Who will be the first...

[Jax Husky]

All those things may have been true at individual times, not so much in one year, and certainly not year in and year out.

West Virginia being a national contender was true for about 5 straight years. In those seasons, you also had a Top 10 Louisville or Rutgers to go through. It was a tougher path than winning the AAC, which almost guarantees you being in at this point.

 

[John]

The Big east was a better conference than the AAC man. West Virginia was a Top 10 team year in and year out. Louisville was regularly ranked, and even Rutgers had a 2-3 year run as a ranked program. The middle of the Big East was much better with Pitt, UConn, Syracuse.
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USF was very good back then too.

West Virginia being a national contender was true for about 5 straight years. In those seasons, you also had a Top 10 Louisville or Rutgers to go through. It was a tougher path than winning the AAC, which almost guarantees you being in at this point.

just had to research USF - their big year was 2007 (from Wikipedia)

Week 3 – #23 after defeating #17 Auburn 26–23

Week 4 – #18 after defeating North Carolina 37–10

Week 5 – #6 after defeating #5 West Virginia 21–13

Week 6 – #5 after defeating FAU 35–23

Week 7 – #2 after defeating UCF 64–12

 

[FfldCntyFan]

Since when have any of our major programs at UConn and many of our minor ones NOT exceeded expectations?

Since January 3, 2011. Hopefully that ends as of now.

 

[Waquoit]

West Virginia being a national contender was true for about 5 straight years. In those seasons, you also had a Top 10 Louisville or Rutgers to go through. It was a tougher path than winning the AAC, which almost guarantees you being in at this point.

Not when UConn was in the Big East. UConn won of share of 2 titles and only spent a couple of weeks total in the Top 25. That ain't happening now.

 

[kemba]

West Virginia being a national contender was true for about 5 straight years. In those seasons, you also had a Top 10 Louisville or Rutgers to go through. It was a tougher path than winning the AAC, which almost guarantees you being in at this point.

WVU was a top 10 team 05-07. After that they were a top 25 team except our Fiesta Bowl year they were unranked.
Lousivlle was great through 06, then fell off bigtime. During basically all our successful years, Louisville was terrible.
Rutgers was great in 06, and I believe they had one more really good year during the P era, but besides that they were average.

So if we're talking 06 Big East than yea I think it was much better. Overall, they are pretty comparable