The past weekend was another good one for the Big East, what with West Virginia and rolling South Florida rolling to set up their primetime clash Friday night and Cincinnati putting up 40 points before a record crowd at home and then moving into the AP poll for the first time since 1976.

“I’ve played at Penn State and at Michigan,” said UC coach Brian Kelly. “The atmosphere at Nippert Stadium was as good as college football can be.”

It’s been a long time since going to football games was the thing to do at UC. And maybe it still isn’t. One game doesn’t make a trend.

Still, it’s a noteworthy early payoff to the work that Kelly and the UC athletic department have done to generate interest in the program.

Then there was Connecticut moving to 4-0 with a win at Pitt, even though the Huskies were an eight-point underdog, and, of course, Syracuse stunning Louisville.

WVU (No. 5), Rutgers (No. 10), USF (No. 18) and the Bearcats are all ranked. Connecticut is receiving votes and Louisville, despite the popular opinion, is not awful. The Big East is generating a lot of attention and the conference’s image is as strong right now as it’s been since Miami and Virginia Tech in 2003. In truth, all the questions aimed at Big East coaches about this success merely stirred up old issues.

In the past, coaches would blush at the compliments and speak in generalities about how the process was moving along and the Big East would continue to develop. Gradually, though, you could sense a frustration that good things were praised too much and bad things were criticized too unfairly and that all they wanted was for people to listen when they said the Big East was and would be pretty good.

Well, another round of encouragement came during Monday’s coaches’ teleconference and UConn Coach Randy Edsall decided to take a stand against the idea his is a fledgling, still-recovering conference.

“It’s kind of like we’re beating a dead horse each week,” he said. “As coaches, athletic directors and administrators of the Big East, we always felt this was a very good conference from top to bottom, which is what’s happened when you look at how it all played out. All we have to do is keep our mindset, keep our focus on what we do on the field and we can keep it at this level. We know how we got to this point in time. We have a lot of good coaches and excellent players who all work very hard each and every week to be the best we can be.”

Slightly more moving than than Pitt’s normally eloquent Dave Wanstedt, who was asked to comment on his loss to UConn.

“I don’t know about a comment, but I think one word sums it up: Six turnovers.”