If Pittsburgh and the Big East continue to struggle, there will be no Gatorade bath this season.
The Big East continues to sink further into the depths of irrelevance and the calls for the conference to lose its automatic qualifying bid grow louder and louder. As we are well into the college football season, there is no Big East team in the Top 25. The conference has failed miserably in its non-conference play boasting a combined record of 19-14, average at best. However, when you consider 9 out of the 19 wins came against DI-AA teams, it’s quite embarrassing begging the question of whether or not the conference champ should be a BCS automatic qualifier.
Furthermore, during that same span, the Big East went 2-10 against teams from other BCS AQ conferences. The two teams that won have nothing to brag about: West Virginia beat a terrible Maryland team and UConn demolished Vanderbilt. The Big East continued to show the college football world why the conference is under constant scrutiny with Temple beating UConn, Rutgers falling to bottom feeder Tulane, and Fresno State taking care of business against Cincinnati.
Pittsburgh’s Dave Wannstedt quickly came to the defense stating, “I would ask everyone, let’s wait and see where things are in two month.” It’s pretty easy to be optimistic about the conference when the Big East is now in conference play. Whichever team sits atop the Big East come December, that team will most certainty be the underdog in January’s BCS bowl game.
As it stands, the Big East needs to make some quick adjustments, add some better teams (not Villanova), prevent coaching turnover, but most of all, win some big games against legitimate opponents. It’s unfortunate, but as the conference currently holds a course for disaster, the Big East is on the verge of extinction.
