Big East Up for Grabs

Last night, the West Virginia Mountaineers went on the road and pulled out a 30-27 win over the South Florida Bulls on the leg of Tyler Bitancurt, who made a 28 yard field goal as time expired. This win moves the Mountaineers' record to 9-3, 5-2 in Big East play. Louisville also has a 5-2 record in conference play and holds the head-to-head tiebreaker over West Virginia, having defeated the Mountaineers 38-35 earlier in the season. However, Cincinnati and UCONN still have to play. A win by UCONN would make Louisville the champions of the Big East Conference and send them to a BCS bowl; however, if Cincinnati wins, they would also have a 5-2 conference record which would force a 3-way tie for 1st place. In that case, West Virginia would likely be the team with the highest BCS ranking and would therefore be given the conference title and get the BCS bowl bid. Regardless of the outcome, the Big East will either get a 3 loss or potentially a 5 loss team into a BCS bowl while many 1 or 2 loss teams from tougher conferences will miss out on the more prestigious bowl games. Is it just me or does the Big East seem to benefit too much from being an automatic qualifying conference? I mean come on, the highest ranked team in the conference right now is #23 and the typical cut off is #14 unless you happen to be the champion from your AQ conference. Last year, UCONN won the conference without even being ranked, the only time I can ever remember an unranked team making a BCS bowl. Predictably, they got completely outclassed by a dominant Oklahoma team in the Fiesta Bowl.