Sunday, September 9, 2007

Fear the Big East?

Given the Big East's weak bowl affiliations, I wasn't that impressed when the Big East went 5-0 in last year's bowl games. But give the Big East credit, they're off to a tremendous start again in the non-conference schedule and with South Florida winning at Auburn, you certainly can't make the claim that the conference hasn't beat any legitimate teams. In fact, were it not for Syracuse starting 0-2, the conference would be undefeated at this point.

If you stayed up to watch the USF-Auburn game, you saw plenty of drama. South Florida needed overtime to win despite having a plus 5 turnover margin. That was largely because of 4 missed FGs by Delbert Alvarado. Despite the 4 missed FGs, at the end of regulation, the USF coach chose to kick a 19 yard FG rather than go for the win on 4th down. Alvarado came through with the big FG and the decision to go to overtime paid off. USF answered Auburn's overtime FG with a Matt Grothe TD pass for the walk-off victory.

Conference Cup
Wins vs BCS/ND, Losses vs BCS/ND, Non BCS Losses
3-2-0 Big East
4-2-1 Pac10
3-3-0 SEC
3-2-2 Big 10
4-3-3 Big 12
1-4-3 ACC
0-2-0 Notre Dame

BCS vs BCS This Week
Cincinnati beat Oregon St.
Oregon beat Michigan
Oklahoma beat Miami
Penn St. beat Notre Dame
Nebraska beat Wake Forest
Missouri beat Mississippi
Iowa beat Syracuse
South Florida beat Auburn
LSU beat Virginia Tech
Arizona St. beat Colorado

Is there anything more embarassing that having a team use the Statue-of-Liberty-Play against you? How about when a team uses the SoLP and a fake SoLP as Oregon did against Michigan?

Really Bad Losses
East Carolina beat North Carolina
N. Iowa beat Iowa St.

Iowa St. looks to be in for a long season having lost to two small conference teams already.

By the way, you'll notice I'm not giving any credit for beating TCU or Boise St. I might give some credit in the conference cup later in the year, but I'd like to see the small conference teams truly establish themselves this season before I make those decisions.