Remember the Titans...and Canes, Eagles, and Hokies

How sweet it is, and continues to be.

Notwithstanding the doubters, Matt Hayes on Sporting News, and Dennis Dodd on Sportsline, who still think Rutgers is a pretender and won't win on Saturday night,
most of the nation is giving Rutgers respect. No one in their right mind thinks an undefeated Rutgers has some kind of guaranteed birthright to get into the national title game. The biggest factor is history. USC, Florida, Notre Dame...these names evoke majesty in terms of college football, a loss or bump in the road indicates a normal progressiona for a championship team, and they have the history to back it up. Make no mistake that the powers that run college football like the debates that no playoffs spark. The talk keeps college football on the minds and lips of people, and keeps serious interest in the regular season. In sports such as the basketball, the regular season is about maneuvering for position, and while the banner for winning your conference is nice, it doesn't really mean much.
But football is a different animal. Each game, and by extension, each play can drastically change a season (see South Florida dropping a two point conversion, or Ray Rice's game changing rommp against Pitt). And the Scarlet Knights will be in playoff games the rest of the regular season, and potentially, as the schedule makers knew, their finale against West Virginia will be just like every other conference's title game.
What I don't understand is the posturing that the Big East is a weak conference. Rankings being as subjective as they are, are still generated by writers and coaches, (and sometimes they don't get it right by their own admission) and if you look at them, apparently people think Rutgers, L'ville, and West Virginia are for real, and three of the best 25 teams in the country. They don't list them with asterisks, I assume the rankings mean that if a lower ranked team played a higher ranked team, the team ranked higher would win. Right? So what is the confusion? The last time I checked, the ACC is the worst conference in America, they are the joke, and not the powerful force with the cream of the Big East crop. It may be a perfect storm this season having a former doormat (RU), a former Conf USAer (L'ville), and the team that just so happened to smoke the SEC champion LAST YEAR (WVU), but past history doesn't indicate current success (see White Sox, Red Sox, Hurricanes, and Lightning).

Go RU.