NCAA Football West Virginia

TAMPA, Fla. -- The demand for a college football playoff could break up the BCS after the 2013 season, but instead of adding a playoff, the Football Bowl Subdivision (FBS) would likely just revert back to the old bowl system, Big East commissioner John Marinatto told FanHouse.

"It [the BCS] is such an entity where there's so many diverse things that come together that make it work," Marinatto said. "I don't know if all that will continue to go on the way it is. If they're pressured to create a playoff, they would simply go back to what the system used to be like and have it as an at-large, free-for-all where people can go [to whichever bowl] they want.

And then there were two.

Cincinnati and Pittsburgh are now the lone undefeated teams in Big East play after last weekend's action.

The No. 4 ranked Bearcats and No. 14 Panthers continue on a collision course for the de facto Big East championship game on Dec. 5 in Pittsburgh. By the way, whatever Nick Carparelli, the Big East's senior associate commissioner for football, is making, he deserves a raise.

Carparelli is in charge of the league's schedule and his philosophy is having the league's top games played later in the year. That's easier said than done, but the Big East could have a pair of Top 10 teams playing for the league title if the Bearcats and Panthers don't stumble.

Stumble is exactly what West Virginia did -- again -- at South Florida. Playing in Tampa, Fla., on a Friday night for the second time in three years, the Mountaineers' league title hopes took a big hit with the 30-19 loss to the Bulls, who had lost their previous two games to Cincinnati and Pittsburgh by a combined margin of 75-31.

Gentlemen, start your hype engines.

We're just past the halfway mark of the college football season and, forget the battle for who will play for the BCS title, the most intriguing campaign is for the Heisman Trophy.

The latest flavor of the month is Alabama running back Mark Ingram, who has been touted by several TV talking heads and is the top candidate at HeismanPundit.com.

That's understandable, but why has there been hardly no Heisman mention for West Virginia's Noel Devine and Pittsburgh's Dion Lewis, who are the nation's third and fourth leading rushers?

"Dion's been very consistent," Pittsburgh coach Dave Wannstedt said. "You expect a freshman running back like him to perform that way maybe like three or four games a year, not eight games in a row."

Ingram obviously deserves consideration for the award, but is it not so much for what he's done, but who he plays for? After all, he has the No. 1 requirement to win the Heisman – he plays on a team that's ranked in the top five

Just three weeks ago, we called Pittsburgh the Pitts-ophrenic Panthers after their up-and-down performances earlier this season against Buffalo, N.C. State, Louisville and UConn.

Uh, is it too late to take that all back?

As impressive as Cincinnati has been all season, Pittsburgh might be playing the best overall of any Big East team. The offense is balanced and the defense gets more dominating each week. Saturday, the Panthers (7-1, 4-0 Big East) scorched South Florida 41-14.

Since allowing 505 yards at N.C. State, the Panthers have improved their defensive numbers in each of the past four games. Pitt allowed 305 yards to Louisville on Oct. 2, 303 to UConn on Oct. 10, 286 to Rutgers on Oct. 16 and 212 to USF on Saturday.

West Virginia wore his number. Connecticut brought his jersey and helmet to the sideline. The Morgantown crowd roared in his honor and stood silent in his memory.

Six days after UConn cornerback Jasper Howard died from a stab wound suffered after a school dance, two Big East rivals kept his memory very much alive.

The Huskies played their heavy hearts out and paid tribute to Howard with everything except a win.

"I just feel empty,'' Connecticut coach Randy Edsall said. "The kids played their hearts out and did what we asked them to do. This is a special group of kids. We've got to take this and just learn how to play like this all the time.''

Almost heaven, West Virginia. More like almost, West Virginia.

The Mountaineers (3-1) are almost undefeated, almost ranked in the Top 25, almost a lot of things, but they're not. The main reason is because of their propensity for turnovers.

In 13 games last season, the Mountaineers lost 16 turnovers. In their last three games, they've already lost 14 turnovers.

"I'm getting mad right now," WVU coach Bill Stewart said. "We're not hitting on all cylinders I know we can hit. We're not finishing.

On Monday, Louisville coach Steve Kragthorpe was asked who would be the Cardinals' starting quarterback Saturday against Southern Miss.

"I don't want Southern Miss to know who the quarterback is," Kragthorpe said. "You guys will find out when they walk out on game day."

Forget the Abbott and Costello routine "Who's on first?", "Who's starting at quarterback?" has become the all-too-common theme in the first month of the Big East.

Last year, the league was stockpiled with clear-cut starting quarterbacks at West Virginia (Pat White), South Florida (Matt Grothe), Rutgers (Mike Teel), Pittsburgh (Bill Stull), Louisville (Hunter Cantwell) and Syracuse (Cameron Dantley). At Cincinnati and UConn, Tony Pike and Tyler Lorenzen ended up getting the majority of the starts, but the Bearcats and Huskies each used three different starting quarterbacks last season.

The past week was fairly routine and predictable for the Big East: Cincinnati, South Florida, West Virginia and Pittsburgh all won fairly easy as they were expected against lesser competition.

The season isn't even to the halfway mark -- heck not every team has even started Big East play yet -- but that quartet has emerged as the Big East's Fab Four.

Entering the season, the consensus of all the preseason magazines and .com's was that any one of five teams would win the league. Those four plus Rutgers were considered good enough to win the league in a race that would be too close to call.

When Cincinnati climbed to No. 10 in this week's Associated Press poll, the Bearcats became the league's fifth member to be ranked in the top 10 since the 2007 season.

The other Big East teams to reach the top 10 since 2007 all came during the 2007 season. USF and West Virginia each reached No. 2, while Louisville was as high as No. 8 and Rutgers was No. 10.

The only league members who haven't been ranked in the top 10 the past three seasons are Pittsburgh, Connecticut and Syracuse, although UConn reached No. 16 in 2007 and Pitt was as high as No. 17 last season.

Since 2007, only the SEC can boast of a higher percentage of league members being ranked in the top 10 than the Big East.

It was a good week for the Big East, but it was oh-so-close to being a great week for the league. If not for a fumbled punt return by Louisville's Trent Guy and a turnover-fest by West Virginia on a rainy night in Auburn, Ala., the Big East would be have been a perfect 8-0 last week in non-conference action.

The league went 6-2, including a 3-2 mark against BCS opponents and upsets by UConn at Baylor and Syracuse against Northwestern.

For as well as the league did, though, there was a touch of melancholy with the news that USF QB Matt Grothe, the league's all-time leader in total offense, suffered a torn ACL Saturday against Charleston Southern, ending his USF career.