Pre-Season rankings are mostly meaningless. It’s nice to be listed, and it tells you a lot about the expectations of the team; but it is really just a guess. Besides there are so many pre-season rankings, it’s hard to get a feel for where the team is really expected to be. Pitt’s athletic site collected 12 different preseason rankings (PDF). The rankings vary from #5 to #19. Like figure skating, throw out the top rank and the bottom, and what you are left with are 10 rankings between #8 and #12. Roughly speaking, Pitt is expected to be the #10 team. That is BCS fringe — can either fall in or out.

Not necessarily what I want to hear from Pitt, but not unexpected. They are saying they “not looking at all at leaving the conference.” Despite the loss of VT and Miami, but it doesn’t say they won’t listen or consider an offer (link via Derek Willis at Big East Fanblogs). It also points out that Harris is already using Pitt’s strength compared to the rest of the Big East, coupled with the BCS as a selling point to recruits. In the short term, that has to help.

ESPN.com is doing conference previews this week. The Big East is up. Basically, it is saying that this is probably the most competitive and balanced the conference has ever been — in its final year in present form. It also pushes the fact that the Big East has been a hell of a good conference for a while in other ways.

Whether or not supporters of the SEC, Big 12 or Big Ten will admit it, the Big East, pound for pound, is as good as any of them.

Check the facts:

The eight-team Big East finished last season with half of its members ranked in the Top 25. No other conference — all of them bigger than the Big East — had more than four. Big East schools also won six games against ranked opponents, a number surpassed only by the Big Ten which registered seven victories.

In the past three seasons, Big East schools have won 73.3 percent (11-4) of their bowl games. The Big 12 comes in a distant second with a 52.2 winning percentage (12-11).

Since 2000, the Big 12 and SEC have won 12 bowls games. The Big East has 11 victories despite playing nine fewer postseason games than the SEC and eight fewer than the Big 12.

It picks the Miami-Pitt game at the end of the season as the game of the year, and DE, Claude Harriott, of Pitt as pre-season defensive player of the year.

The headline for the capsule summary of Pitt

Anything short of a BCS bowl may be disappointing

is very similar to what I said a couple days ago (though with less ambiguity)

Anything less than winning the Big East will be a disappointment this year.

There’s also a companion article on whether the hard feelings of the remaining Big East schools fans at Miami and VT bolting for the ACC after this year will affect the games. It ends with moronic coachspeak from Walt Harris:

Pittsburgh coach Walt Harris thinks all the talk about Big East teams possessing added motivation for games against Miami and Virginia Tech is silly.

“We just want to play football,” Harris said. “There is no extra incentive to beat Miami or Virginia Tech or no animosity because what happened had nothing to do with the players or coaches. It was beyond our control. We want to beat those teams because we want to win the conference.”

I suppose Walt, feels a need to say these things publicly, but —

BULL-F***ING-S**T

The thing about college football is the fans help drive the intensity more than in pro football. The fans will be so juiced for these games, that if it doesn’t carry over to the players, then there is a real problem with the players and the coaches. I want the coaches to have to be scrambling on the sideline reining in the smack and the woofing from the players when Pitt plays VT and Miami. I want an ugly, angry mood in the stands. I’m not talking soccer riots; but I am talking waves of intense passion and hatred cascading down from the stands.