The opening of three key SEC jobs this season -- Arkansas, Auburn and Tennessee -- sparked debate within the Athlon office, and, it seems, through rabid SEC fans.

Which job is the most desirable?

It’s a loaded question, for sure. Tradition, resources, commitment, recruiting base, competition level and other perks and challenges all come into play.

Two years ago, we ranked every coaching job in the country in our preseason annual. Much has changed since then, not least of which conference affiliations.

The merits of recruiting rankings are debated in every sports bar and around every water cooler in the nation. Athlon continues its look at how each all-conference team ranked as high school recruits with the first-team All-Big East team.

Related: College Football's 2012 All-American Team as Recruits

2012 Offensive All-Big East Team as Recruits

Change seems like the perfect word to sum up the Big East in 2013. The conference will welcome six new teams next season, while three programs will have new head coaches. Willie Taggart was hired to replace Skip Holtz at South Florida, Tommy Tuberville was brought in to replace Butch Jones at Cincinnati, and Matt Rhule returns to Temple to take over for Steve Addazio.

Johnny Manziel’s Heisman coronation capped a wild year of college football in 2012 filled with twists, turns and unexpected results.

Perhaps we should have known 2012 would be different from previous years when Alabama helped start things off with a familiar opponent (LSU) and a different result (a 21-0 rout on the arm of a quarterback ) in the BCS Championship Game.

As 2012 comes to a close, Athlon will count down the top individual performances in each major sport from the year, culminating with a full list of the top 50 performances of the year.

For another year, the Big East football season almost seemed to be a sidenote.

At the end of college football’s regular season, the focus always shifts to the BCS title and debating the best teams in the nation. However, there’s also the other side of the coin, as the end of the year is a chance to reflect on the worst teams. And when examining the BCS era (1998-2012), there's no shortage of "quality" candidates for this ranking. 

Say this for the Big East: The title chase won’t be without intrigue.

Losses by Louisville and Rutgers last week gave Syracuse and Cincinnati a chance to claim shares of the Big East title. Meanwhile, the two teams that scored the upsets -- Connecticut and Pittsburgh -- still have hopes of becoming bowl eligible.

Rutgers and Pittsburgh will play this week in what’s an important Big East game ... for now. The Scarlet Knights are seeking their first Big East title, and Pittsburgh is looking for a bowl game.

After that, it’s off to the ACC for Pittsburgh next season, and then Rutgers to the Big Ten in two years. Elsewhere, UConn and Louisville will face each other this week in a game between teams hoping to get called up to the ACC.

College football has been on a wave of non-stop realignment over the last two years, and the dominoes continued to fall with the Big Ten’s addition of Rutgers. Maryland was announced as the Big Ten’s 13^th team on Monday, while the Scarlet Knights will join as team No. 14 in 2014.

The de facto Big East championship game between Louisville and Rutgers has been established with the Scarlet Knights’ 10-3 win over Cincinnati on Saturday.

But that’s not going to be the big topic around the Big East in the two weeks before the game in Piscataway. The Big East may yet again be the subject of conference realignment talk as reports surfaced Saturday that Maryland is in negotiations to leave the ACC for the Big Ten, a possibility that could cause Rutgers to leave the Big East to be the Big Ten’s 14th member.