PITTSBURGH – Don’t think for a second the brass at the Big East office in Providence wasn’t rooting hard last night. Don’t think they didn’t want Pittsburgh to bust up Miami something fierce at Heinz Field.
A Pittsburgh win would send the Panthers to a BCS bowl as co-Big East champion. West Virginia, which earned a share of the title by beating Temple 45-28 yesterday, would go to the Gator Bowl.
And Miami, which along with Virginia Tech (a 35-21 loser to Virginia yesterday) has opted to bolt for the ACC next season, would be relegated to a minor bowl. Good riddance, ‘Canes.
Of course, no one in Providence or Pittsburgh or Morgantown would admit before yesterday’s games that they wished ill will on the team that has dominated the Big East Conference. But you don’t call the gal who dumped you and wish her luck on the next date.
The Big East needs a program to carry its banner, and the two most likely candidates are Pittsburgh and West Virginia. The Panthers have never won a Big East crown (neither have the Mountaineers) so this would give the reformed league something to feel good about.
“The focus is to win the Big East and whatever happens after that is great,” Pittsburgh coach Walt Harris said earlier this week. “And, in order to win the Big East, we have to beat Miami. They are a challenging team. When you watch their athletes and study them, you see they had a couple of games where turnovers got them [or they’d be undefeated].”
Pittsburgh (8-3, 5-1 Big East going into last night) Miami (9-2, 5-1) and West Virginia (8-4, 6-1) have spent the season knocking off each other. Miami edged West Virginia. West Virginia pulverized Pittsburgh.
Despite that loss, the Panthers would go to the BCS bowl based on the conference’s tie-breaker, which is the BCS standings. Pittsburgh, 25th in the BCS, had a five-spot lead over West Virginia going into yesterday’s action.
The Mountaineers were hurt by having played two awful teams: Central Florida, which was 106th before this week’s lopsided loss to Marshall, and East Carolina, which was 114th out of 117 Division I-A schools.
The Mountaineers will probably go to the Gator Bowl for a rematch against Maryland. A Miami win last night would mean the ‘Canes would go o a BCS bowl game and Pittsburgh could find itself in the Insight Bowl against Cal.
“I don’t even want to think about it,” said Miami offensive lineman Chris Myers. “We’re either going to be first [in the Big East] or third. If we get third, it’s going to be something like the Humanitarian Bowl. We don’t want [that].”
The Panthers haven’t been to a New Year’s Day bowl game since 1984 – before many of these players were born.
“A championship would be special,” Panthers quarterback Rod Rutherford told reporters in Pittsburgh. “But, when I came here, Pitt was coming off a 2-9 season and we hadn’t had much success for a long time, so people didn’t expect much of us.
“I really just wanted to help Pitt become a great program again, and I feel like we’ve already done that. A BCS bowl was like a dream back then, but now that we’re this close, we want to finish the job.”
