They came from Syracuse way…with names like Brown, Mackey, Csonka, McNab and Harrison. From down Pittsburgh way with Marino, Dorsett, Fralic, Ditka. Warner, Ham, Harris and Muchak from Happy Valley. Flutie, Hasselbeck, Romanowski and Smerlas up in Beantown.
Yep, once upon a time, Eastern football has some..eh… cajones. That time is long gone. See, the only thing keeping an atrocious Pitt team off Pennsylvania papers’ front page for their lousy performance has been the stench emanating from the not-so-Happy Valley. That’s where you know who did you know what to little boys.
Syracuse is a joke. Temple has not been decent since Pop Warner coached there. Boston College is meh. And UConn is happy when they win 7 or 8.
Which leaves us Rutgers, which is 4-0 after beating a hapless Arkansas squad – but they’re expected to return to Earth pronto.
The state of football in The Big East is so bad that several of the mediocre programs have just left, en mass, to play for the ACC. The exodus left the conference honchos to scrape the dregs for castoffs of other conferences. So get ready for “eastern” teams like Boise State, Houston and SMU. In a sport where the Big 12 has ten and the Big Ten has twelve, I guess a Big East that stretches across three time zones and ends up in Idaho may make some sense.
My question is, however…Why? Why has eastern college football been sucking wind so badly as of late? It was not so long ago that Syracuse had perennial top 20 teams while Pitt and BC were also good for solid 8+ win seasons. 
Penn State was a perennial contender for a National Championship. What happened? It’s not like they are in a bad recruiting area; the number of high school football prospects from the NE states is on par, per capita, with most areas of the country – with the exception of football mad Texas and Florida. But they get to the big time and… stink it up.
I know the situation at Penn State. But why is Syracuse, BC and Pitt so crappy now? I figure they would have made hay and used the Penn State mess to sew up a bunch of good players. But nope. They’re simply not good. Makes ya wonder…
As for the rest of College Football, there are some key games this week. One already played out – a scrappy Washington Huskies team knocking off #8 Stanford Thursday night. This is the mano e mano stage of the season, where we see who wears the big boy pants…
Here are some picks:
West By God Virginny 48, Baylor 24. Moonshiners beat the Baptists and expose their crappy D.
THE Ohio State University 9, Sparty 6. Neither team scores a TD… 4 yards and a cloud of AstroTurf pebbles.
Texas 41, Okie State 40…should be innerestin’…and we’ll see who gets to bark in the Big 12.
UConn 24, Rutgers 21…upset special as the Huskies derail the Jersey Boys .
TCU 38 SMU 3…payback for last years upset in the battle of the iron skillet.
That’s it… Turn in Sunday morning for our Pro Football guru, Cheesy Bruin.
