2011 Big East Conference Preview

> Check out the entire 2011 College Football Preview

The only constant in Big East football is change – change that has steadily eroded the quality of a league that sent nationally respected teams as its champion to the BCS every year from 2005-2010. Since its reconfiguration in 2005, every coach that has led his team to a Big East championship has subsequently left that school for another head coaching job elsewhere. However, change is not confined to the top. Every Big East school except for Rutgers has made a coaching change in the past two seasons (in West Virginia’s case, the school announced Dana Holgorsen as its coach in waiting making 2011 Bill Stewart’s final season at the helm).  The coaching brain-drain and instability that have characterized the league showed most evidently when 8-4 and unranked Connecticut was crowned champion and sent to the Fiesta Bowl as the league’s BCS representative.

Changes at the top mean the race for the Big East championship will be as wide open as it has ever been. Even in 2010, Pitt entered the season as the hot, trendy preseason champion pick. There will be no such consensus in 2011. In the SEC, divergence of opinion indicates that there are several viable contenders, at least on paper. For the Big East, it means there simply aren’t any teams that look better than any others. At best, every team one might consider a favorite has considerable questions it must answer heading into the fall.

New coaches Todd Graham and Paul Pasqualoni as well as coach-in-waiting Holgorsen promise drastic changes to their teams’ offensive philosophies. Graham will scrap Dave Wannstedt’s I-formation, run- heavy offense for a hurry-up, shotgun-based attack. Pasqualoni will institute the multiple look option style attack he ran as coach at Syracuse. Holgorsen, who gained notoriety as the understudy of Mike Leach at Texas Tech, will bring his wide-open, pass-happy offense to Morgantown. Each coach will be forced to rely on quarterbacks that did not display a particular affinity for passing in 2010.

In addition to the new coaches, the second-year guys will also have something to say: Charlie Strong, Butch Jones, and Skip Holtz hope to build on the 2010 season and use it to spring forward in 2011. Strong and Holtz both led Louisville and USF to bowl wins ( Louisville’s first since 2007) but enter 2011 with good defenses and questions at quarterback. Jones, conversely, faces the opposite state of affairs in Cincinnati. Record setting UC quarterback Zach Collaros returns, but so does a defense that was one of the worst in the nation in 2010.

Also lurking in 2011 is Rutgers and the only coaching mainstay in the league: Greg Schiano. After a disappointing season that saw the Scarlet Knights miss a bowl game for the first time since 2005, Schiano hopes that new offensive coordinator Frank Cignetti and his pro-style attack will fit second-year quarterback Chas Dodd and dynamic receiver (and wildcat formation performer extraordinaire) Mohammed Sanu better than the 2010 RU offense did. If it does, the Knights should once again be a bowl-bound team.

The Big East has never been more wide open than it will be in 2011. Much of the league race will be decided by which coach can best groom a new quarterback or acclimate his players to a new scheme. The coach that does so will have a leg up on the rest of the league.

• 2011 Cincinnati Bearcats football preview
• 2011 Connecticut (UConn) Huskies football preview
• 2011 Louisville Cardinals football preview
• 2011 Pittsburgh (Pitt) Panthers football preview
• 2011 Rutgers Scarlet Knights football preview
• 2011 South Florida (USF) Bulls football preview
• 2011 Syracuse Orange football preview
• 2011 West Virginia (WVU) Mountaineers football preview

By Matt Zemek
DFN Sports Senior College Football Correspondent