies

This Article is from the Daily Athenean (whoever that is) Brought out some good points

Updated: Sunday, October 4, 2009


The Big East Conference could be called the black sheep of the Bowl Championship Series conferences.

While the Big East has been able to weather the tumultuous storm of losing three of its best football programs – Boston College, Miami and Virginia Tech in 2003 – the sheep are still on their way to the slaughter house.

And sadly, they have no way to turn the truck around.

Just take a look at the college football on a national level. That’s right. The Big East isn’t there.

I’ll give you Cincinnati because being No. 10 in the country is definitely worth a mention, but there is little mention of the Bearcats outside of the Big East itself. This year has proven something to me: The Big East can beat whoever it wants – but it will never get respect for beating those teams.

Take for example West Virginia – who has its fair share of big wins in BCS bowl games. Those wins, though, were more touted as fluke losses for Georgia and Oklahoma rather than West Virginia wins.

How about South Florida’s historic upset win over then-No. 18 Florida State on Sept. 26?

Was that a fluke win? I’m sure if you asked outside of the Big East, most would say yes and would give little respect to South Florida’s program.

And what about Cincinnati’s win at Oregon State (the same Reser Stadium in which USC lost two straight games)? I haven’t heard a word about that win.

The simple fact, which has taken a little too long for me to truly realize, is the Big East could win every out-of-conference game against big-time opponents, bring home as many major bowl trophies it wants and continue to put players into the NFL and the conference will still be considered second-rate.

There’s no way around it anymore.

It appears there is a bias against the conference in the national media, which is prohibiting the Big East from succeeding at the highest level. The framing being done to put down the conference is something it will live with throughout its history in the BCS.

To burst through that national shield of negativity surrounding the conference, only one thing needs to happen: A team needs to step up and become a yearly, national contender.

The ESPN crew that called the Pittsburgh/Louisville game Friday night said the Panthers have to be on top of the conference for it to gain respect.

While the Panthers don’t have to be that team, the Big East does need one team to become known as the powerhouse.

It’s what makes conferences stick out.

USC has held up a relatively weak Pac-10 Conference for more than five years. Ohio State has done the same thing for the Big 10 Conference.

For a while, that team in the Big East looked like West Virginia.

During the run of 10-win seasons, the Mountaineers were highly regarded all around the nation.

Now, after listening and reading national pundits, the Mountaineers are no more than a second-tier team in the country.

Cincinnati could be the Big East’s team, but it depends on its head coach Brian Kelly and how long he can stay at the program before a bigger name school comes calling.

WVU head coach Bill Stewart, along with the conference’s other head coaches, have done well to promote the conference. But it seems they’re doing so much of it.

Stewart, who deems the Big East the "black-and-blue league" said prior to the Mountaineers’ game with Colorado that he doesn’t understand why the Big East has to continue to stick up for itself.

"I don’t know why we keep having to apologize for the league," Stewart said. "The Big East is good football. I just don’t get it."

But those coaches will continue to answer those questions. There’s no stopping media members from asking.

Unless one program can step up and consistently challenge for national championships, the Big East will always been the least-thought-of BCS conference.

The black sheep of the BCS has been in transit to the slaughter house for a while now.

It’s right around the corner.

It’s getting closer, closer and closer.

And nobody from the Big East is capable of turning the truck around.





Big East Silencing Its Critics (From the New York Times)
By PETE THAMEL
Published: October 4, 2009
SYRACUSE — As the glossy preseason college football periodicals gave way to the first polls this summer, there was not a lot of good news for the Big East conference. The combination of a perceived lack of a marquee team in the league and the Mountain West’s stellar 2008 season led to a drumbeat of criticism.

Columnists called into question the league’s automatic bid to the Bowl Championship Series. A sense of uncertainty, at least in the news media, surrounded the eight-team league.

The Big East had no ranked teams in the preseason polls, and the league’s most recognizable star was Syracuse quarterback Greg Paulus, who built his reputation as a Duke point guard.

“There’s really nothing more irrelevant than preseason rankings,” Nick Carparelli Jr., the Big East’s associate commissioner for football, said Saturday in a telephone interview. “Unfortunately, they’re the rankings that are out there the longest, talked about the most and get the most scrutiny.”

Five weeks into the season, the Big East has silenced nearly all of its critics, thanks mainly to the stellar play of its two undefeated teams: No. 8 Cincinnati (5-0) and No. 23 South Florida (5-0). The Bearcats and the Bulls, who have posted the league’s defining wins, will face off in a Thursday night game on Oct. 15.

The Thursday Big East game has become something of a trademark for the revamped league, which is now in its fifth year in an eight-team format. And because Cincinnati and South Florida have byes this week, they will be undefeated when they meet.

“It’s been our goal to put our best games in a spot where the most people could see it,” Carparelli said. “You can have a great game on a Saturday and it gets lost among a bunch of other great games.”

No one has defended the Big East more vociferously than South Florida Coach Jim Leavitt, who, at the conference’s media day, took umbrage at a reporter who insinuated that the league padded its 12-4 bowl record the last three seasons because of lopsided matchups.

“I’ll say it again, the same thing I told you a month ago, and I’m right,” Leavitt said. “All you can do is look at the bowl games, the nonconference games, and make your own decision.

“I don’t know why the media doesn’t do the things they should do with the Big East. The Big East is that tough.”

Carparelli said the sniping about the league stopped on Labor Day weekend, when Cincinnati, unranked to start the season, went to Rutgers and embarrassed the Scarlet Knights, 47-15. The Bearcats are No. 11 in the nation in total offense. They have two elite players in wide receiver Mardy Gilyard and quarterback Tony Pike.

Gilyard is tied for first in the nation with seven touchdown receptions. He is also averaging 7.6 catches per game for 103.4 yards, both in the top 20 nationally.

Pike is averaging 298.6 passing yards a game. He has 13 touchdown passes, 3 interceptions and a completion percentage of 66.7 percent.

The Bearcats, who have also beaten Oregon State, have had a serviceable defense. They lost 10 starters from last year’s Orange Bowl team and have adapted reasonably well to a new scheme and a slew of position changes.

“They should be in the top 5,” Leavitt said. “They’re that good.”

The Bulls have not proved quite as much as the Bearcats. They won at Florida State, but the value of that victory is debatable, considering the schizophrenic nature of the Seminoles.

It will be hard to get too excited about the Bulls until they hit the meat of conference play. They went 2-5 in the Big East last year and are 3-9 in league road games not played in the Carrier Dome. This year, they have beaten two teams from outside the Football Bowl Subdivision and a weak Western Kentucky team.

U.S.F. also had a pattern of starting strong and fading, most notably in 2007, when it reached as high as No. 2 in the nation and finished unranked.

“We have started off strong and we’ve got to the middle of the season and we hit a slump, a three-game slump or a four-game slump,” the senior safety Nate Allen said. “And to be great, you can’t do that.”

On offense, U.S.F. is not yet polished. The Bulls lost quarterback Matt Grothe, a four-year starter, for the season, but his replacement, B. J. Daniels, has showed promise. Daniels, a freshman, has opened his career with road victories at Florida State and Syracuse. With his huge arm and elusiveness, he promises to be a nightmare for defensive coordinators for years to come. Still, South Florida’s run game is mediocre, and it lost three fumbles against Syracuse on Saturday.

The Bulls’ strength lies in their defensive front four. The star end George Selvie finally has a co-star to take pressure off him in Jason Pierre-Paul, a junior college transfer who has lived up to his five-star billing out of high school. He returned an interception 18 yards for a touchdown at Syracuse on Saturday, one of the seven turnovers the Bulls forced.

The Bulls’ stout defense against Cincinnati’s explosive offense will make for a good Thursday night story line.

“We’ve both got byes this week and we’re going to get to sit and watch teams lose, so this game could end up as a pretty big game,” Selvie said.

With the Chicken Little predictions for the league just a memory, Carparelli could only chuckle at the scale of the denigrating off-season talk about the Big East.

“Nothing causes a greater overreaction than college football,” he said.

(10-05-2009 09:04 AM)cuseroc Wrote:  Big East forced to be second-rate
By Tony Dobies

This Article is from the Daily Athenean (whoever that is) Brought out some good points

While the writer is surely right that we are regarded as the 'black sheep' of the BCS and given far less respect, he's wrong about a few points. First, WVU and the Big East did get a decent amount of respect and credit for WVU's wins over UGA and OK in those BCS bowl games. Without those wins, we'd be in far worse shape perception-wise, though i know it's hard to believe that.

Also, i don't think USF and Cincy not getting much notice for beating FSU and OSU respectively is indicative of a lack of respect. While USF's win over FSU was a major, resonant event in the state of Florida, the fact is that FSU is a 2-3 team, just not very good. Likewise, OSU is 2-2 so we can't blame the national media for not being overly impressed.

The author is also right about it being helpful if we had a signature program, a USC, or what FSU was for the ACC in the 90s, a dominant program that consistnetly keeps the Big East brand in the national title discussion, and we just don't have that.

I think we're fine. I noticed that Virginia Tech isn't getting any respect compared to Miami's resurgence- and VT actually beat Miami. Some people are even saying the "bad weather" beat Miami.
So some people are stuck on tradition and can't see the changes in the world areound them everyday. that's fine. If the BE keep winning the big games we'll become the tradition that people expect- but it takes consistency to make a champion- at least we're on our way.

i wonder if we'd be even having this discussion if bobby p and rich rod were sill here?

The Daily Athenaeum = West Virginia's student newspaper.

(10-05-2009 09:19 AM)quo vadis Wrote:  

(10-05-2009 09:04 AM)cuseroc Wrote:  Big East forced to be second-rate
By Tony Dobies

This Article is from the Daily Athenean (whoever that is) Brought out some good points

While the writer is surely right that we are regarded as the 'black sheep' of the BCS and given far less respect, he's wrong about a few points. First, WVU and the Big East did get a decent amount of respect and credit for WVU's wins over UGA and OK in those BCS bowl games. Without those wins, we'd be in far worse shape perception-wise, though i know it's hard to believe that.

Also, i don't think USF and Cincy not getting much notice for beating FSU and OSU respectively is indicative of a lack of respect. While USF's win over FSU was a major, resonant event in the state of Florida, the fact is that FSU is a 2-3 team, just not very good. Likewise, OSU is 2-2 so we can't blame the national media for not being overly impressed.

The author is also right about it being helpful if we had a signature program, a USC, or what FSU was for the ACC in the 90s, a dominant program that consistnetly keeps the Big East brand in the national title discussion, and we just don't have that.

To go further with your point, Cincy did, in fact, get plenty of respect for the win at Oregon State. That game pretty much vaulted them up the polls, along with the win over Fresno.

To put it another way, I've heard much more praise heaped on Cincy for winning at Oregon State, than attempts to taint the win by pointing out the Beavs lost again at home to Arizona a week later.

The BE has two top ten candidates for the Heisman - both Cincy players. That program started the season completely ignored. I'd say they are a program that's pretty well capable of "turning the truck around", as are a couple others in the league, if they get hot.

The problem with the media is BE is guilty of suck until we prove it during the season while other BCS conferences are given benefit of the doubt until they prove they suck on the field. It is an uphill battle each and every single year.

Yes BE needs a program to step it up and stay there. We need a national championship contender every single year to be in discussion. Otherwise, we don't get any respect the minute we have a bad day.

(10-05-2009 02:59 PM)SF Husky Wrote:  The problem with the media is BE is guilty of suck until we prove it during the season while other BCS conferences are given benefit of the doubt until they prove they suck on the field. It is an uphill battle each and every single year.

Yes BE needs a program to step it up and stay there. We need a national championship contender every single year to be in discussion. Otherwise, we don't get any respect the minute we have a bad day.

I think that's a good way of putting it...I agree 100%

(10-05-2009 12:19 PM)mattsarz Wrote:  The Daily Athenaeum = West Virginia's student newspaper.

Quite true. If you'd like to check it out online, here the url... http://www.da.wvu.edu

(10-05-2009 03:32 PM)Bearcats#1 Wrote:  

(10-05-2009 02:59 PM)SF Husky Wrote:  The problem with the media is BE is guilty of suck until we prove it during the season while other BCS conferences are given benefit of the doubt until they prove they suck on the field. It is an uphill battle each and every single year.

Yes BE needs a program to step it up and stay there. We need a national championship contender every single year to be in discussion. Otherwise, we don't get any respect the minute we have a bad day.

I think that's a good way of putting it...I agree 100%

If we keep winning BCS bowls, eventually we'll be in the discussion. If we start a losing streak, especially one of ACC proportions, we can forget it...

The Big East can get itself back on the national consciousness on a regular basis by having 3 or 4 ranked teams. Also, if we can get WVU, Pitt, Syracuse and Louisville, all national names with solid tradition (in some cases, great tradition) back to winning on a consistent basis, or in WVU's and Pitt's cases, Top 25, then we'll be put on the same level as the SEC, Big Ten and others, since those schoosl are mentioned in the same breath as a Florida, or Texas, or Oklahoma or Ohio State.

(10-06-2009 05:25 PM)CatsClaw Wrote:  The Big East can get itself back on the national consciousness on a regular basis by having 3 or 4 ranked teams. Also, if we can get WVU, Pitt, Syracuse and Louisville, all national names with solid tradition (in some cases, great tradition) back to winning on a consistent basis, or in WVU's and Pitt's cases, Top 25, then we'll be put on the same level as the SEC, Big Ten and others, since those schoosl are mentioned in the same breath as a Florida, or Texas, or Oklahoma or Ohio State.

I don't think its necessarily as important to have Louisville at that level as the other 3 as Louisville is known for Basketball. I'd argue its more important for USF, Cincy, and Rutgers to be on a national level. All three come from fertile recruiting grounds and in the case of Rutgers started the whole thing 140 years ago.

In the final poll, we may have 3 or 4 ranked teams. But even if we don't, as long as we take care of business in the bowl games they can't say sh!t to us...

Big East Football: Get the facts - Edition 1
By Jerry Sanchez
October 08, 2009, 1:50AM

The Big East has struggled to regain respect in the college football world following the departure of Miami, Virginia Tech, and Boston College after the 2003 and 2004 seasons.

However, on the football field they have done their part with the recent successes of West Virginia, South Florida, Cincinnati and Rutgers as prime examples. However, along with the likes of UCONN and Louisville, these are not names that are laden with tradition ala the Notre Dame and USC’s of the world.

My new weekly Big East blog will not be a weekly review ...... and will not try to compare and contrast conferences, just try and provide facts and examples and will let you decipher the strength of the conference on your own and not through the eyes of the media. Is the football being played on the field in say a UCONN and Pittsburgh game is just as good as the football being played in a Michigan and Michigan State game – minus the extremely big stadiums and large crowds?

Let us begin edition #1:

Out of Conference play

No better way for a conference to prove itself than by playing other conferences.

The Big East is 22-7, second only to the SEC.

How about out of conference play against BCS conference opponents?

The Big East is tied for second with the Pac-10 at 6-6, the SEC is first at 7-3

The Big 10 is 5-7.

The Big 12 is 4-7.

The ACC is 6-7 and that doesn’t even shed light on the fact that at one point in the season the ACC was 4-4 against the Colonial Athletic Conference.

For those not familiar with the CAA conference, it is a FCS (1-AA) conference that includes New Hampshire, Richmond, James Madison, etc.

Note that only the Big East and Pac-10 do not have losses to FCS schools.

After Rutgers beat ACC member Maryland two weeks ago 34-13 dominating and outscoring Maryland 24-0 in the second half it was written off by many as Maryland not being very good.

Maryland beat Clemson this week.

While that surely means now that Clemson is no good, how far down the line do we have to go?

Clemson has beaten Boston College this year.

Boston College beat Florida State this weekend.

The same Florida State that Miami beat a few weeks ago and catapulted them to national status.

Sagarin ratings

The Sagarin ratings are a respected formula and methodology in determining relative strength in collegiate sports.

Here are the Sagarin conference rankings to date:

1 SOUTHEASTERN (A) = 79.61
2 PAC-10 (A) = 79.11
3 ATLANTIC COAST (A) = 76.65
4 BIG 12 (A) = 75.96
5 BIG EAST (A) = 75.95
6 BIG TEN (A) = 75.36

It should be noted that the Big 10 is last among BCS conferences in these standings.

The Big 10 was also last in 2008, 2007, and 2006.

The Big East was 5th in 2008, 4th in 2007, and 5th in 2006.

Here are the rankings of Big East teams:

5 - Cincy
18 - USF
21 - WVU
35 - Rutgers
37 - Pitt
44 - UConn
88 - Cuse
121 - Louisville

This would suggest that West Virginia should also be ranked.

BCS Bowls

How has the Big East fared in BCS Bowl games?

Cincinnati lost 20-7 in the Orange Bowl last year vs. ACC champ Virginia Tech.

This lost appeared to hurt the Big East as no Big East team was ranked in the preseason polls.

Yet prior to that loss the Big East had won 4 straight BCS bowl games.

The ACC had lost 8 straight.

Preseason Polls

The Big East did not have any ranked teams in the preseason polls.

Is it fair to say which teams are better than others with out those teams actually playing a game yet?

-----

Team A starts the season ranked #9.

Team A beats Akron, Syracuse and Temple and rises to #5.

Team A loses to unranked conference foe Iowa.

Team A falls to #15.

Team A beats Illinois and faces Eastern Illinois this week.

Expect Team A to be around #12 this weekend.

Team A is Penn State.

-----

Team B starts the season unranked despite being the returning conference champion of their BCS league.

Team B blows out a conference opponent on the road in week one.

Team B then beats SE Miss St, #25 Oregon State, Fresno State, and Miami (OH) and rises to #8.

Team B is Cincinnati.

-----

Starting the season unranked may have caused Cincinnati an opportunity to play for the National Title this season.

Starting the season at #9 means Penn State can afford another loss, possibly two more and may still secure a BCS bid.

Last week Iowa beat Arkansas State 24-21 with ASU heaving a hail mary that fell well short of the 20 yard line on the game’s last play.

Arkansas State is 1-3 and is from the Sun Belt conference.

In the Oklahoma-Miami broadcast on ABC Saturday night while talking up the 5-0 Iowa Hawkeyes matchup next week against Michigan on sister station ESPN the Arkansas State game and score was not mentioned once.

Here’s more food for thought regarding the rankings:

Do you think Rutgers would be ranked if it beat Florida Atlantic, Arkansas State, Louisiana-Lafayette and lost to Virginia Tech?

Do you think Nebraska would be ranked if it beat Florida International, Maryland, Howard and lost to Cincinnati?

I don’t know the answer. But I do know that Nebraska is ranked after beating Florida Atlantic, Arkansas State, Louisiana-Lafayette and losing to Virginia Tech.

I am not saying Rutgers should be ranked. That I do not believe. But should Nebraska be ranked?

Bias in determining quality of wins?

Washington is 12-47 over the past five seasons including 0-12 last year.

Washington gets ranked #24 after victory over #3 USC in week three.

USC has lost to an unranked PAC-10 team four seasons in a row.

Washington goes on to lose its next two games.

Iowa was unranked when it beat #5 Penn State.

Iowa is rewarded for its victory by jumping all the way to #13.

Big East member South Florida defeated #18 Florida State to go to 4-0.

South Florida does NOT get ranked in the ensuing poll becoming the only unranked team to beat a ranked team and not be ranked in the upcoming poll.

Here’s to seeing some sort of inclusive playoff system sooner rather than later

This article appeared on the New Jersey Star-Ledger website on Thursday, October 8, 2009.

The big east needs a consistent team contending and it just needs time. Unfortunately, this talk will evaporate in another 5-10 years. Until then they need WV, Cincy or someone else to contend and be a workhorse, carrying the identity of the conference. Years ago it was Syracuse or Miami doing it,,, the ACC had FSU dominating... Unfortunately with the additions of cincy, UL, USF there is alot of inexperience with these programs winning, therefore they don't get recognized as legit contenders