Orson at Every Day Should Be Saturday, reviews the performances of Big East football coaches in the BE commercial that has been airing all season.

It’s worth reading the whole post, but he ignores the funniest/most painful part of the ad. The part where they seek to remind recruits/stick it in the eye of the ACC and the Mountain West that they still have a BCS bid. The Big East’s way of announcing, “goddammit, we are relevant no matter how much we get ragged on.” You almost expect the BE coaches to be in a group shot at the end and flip the bird.

The bottom part of the poll is as big a mess as ever. Wanted to drop some teams (FSU) out completely, but the dearth of other teams more deserving kept them in the rankings. Just not a lot of true top-25 teams this year. I’m also a little embarrassed at some sloppiness on my part in the ballot this week. Inexcusable.

The full blogpoll is here. All ballots can be checked here.

1. Southern California — Ho-hum
2. Texas — La la la
3. Miami (Florida) — Yawn
4. Louisiana State — Pulled another one out, as the talent is there. Still question the coaching
5. Notre Dame — No one wants to play ND in the BCS when Charlie Weis has a month to prepare.
6. Virginia Tech — DNP
7. Alabama — Shakiness finally caught up with them
8. Ohio State — Defense, defense, and oh, yeah the offense is now on
9. Penn State — DNP
10. West Virginia — Hoopies rape sheep bearcats!
11. Auburn — First big win of the season at the right time
12. South Carolina — Break a losing streak that predates WWII and you too will shoot up the rankings
13. Georgia — Shockley back, but defense went MIA
14. UCLA — Here’s where things start to get jumbled
15. Wisconsin — Okay, I screwed this one up. Plain truth, they were supposed to be out of the poll, but I goofed.
16. TCU — But for that SMU loss and they’d be giving Mountain West a legit complaint this season with their own C-USA team
17. Michigan — Ohio St. game decides whether the season was somewhat disappointing or firelloydcarr.com disappointing.
18. Oregon — Escaping with a win
19. Louisville — Everyone is still wondering about the USF loss
20. Fresno State — I am the walrus
21. Northwestern — Like I said, running out of teams
22. Florida — Or else they might have been dropped
23. UTEP — And teams like this break through
24. Florida State — While teams like this somehow remain
25. Oklahoma — And others have clawed back in

Out: Texas Tech, Colorado, GT
In: Oklahoma, UTEP, South Carolina
Games seen in whole or part: Cinci-WVU, RU-L-ville, UConn-Pitt, LSU-Ala

The Big East got another bowl tie-in.

The BIG EAST Conference has entered into a four-year agreement to participate in the EV1.net Houston Bowl and will meet an opponent from the Big 12 Conference beginning in the 2006 season. The EV1.net Houston Bowl is played at the state-of-the-art Reliant Stadium in Houston, Texas.

The EV1.net Houston Bowl will be able to select a BIG EAST team after the league’s Bowl Championship Series representative has been determined and a BIG EAST team is invited to either the Toyota Gator Bowl or the Vitalis Sun Bowl. During any year when Notre Dame participates in the Gator or Sun Bowls, the EV1.net Houston Bowl will get first choice of a BIG EAST team after the league’s BCS representative has been identified. The EV1.Net Houston Bowl has the ability to choose Notre Dame once over the four-year agreement.

The Big East will send its #3 team to play the #6 team from the Big XII. The Big East needed to add another bowl, especially after the Toronto bowl plan was rejected for a San Diego based-bowl. From my personal perspective, this isn’t too bad since my sister lives in Houston.

Give Joe Starkey credit for creating two columns from the same theme. He has an ESPN.com column on Big East football and Mike Tranghese. Plus he puts a variation on a similar column at the Trib. Both are about Tranghese defending the Big East from the ongoing attacks of how it is unworthy to participate in the pure, noble BCS system.

Mike Tranghese is fed up with the criticism of his reconfigured football league.

The Big East commissioner doesn’t want to hear it from the media — though some of us have been unable to resist — and certainly doesn’t want to hear it from non-BCS conferences such as the Mountain West.

“They need to keep quiet and go prove themselves,” Tranghese said Monday in a phone interview. “If they deserve to get in (to the BCS), they’ll get in.”

Some might point out that they did last year, kind of demonstrably against the Big East. This year hasn’t been as good with their own C-USA refugee, TCU, leading their conference.

The ESPN.com article is a bit more detailed and Tranghese spins a new tale of how the BE got to stay in the BCS.

Tranghese insists there was no hocus-pocus behind keeping that lucrative BCS bid. He scoffs at charges of cronyism levied by those who wonder whether his power-brokering history put him in a position to curry favors. Among his many posts, Tranghese served as the lead administrator of the BCS (2002-03) and chairman of the NCAA Men’s Basketball Subcommittee on Television (1997-2001), where he helped to secure a $6 billion contract from CBS for broadcast rights.

“Everybody keeps talking like I did something to make this happen,” Tranghese said in a phone interview Monday, when asked how the league kept its BCS bid. “When we lost our members, we simply went to the others [in the BCS] and said, ‘You know what? You have to make a decision.’ They evaluated, saw that we were one of the founders [of the BCS] and recognized that the Northeast section of the country was a very good thing to have. And we made a very good case.”

No doubt they did take into account the media markets, but there is no sense pretending that Tranghese’s personal connections didn’t play a huge role in this. This is also strange, since a few weeks ago after BE Basketball media day, a story came out where Tranghese admitted he pressed the BE’s case to stay in the BCS for a year.

More interesting is his story on how Louisville got included in the BE BCS ranks last season when they were still in C-USA.

“I was obviously opposed to that,” Mountain West commissioner Craig Thompson told the Orlando Sentinel last month. “Louisville didn’t play a single Big East opponent last year, and yet their great season is credited to the Big East. It makes no sense.”

Tranghese says that when the BCS “decided to give us a four-year opportunity” at a meeting in February 2004, it asked for the league’s “lineup” for the 2004 season. Tranghese said he responded by listing the teams in the conference that year. They included Boston College, which would play in ’04 before defecting to the ACC, and Temple, which was known to be headed into its last Big East season (it was kicked out).

“The Big Ten said, ‘No, BC and Temple are not going to be in your league [after ’04], so they shouldn’t count, because we’re trying to evaluate you over four years. Cincinnati, South Florida and Louisville; we think they oughta count,'” Tranghese said.

Furthermore, Tranghese said, “The Mountain West sat at the table and voted in favor of it, and now they’re bellyaching about it after the fact. They need to keep quiet and go prove themselves. If they deserve to get in, they’ll get in.”

Thompson, the Mountain West commissioner, did not return a phone call seeking comment. A Big Ten spokesman said Monday that commissioner Jim Delany was not available for comment and wouldn’t be until Thursday.

I don’t know. Call it a hunch, but I don’t see a lot of games being scheduled between Mountain West and Big East teams in the next few years. Skip the Trib article and read the whole ESPN.com article.

So now the Backyard Brawl is a complete family affair. Both head coaches are alum of their respective schools who have played in the game, rooted as fans, coached in it, and know the history.

Coach Wannstedt talks about his Backyard Brawl memories as a player, coach and fan.

A West Virginia columnist fears chaos should Pitt win the Backyard Brawl and WVU then loses to USF (who he presumably has losing another game to someone else).

That revamped Big East head-to-head tiebreaker for a two-team deadlock could be WVU’s undoing. Don’t forget Pitt (5-5), which visits Mountaineer Field on Thanksgiving night.

If WVU, USF and the Panthers all finish with two Big East losses, a 6-5 Pitt team gets the BCS berth – and the Big East is drowned in criticism then — because the Panthers would have swept the other two involved the tie.

With Notre Dame needing to beat Syracuse and Stanford to lock up a BCS at-large slot, the Big East runner-up Gator Bowl will gladly settle for Louisville, which figures to go 9-2. Understandably, the Gator doesn’t want West Virginia for a third straight year.

It’s madness! Utter madness, I say!

Not really. I realize that the system can be confusing, but under his scenario, Louisville also finishes with 2 losses and also tied for the conference. At that point, the other factors including rankings and BCS stuff come into play.

Sadly, the cluelessness also happens in Pittsburgh. An article purporting to explain how Pitt could win the Big East again. For some reason, there is this misconception that Louisville is already out of the potential scenarios for winning the Big East, but Pitt isn’t. Don’t these people have any fact-checkers or editors?

Louisville has 2 games remaining against Syracuse and UConn. They look to have a rather simple path to finishing 5-2 in the BE, as Pitt would be with a win over WVU. If all 4 teams tied, the head-to-head match-ups would be useless. Then they go to other factors. Let’s just say, that Pitt wouldn’t have much of a shot.

No. The only way Pitt can get the BCS bid is to beat WVU, USF beats WVU and Louisville loses to either Syracuse or UConn. Not a likely scenario.

This article suggests that Pitt winning the Backyard Brawl and becoming bowl eligible would “salvage” the season.

“Beating West Virginia, that would change a lot about our season, no doubt,” said linebacker H.B. Blades. “It is going to be just like every other West Virginia-Pitt game — a dirty, physical game. There is no finesse about it. You better come ready to play in this one.

“I experienced that atmosphere my freshman year. It is totally different. I can talk all I want to about the rivalry with West Virginia and what it is like, but until some of the guys get down there and experience it for themselves, they won’t know what it is all about.”

Cornerback Josh Lay added: “A win over West Virginia would make a big difference for us. That’s the Backyard Brawl, that’s our rival game. A win over them is all about bragging rights. It doesn’t matter how our season went, if we beat them it is always going to be big for us.”

If West Virginia (8-1, 5-0) wins, the Mountaineers would clinch at least a first-place tie in the Big East and set up a showdown for the BCS berth with South Florida the following week.

Blades said next to clinching a bowl bid for the Panthers (5-5, 4-2), ruining the Mountaineers’ chances at a BCS berth is his No. 1 goal and doing so would make the win a little extra sweet.

No. It might assuage the disappointments of the season, but it wouldn’t salvage it. The only way I conceivably see a salvaging the season is not just winning the Brawl, but then rolling in a bowl game. To actually see Pitt beat a non-con Div. 1A opponent this season would come closest to salvage the season based on expectations and what has happened. Consider that Pitt has only beaten one (Div. 1A) opponent with a winning record this season — USF.

Still, it starts with the “one game at a time” approach, and beating WVU is goal one. Even if some have trouble realistically believing it.

Quarterback Tyler Palko echoed his words, saying, “We’ve got a lot of stuff to play for. It’s a big game for us — we can get a bowl bid if we win.”

The Panthers’ enthusiasm is commendable, considering how poorly they played on offense in a 24-0 victory Saturday over Connecticut, but any parallels between last November and this one are difficult to find.

A year ago, before surprising West Virginia 16-13 on Thanksgiving night in Pittsburgh and being rewarded with an unexpected trip to the Fiesta Bowl for doing so, Pitt (8-4) was in the midst of winning six of its last seven games. Palko led a series of comeback victories, one at Notre Dame and another against the Mountaineers, throwing 17 touchdown passes and two interceptions in his final six games.

Against UConn, Palko looked like he was running a revamped Pitt offense for the first time _ a season-long problem for a player who doesn’t seem to know if he’s running a passing- or a rushing-based offense. He threw for 116 yards, about half his average down the stretch a year ago, in a game decided mostly by a blocked field goal attempt and a deflected punt that both led to touchdowns.

Also, Pitt (5-5, 4-2 Big East) hasn’t won on the road since beating South Florida in December, going 0-4 this season. Pitt lost two weeks ago at No. 18 Louisville 42-20.

It doesn’t sound like a team primed to surprise the No. 13 Mountaineers (8-1, 5-0) for the second year in a row; last year’s last-minute loss at Heinz Field cost West Virginia the BCS bowl trip that instead went to Pitt. This time, West Virginia can lock up an unbeaten conference season by beating Pitt and South Florida (5-3, 3-1) on Dec. 3.

A loss sends the Panthers to their first losing season since 1999 and breaks the string of five consecutive bowl appearances they had under former coach Walt Harris.

The players and coaches are trying not to look back at the missed opportunities of the season.

“To get to 5-5 after the way the season began is good,” Revis said. “But to be 5-5 … a lot of us thought we’d be better.”

It appears that the Panthers are moving in that direction, particularly on defense. After shutting out Connecticut 24-0 Saturday, the defense is allowing less than 20 points per game – and that number shrinks to 16 if the 42-20 loss to Louisville is omitted. While the run defense hasn’t been stellar, the secondary has saved this bend-don’t-break unit.

The offense is still struggling – Saturday’s 2.2 yards per carry won’t win many games – though quarterback Tyler Palko said he’s more comfortable than ever in Dave Wannstedt’s new run-first system.

The progress satisfies Wannstedt, even if he remains disappointed in the overall record.

“I wish we could start over,” he said. “I wish I could turn the calendar and start training camp tomorrow.”

The ever-logical Palko, though, had a point in this post-game quote:

“You’d like to start the season over, but you can’t. It’s unrealistic.”

To echo, Coach Wannstedt from earlier in the season, “It is what it is.” Goddammit.