It will surprise exactly none of you that there is a certain amount of parochialism in local sports coverage here in New England. Take our obsession with the Red Sox or a sports talk radio landscape that seems incapable of discussing a team that doesn't play within shouting distance of Route 95. But one of the odder facets of this is what we get stuck with on Saturday afternoons during football season.

The Big East game of the week, from ESPN Plus.

OK, given that the only two divison 1 teams in New England do or will play in that conference, you'd expect the game to show up somewhere. But consider what transpired yesterday: ABC could offer Ohio State-NC State or Texas-Arkansas, and our local decided to go with West Virginia-Cincinnati. Not only is it the clear loser of that triad, it's not even a true Big East game (nor is next week's Central Florida-Syracuse tilt).

The West Virginia-Cincinnati game, by the way is the one where the winning team scored one more point (15) as the number of fumbles committed by the combined teams (14). There were a couple of picks in the game, too.

I have to assume that WCVB (the local ABC station) has some sort of contractual obligation to show the Big East games. I hope it's not some sort of misplaced sense of nostalgia for eastern collegiate football.

At some point the Big East game of the week will feature two teams playing a conference game. Sadly, it's usually Miami-Rutgers or Virginia Tech-Temple.

The more worth putative Big East game of the week - BC-UConn - was shown by the local WB station using a Connecticut station's feed. UConn looked pretty good in a losing cause (24-14). If their QB can find the range with any regularity (he overthrew a number of balls yesterday). They have a strong possibility of being bowl eligible, though as an independent stand little chance of going unless they can knock off Virginia Tech or Wake Forest.

FWIW, going back to the Big East game of the week, it ended just in time to go to OSU-NCSU's overtimes. I'm still puzzled by the two QB sneaks called by the Wolfpack in the third OT. That game led to us not joining ND-Michigan until the second quarter, and quite honestly they could have fired up the provincialism and shown Holy Cross-Georgetown instead. Very unpretty.

In the interest of equal time, I passed on the prime time games (seeing just bits of the Nebraska-Penn State tilt) so we could watch the finale of Race to the Altar, a very generic NBC reality offering that pitted 8 couples against each other, with the winner getting a dream wedding.

The show itself was like a combination of Fear Factor and Double Dare, mixing physical challenges with scavenger hunt-type events.

We caught last week's episode and decided to tune back in for the finale, which was, well, perhaps not worth the wait but about as good as anything else on TV at the time. Most interesting moment from last night was during the final event, when both couples couldn't figure out that a clue referring to the City of Light should have sent them to the Paris hotel and casino (the show being set in Vegas). One couple took the part of the clue about going up something to mean the Stratosphere, while the other asked their cabbie and went back to where they started at the Fremont Street Experience. Not surprisingly, both couples asked the elevator attendants at the Paris about a place that might have a genie and a lamp (thankfully, otherwise they'd have wound up in Reno or something).

Seriously, if either couple went to the Paris directly, they'd have won by a mile. Idiots. Then again, on last week's episode none of the couples could pronounce Liberace's name, leading to delays on all sides. So sad.