ESPN College Football

Posted by ESPN.com's Brian Bennett

We love our teams and we treat our stars like super heroes. But every hero needs a villain. It's fun to win games; it's even more so to vanquish the guy wearing the black hat.

Some Big East programs are so new or were so irrelevant for so long that finding deep-seated villainy isn't easy. Unless you look hard enough. Here are my choices for each Big East team's current and historical villains.

Cincinnati

Current villain: Darren Evans. The Virginia Tech running back rushed for 153 yards and a score as the MVP of Cincinnati's 20-7 Orange Bowl loss in January. Even Bearcats fans, however, had to be saddened to see that Evans will miss this season with an ACL injury.

All-time villain: Ohio State. The last Cincinnati win over the Buckeyes, a 34-0 thrashing, sure was sweet. Too bad it came in 1897. Just about ever since, the Bearcats have lived in the shadow of the state's behemoth program, which usually has its pick of Ohio's best recruits, even in Cincinnati's backyard.

Connecticut

Current villain: West Virginia. The Huskies have come a long way since moving up to the FBS, but the one mountain they haven't been able to climb has been the, uh, Mountaineers. UConn is 0-5 against West Virginia, including a 66-21 loss in 2007 when the two teams tied for the regular-season Big East title. All of the losses have come by at least 12 points.

All-time villain: Boston College. Not only is UConn 0-10-2 in history against its neighbor to the north, but the Eagles abandoned the Big East just as the Huskies were coming aboard. That killed any chance of a budding Northeast football rivalry.

Louisville

Current villain: Larry Taylor. Louisville fans still fume over the Connecticut player's "Unfair Catch" in 2007. Taylor waved his hand in the air as if to signal a fair catch on a punt, but then ran the kick back for a game-changing touchdown against a stunned coverage team. UConn went on to win the game, and Louisville finished the season 6-6, missing out on a bowl.

All-time villain: Southern Miss. Two losses to the Golden Eagles still cause heartburn for Louisville fans. In 1989, a young quarterback named Brett Favre threw a Hail Mary that bounced off the helmet of the Cards' Michael Jackson -- and landed safely into Darryl Tillman's hands for a game-winning, 79-yard touchdown. In 1999, Southern Miss won on the infamous "Mills Kills" fake-punt play that officials later said was illegal. It's only fitting that this old rivalry will be renewed in 2009.

Pittsburgh

Current villain: Rutgers. For whatever reason, the Scarlet Knights have Pitt's number right now. Rutgers has won four straight games in this series, including last year's 54-34 blowout at Heinz Field, which effectively killed Pitt's chances of winning the Big East.

All-time villain: Joe Paterno. Penn State has long been Pitt's most bitter rival, and Paterno has engineered some painful losses for the Panthers -- none more so than a 48-14 thrashing in 1981 that ruined Pitt's national title hopes. But even more so than that, Pittsburgh fans blame Paterno for ending the series between the two schools (they haven't played since 2000 and don't have a game on the horizon). Nothing's worse than a villain who won't even come out for a duel.

Rutgers

Current villain: West Virginia. The Scarlet Knights are just 4-30-2 all-time against the Mountaineers and have lost 14 straight in the series. The most damaging loss came at the end of the 2006 season, when West Virginia -- playing without an injured Pat White -- pulled out a triple-overtime win that pushed Rutgers out of a BCS game and into the Texas Bowl.

All-time villain: Penn State. For years, the Nittany Lions raided the state of New Jersey for top recruits while Rutgers' program floundered. Greg Schiano, a former Penn State assistant, finally helped the Scarlet Knights keep some of the talent in-state, but the two schools still battle on the recruiting trail all the time.

South Florida

Current villain: October. The entire month has seemed like Halloween for the Bulls the past two years. After undefeated and impressive Septembers, South Florida has gone just 3-5 in the past two Octobers, wrecking its Big East and national hopes.

All-time villain: Florida's Big Three. It's hard to build a program from scratch. It's even harder when you're in the same state and competing for the same recruits as Florida, Florida State and Miami. Those schools often treated the Bulls like a forgotten stepchild. But South Florida will get its first-ever shot against FSU this year and play Miami in November. Next year, it will take on Florida in Gainesville for the first time.

Syracuse

Current villain: Greg Robinson. He's way too nice of a person to be considered a true villain. Still, Robinson pretty much ran the Orange into the ground with a 10-37 record in four years as head coach, turning a proud program into a laughingstock along the way. Syracuse fans can barely speak his name at this point.

All-time villain: Pat "Tie" Dye. His team down 16-13 in the 1988 Sugar Bowl with four seconds left and the ball on the Syracuse 13, the Auburn coach sent out field goal kicker Win Lyle rather than go for the win. Syracuse finished 11-0-1 and might have had a shot at the national title had its defense been given the opportunity to settle matters. Orange coach Dick MacPherson steamed about the decision after the game, saying, "Did his school president tell him he was fired if he lost? I definitely would have gone for the win."

West Virginia

Current villain: Rich Rodriguez. Nothing hurts more than a once-great relationship gone sour. On the morning of Dec. 1, 2007, Rodriguez probably was the most popular man in West Virginia, as the Mountaineers were on the verge of playing for the national title. Instead, they were upset at home that night by Pitt and ... well, you know the rest of the story. The situation is still so acrimonious that Rodriguez said this offseason that people in his home state make him feel like "an axe murderer." Sounds like a true villain.

All-time villain: Pittsburgh. The Backyard Brawl is the biggest rivalry in the Big East, and Pitt has the historical edge with a 61-37-3 all-time advantage. Things have really heated up in the past two years, with the Panthers reviving from a down period to win two straight, including the 2007 upset.

Those are my picks for top villains. Let's hear yours. Send them to my mailbag and we'll discuss tomorrow.