After a week of restless pondering, I'm still reading it pretty much like this -- Pitt's football Panthers, having lost their punter, their kicker, their long snapper, their All-American running back, their All-American middle linebacker, and every last trace of their momentum from a 9-4 season during four startlingly impotent quarters of the Sun Bowl, are the favorites to win the Big East Conference championship.

Without an accomplished quarterback.

Well that's some conference.

It is, perhaps, fair and prudent to mention at this point that Big East teams went 4-2 in bowl games last season, as good a bowl record as any conference outside of the hallowed Southeast Conference and the equally deified Pac-10.

But c'mon, how can a team in Pitt's condition get picked by the Big East media as the most likely to gain the league's top bowl assignment? Moreover, here's the frightening part: It all makes perfect sense.

By the time Dave Wannstedt opened practice this week, he had had a week to mull this over, too, but even the fifth-year head coach of a program now built exclusively on his own recruits appeared to strain just a bit in explaining Pitt's superior pole position, dubious as it is.

Wannstedt pointed out that he is coaching more seniors than he ever has at Pitt, calling those 19 seniors the foundation of the football team. Nineteen seniors are wonderful, but 19 seniors by themselves do not a conference champion make.

St. Barnabas has at least 19 seniors, but I don't like them to beat Rutgers on the road.

Don't e-mail me saying St. Barnabas doesn't have a football team. I know it is a retirement facility in the North Hills, but, all the same, it would not surprise me to see it turn up on Penn State's non-conference schedule.

No conference that includes Syracuse even needs a St. Barnabas anyway.

Syracuse is the only sure thing in the Big East. It's not just that there is not a likely conference foe it could possibly beat, but the Orange have taken the precaution of lining up a non-conference schedule that might leave it winless until sometime in 2010. Syracuse opens with three Big Ten bowl teams -- Minnesota, Penn State and Northwestern.

Estimated aggregate score: 151-0.

But beyond Syracuse, the Big East is a muddle. In fact, all the voters in the poll who placed Pitt in the favorite's role went through a thought process not at all unlike this:

Conference champion? I don't know, Pitt? Or,

I don't know, Cincinnati? Or,

I don't know, West Virginia?

Rutgers? Connecticut? Louisville? South Florida?

Cincinnati is the defending champion, and, while quarterback Tony Pike might be the pre-eminent offensive force in the league, the Bearcats had some significant subtractions on defense, like ten-elevenths of it. Lost 10 starters, which is a tough way to play preseason favorite.

Much will be known about the direction of things on the very first weekend, when Cincinnati visits Rutgers. Rutgers is a team remarkably similar to Pitt with one notable exception. Like Pitt, the Scarlet Knights are possessed of excellent offensive and defensive lines. Unlike Pitt, Rutgers lost an outstanding quarterback in Mike Teel. Pitt neither lost one nor retained one, but Wannstedt said confidently as practice began that Bill Stull has earned the starter's job and that Stull had the full confidence of the coaching staff.

"Everybody wants to talk about the quarterback," Wannstedt said in his formal remarks, "and we're very fortunate here at Pitt."

Of the many options available to everyone to describe Pitt's quarterback situation, "very fortunate" somehow doesn't leap at me as the first choice. Wannstedt has two passers with experience, Stull and Pat Bostick, but their experience last year resulted in 10 touchdowns against 14 interceptions. Wannstedt mentioned what a heck of a player third-option Tino Sunseri is going to be, but, until someone determines Pitt has a heck of a problem at the position, I'm guessing we won't see him.

Pitt's offense urgently is awaiting an identity. It has capable receivers in Jonathan Baldwin and tight end Nate Byham, but there is no readily identifiable replacement for the Philadelphia Eagles' Shady McCoy.

Fortunately for the Panthers, every other Big East team has as many problems as they. South Florida has speed to burn and an accomplished director in quarterback Matt Grothe, but it further possesses an established self-destructive habit and a defense that never seems to match the intensity of standout defensive end George Selvie. West Virginia must merely replace the irreplaceable Pat White, but its defense makes it a contender. Connecticut must replace the nearly irreplaceable running back Donald Brown, not that even his skills allowed the Huskies to win a big game now and again.

The truth is that Pitt can win nine, 10, 11 times, mostly because its defense is so deep and talented it might give the offense enough time to figure some things out. By the time the Panthers meet Notre Dame, West Virginia and Cincinnati beginning in mid-November, the quizzical pronouncements of early August might look like clairvoyance.