South Florida provides big boost to the Big East

To relieve stress, Big East Commissioner Mike Tranghese used to sneak out of his Rhode Island office and hit buckets of golf balls.

Whack to Miami, whack to Virginia Tech, whack to Boston College.

In 2003, Miami led a ‘Cane Mutiny to the Atlantic Coast Conference that rocked college football and caused a ripple-effect realignment.

Miami and Virginia Tech were gone by 2004, with Boston College joining the ACC a year later.

The Big East’s major conference status was in peril and there was talk its champion might lose automatic-qualifier status to a major bowl game.

“I didn’t have a lot of people calling me up saying, ‘Don’t worry,’ ” Tranghese recalled this week.

Anyway, here’s how it worked out, and next time you need a magician to pull rabbits out of hats, give Tranghese a call:

From Conference USA, Tranghese plucked Louisville, which won the Big East title last year and defeated ACC champion Wake Forest in the Orange Bowl.

Tranghese also wooed Cincinnati, which is 6-1 this year.

But it was another Conference USA school, located in Tampa, that Tranghese considered to be Microsoft at $10 a share.

The school was South Florida, which is now a program-defining win over Rutgers tonight in Piscataway, N.J., from having perhaps the straightest line to this year’s Bowl Championship Series title game.

“I thought they needed us,” Tranghese said, “and clearly, at the time of losing three schools, we needed them.”

The Bulls debuted at No. 2 in the first BCS standings and have the strongest credentials of the six remaining undefeated major college teams.

South Florida has defeated Auburn and West Virginia and is ranked No. 1 in the BCS computers.

South Florida started its program from scratch 11 years ago.

Its first and only coach, Jim Leavitt, a disciple of Iowa’s Hayden Fry and Kansas State’s Bill Snyder, has been in charge from the days when the coaches worked out of trailers.

Leavitt is a bit crazed, sometimes running conditioning drills with his players.

Asked if he dreamed all this was possible, Leavitt recently said, “I dream about having another day in my life to live, to be honest with you.”

Bulls quarterback Matt Grothe, only a sophomore, is a top-drawer player and a five-alarm competitor. Defensive end George Selvie, also a sophomore, leads the nation with 11.5 sacks.

Consider the utter outrageousness of this typed sentence: South Florida’s path to the national title might go through Rutgers.

“A lot at stake, a lot on the line,” Bulls linebacker Ben Moffitt said of tonight’s game.

How South Florida handles the national attention may be a key in how far it goes.

“The big thing is, treat it like a bottle of poison,” said Carl Franks, the Bulls’ running backs coach. “It’s not going to hurt you unless you swallow it.”

Tranghese would be lying if he said he saw all of this coming.

“Did I expect them to be No. 2 on Oct. 15?” he said of South Florida’s BCS ranking. “No, but I expected them to be in the top 20.”

Tranghese saw South Florida as a mother lode waiting to be mined. It was a large public school, with about 45,000 students, in a state rich with football talent.

“I talked to our [Big East] football coaches and they said if you put them in a conference with a BCS berth, they’re going to win,” Tranghese said.

The Big East needed South Florida, but South Florida needed the protection of being in a BCS conference.

Some college have-nots wonder whether South Florida could have risen to No. 2 in the BCS had it, as a member of Conference USA, beaten the same nonconference opponents.

Karl Benson, the Western Athletic Conference commissioner who has fought for increased access for the five leagues without automatic-qualifier status, offers an interesting case study.

In 2001, WAC member Fresno State opened the season with nonconference wins against Colorado (which finished third in the BCS standings that year) Oregon State (preseason No. 1 in Sports Illustrated) and Wisconsin (at Madison).

After the Wisconsin win, Fresno State rose to No. 11 in the Associated Press poll, and later made it as high as No. 8 before a loss to Boise State ended the Bulldogs’ longshot title hopes.

This year, South Florida parlayed wins over Auburn and West Virginia to go from unranked to No. 2 in this week’s AP poll.

“You talk about a quantum leap,” Benson said. “Some of it is that the brand the conference you’re a member of delivers greater national recognition.”

It will be years before the Big East/ACC fallout can be fully accessed.

Boston College and Virginia Tech are thriving in the ACC; Miami is not.

The Big East certainly did not die, and what did not kill it made it 5-0 in bowls last year.

And, like it or not, South Florida has joined the BCS Big Top.

“It’s difficult for some people to recognize South Florida in that light,” Tranghese said. “Guess what: It’s not going to be last time they’re here.”

Blitz package

* WAC Commissioner Benson isn’t worried Hawaii (7-0) debuted at only No. 18 in the first BCS standings and is convinced the Warriors, if they go unbeaten, will reach the No. 12 or better threshold required to earn a major bowl bid. “It would be hard to keep them out,” he said.

Benson notes every previous undefeated team from a non-BCS conference would have qualified under the current top-12 rule:

In 1998, Tulane finished No. 10 in the final BCS standings, but then a non-BCS school had to finish No. 6 or better to earn a major bid. In 1999, Marshall was No. 12. Utah, in 2004, finished No. 6 to earn a Fiesta Bowl berth. And Boise State got to the Fiesta Bowl with a No. 8 ranking last year after the access rules were changed.

* The New England Patriots are undefeated, the Red Sox are battling Cleveland in the baseball playoffs, and the addition of Kevin Garnett has made the Celtics relevant again. Does anyone in town know that Boston College is ranked No. 3 in the first BCS standings?

“I guess there’s a knock that BC doesn’t have great fan support,” senior quarterback Matt Ryan said this week, “but that’s not the feeling amongst the team.”

Ryan said 5,000 fans made the trip to Notre Dame last week and things could really get exciting should the Eagles keep winning and Ryan stays in the Heisman Trophy chase.

Ryan grew up in the Philadelphia area and his loyalties remain with his hometown teams, but he says there’s nothing quite like Beantown Fever. “It’s been pretty special to be up here and feel, in some sense, that you’re a part of it.”

* When Miami (4-3) plays at Florida State (4-2) it will mark the first time since 1977 that neither team has been ranked. “It’s still Miami and Florida State to us and to the players,” Florida State Coach Bobby Bowden said.

* Arizona State Coach Dennis Erickson on his team’s 7-0 start, with California, Oregon, UCLA, USC and Arizona left on its Pacific 10 Conference plate: “Realistically, we know where we’ve been, and we know where we’re at, and we’re realistic about who we have to play in the next five games.”

* The athletic director who hired basketball coach Ben Howland and a football coach who runs the West Coast offense was fired Tuesday, but it wasn’t UCLA’s Dan Guerrero. It was Steve Pederson, ousted this week at Nebraska.

Pederson came to Lincoln five years ago from Pittsburgh, where he hired Howland from Northern Arizona. Pederson ushered Nebraska Cornhusker football into the modern era when he brought in Bill Callahan, whose West Coast offense has produced a 14-14 record in Big 12 play. And now Pederson has been ushered out.

Nebraska is 4-3 but reeling after dropping two straight games by a combined score of 86-20 and now Tom Osborne, retired 10 years after winning three football national titles in 25 years, has been hired as interim athletic director.

Osborne, 70, said Callahan’s job is safe until the end of the season, but look out then.

At least no one will walk away needing food stamps. Pederson will get a $2.2-million goodbye check. Callahan, if he is fired, will be owed $3 million.

If Callahan goes, how far might Nebraska turn back the football clock? Hawaii quarterback Colt Brennan last Friday set a WAC record with 75 passes against San Jose State. That was three more passes than Nebraska made in the 1960 season.

chris.dufresne@latimes.com