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When you take courses through online schools you don't have to necessarily have a degree in mind; you could just be furthering your knowledge. Keep in mind though that any credit you get toward online degrees can be carried on, generally as long as you don't change online colleges, and a degree could be in your grasp in someday.

Two of the three worst teams in the Big East this year were Syracuse and Pittsburgh.  They're also two teams with legitimate tradition to call upon if they ever acquire a superlative coach.

Think about Rutgers' feeble tradition for a moment.  Until this year they had no history to speak of, nothing in the past with which to sell a recruit.  Yet with the right coach and a few years of patience poof! they're a top 15 team.

Put a coach of Greg Schiano's ability at Pittsburgh or Syracuse and those programs will 1)rebuild 2)do it faster than Rutgers 3)reach greater heights than Rutgers and 4)sustain that success over a longer period of time.  Past is very often precedent in college football.  Neither program is a sleeping giant, but they have it in them to field ranked teams and even a handful of top 10 quality teams.

Things change so quickly in college football but if somehow those two got their acts together and Louisville, West Virginia and Rutgers can maintain their recent success the Big East is looking deeper than most of the conferences out there.

The question will always be can the league field one or two elite teams.  It sort of has that in West Virginia and Louisville, but people will continue to scrutinize the depth of talent for these teams.  The thinking goes that as good as these teams are they'd never come close to an undefeated run in the SEC or Big 12 or ACC or ...

I understand that sentiment but we could also argue that if they were in a more powerful conference they'd also attract the necessary talent to play like all the other teams in said conference.  Think about someone like North Carolina State for a moment.  They've gathered a great deal of talent over the years, not just first rounders but quality guys throughout the roster.  They have a greater depth of talent than someone like Louisville or West Virginia.  Yet they're not as successful.  Imagine the talent the Big East duo could acquire if they were in North Carolina State's position with the prestige of a power conference and nationally televised games weekly against big name foes.

Is it their league competition that makes them less of a success than West Virginia or Louisville?  I'm not so sure.  As has been echoed here many times, sometimes it's not just the talent you have but what you're doing with it.  I believe that what West Virginia and Louisville - and Boise State and others - do is better than what North Carolina State - and Ole Miss and Oregon State and Nebraska and so on and so on - do.  A certain minimum of talent obviously needs to hit the field for these teams to have the years they've had, but obviously they've found it in spite of not having the perks extended to more powerful teams.

So is their road a little easier?  Perhaps.  But it's not hard to figure out they continue to field high quality football teams.  What they do is good enough to run nearly unscathed through an improving conference and score a series of big bowl wins.

As for the rest of the Big East, there's one final piece to the puzzle yet unmentioned: South Florida.  It doesn't take much imagination to realize they have a chance to be something special under the right conditions.  Not long ago Florida, Florida State and Miami were very much afterthoughts in the collective history of college football.  Yet few programs have defined and enriched the game more in the last 30 or so years.  There's plenty more room for another powerful in-state program if you consider all the talent that escapes the clutches of the big three and ends up at Iowa, Ohio State, USC, Rutgers and many other stops.

The Bulls' coach Jim Leavitt clearly believes because he thinks he has the best job in D-IA.  I'd disagree but he sees something in the opportunity that sounds less like bluster the more you think about it.  It's a complete unknown if USF can meet that potential but if they do we're talking about a league with at least one powerful program as its center of gravity and a handful of peers who have come alive in the last few years.

The potential is there, a shock considering the shape of the league not long ago in the wake of several defections to the ACC.

Anyway, that's some fat to chew on this Monday morning.