Get Your Grubby Hands Off My Coach!

Seriously. The Big East is making its move to the big time. We have so much potential right now. WVU, Louisville, and Rutgers have all shown a lot of talent and heart this year, and the nation has noticed. When we lost Miami, BC, and Virginia Tech, everyone thought the Big East would quietly slink into obscurity, lose its BCS bid, and eventually dissolve.

Welly welly welly welly well! South Florida is now showing promise, and with a BCS bid stably assured to our conference for the forseeable future, I think they'll start drawing some of that amazing Floridian football talent. Pittsburgh is just having a couple down years. Wannstedt will have that program in the top 25 consistently soon. Hell, even Syracuse may creep back out of the basement some day, back to their former glory as a respectable football program, which produced such greats as Art Monk, Donovan McNabb, and Larry Csonka.

So, of course, everyone wants to strip the Big East of its most prized assets: its coaches. I am literally getting sick of reading articles saying how Rich Rodriguez, Bobby Petrino, and Greg Schiano are all candidates somewhere else. And if Rutgers fails to step up and pay Schiano to stay in New Jersey, I may feel compelled to take matters into my own hands... not sure how I'd do that, but I'd do something... and it probobly wouldn't be pretty. Louisville's already given Petrino a pretty sweet deal, and he's commited to them, according to this post. WVU has also stepped up and given Richie Rod what he asked for. Hopefully they'll keep heaping it on. Investing in these coaches now will pay off big for all these programs in the future, even if the coaches do choose to leave. As long as we can keep them here long enough to build up the conference's reputation as a whole, we'll all benefit from it.

Consider the fact that when the Big East was abandoned by Miami, VT, and BC, we still had WVU and Pitt, but even though those were both good programs, our BCS bid was under serious scrutiny. Without it, a top coach would obviously have doubts about moving to, or staying in, the dying conference. Thankfully, we've come through with some clutch wins, and shown the world that we're not a dying conference, but one with incredible potential for long term growth and improvement. Who knows, maybe we'll even be able to get Penn State to take notice. If we can keep these great coaches here long enough to build the conference up into a powerhouse conference, like the SEC and the Pac-10, we would be able to more easily afford losing them, because other great coaches will be more attracted to the conference.

Miami, Alabama, Florida State, and UNC, I'm talking to you when I say...

Get your stinking hands off my coaches, you damned dirty apes!