I swear, some time soon I will get to the actual games. Maybe even talk about ND before Saturday. Yet I can’t turn away from Conference Expansiopocolypse stuff. I’m just too invested.

The Big East football programs had a little get together at a hotel in NYC. Henry Kissinger happened to be in the same hotel. You really can’t make this stuff up.

Speaking of stuff you can’t make up. This was the full text of the Big East Conference statement after the meeting.

Our membership met this evening and we are committed as a conference to recruit top level BCS caliber institutions with strong athletic and academic histories and traditions.  We have been approached by a number of such institutions and will pursue all of our options to make the BIG EAST Conference stronger than it has ever been in both basketball and football.

What a reaffirming and warm statement. But…

Curiously absent from the league statement is the specific wording that all of the schools were committed to the league.

Not really. (By the way, check out the story just for the punchdrunk picture of Marinatto. I want some photoshopped submissions based on that picture. Please!)

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   Last Saturday I wrote a pretty opinionated article on here about our QB play and the way I thought the HC should handle it in the future.  Well, nothing I have read so far this week dissuades me from that line of thought.  Actually, some public comments from both Sunseri and Graham reinforce what I’d like to see happen.  I don’t think Graham is listening to me though…

With what might be the best tongue-in-cheek headline ever, DiPaola over at the Trib wrote this:

PITT PASSER SUNSERI GIVES SELF HIGH MARKS

“Bloodied, but with his head held high, Pitt quarterback Tino Sunseri confidently met the media Tuesday, insisting his two-interception, two-fumble (one lost) performance against Iowa constituted his best game of the season.

 “I would say it was my greatest game I played yet,” he said. “I was very pleased with all my reads. Even the interceptions were the right reads. I just have to put more air on the ball.”

Sunseri’s passing efficiency rating is 122.0, 73^rd among the top 100 quarterbacks in the nation, with four interceptions and three touchdown passes, but he said he has a clearer understanding of the offense. “

That’s like a surgeon saying “Hey, I had the right patient; I just amputated the wrong leg.”  Folks, this is why I think that benching Sunseri as a reality check, among other reasons, is in order.  But in a weird and unnerving way I understand where he’s coming from with this.  When you’ve been coddled by two separate head coaches with zero competition for the starting spot since January of 2009, it must skew your vision as to what actually is supposed to transpire in the competitive arena of sports.

How can he have any real internal benchmark of success when he’s never had to measure any in the off season?  His success in “winning” the starter’s job was pre-ordained without even a façade of competition.  Maybe there were good reasons for that at the time, but I’ll bet a dollar that neither Wannstedt nor Graham has ever sat Sunseri down, especially during in-season, and told him in no uncertain terms that he must play to a certain standard or he’ll be on the bench.  This is why I don’t really blame Sunseri so much for what he does out on the field as I do his coaches.  Of course, as we say every week it seems, we’ll know more on Saturday evening but sooner or later a hard decision may have to be made. (more…)