Consider the following:

Our playcalling, both offensively and defensively, is predictable, and our refusal to make halftime adjustments has repeatedly burned us. The coaching staff views changes at halftime as a sign of weakness; darn straight! But I’d rather see us fix those weaknesses than ignore their existence. The same thing can now be said about our football program as a whole. I’m not calling for Coach Harris’s head, but as a contributor to Pitt athletics, I want to see the leadership of the football program acknowledge the obvious problems therein and work to change them.

Okay, I changed two words in this paragraph and deleted a parenthetical. This was really written by a die-hard Hokie fan about his football team.

Here’s the real statement.

Our playcalling, both offensively and defensively, is predictable, and our refusal to make halftime adjustments has repeatedly burned us. The coaching staff views changes at halftime as a sign of weakness; darn straight! But I’d rather see us fix those weaknesses (for example, our failure to cover Heath Miller) than ignore their existence. The same thing can now be said about our football program as a whole. I’m not calling for Coach Beamer’s head, but as a contributor to Virginia Tech athletics, I want to see the leadership of the football program acknowledge the obvious problems therein and work to change them.

No one here at PSB is calling for Walt Harris’s head. We have longstanding criticisms, that haven’t changed.

In light of the pathetic loss on Saturday night there are predictable pieces saying Harris can’t win the big one (but Ron Cook wouldn’t want to lay any blame on his boy Paul Rhoads, now would he?). And of course, there is the rekindled question of whether Harris should stay.

Here’s just a short list of things that have to change under Walt Harris:

— Re-teach the fundamentals on defense. You know, tackling instead of just hitting. You don’t have to fire Rhoads, who, it must be conceded, did seem to have the defense doing well the previous two years; but something changed, and it wasn’t that the talent dropped that greatly for the defense to plummet so far this year.

— Re-educate the offensive line on how to block. The line didn’t seem to have a lot of holding penalties this year, but they sure didn’t do much for the running game. Nor could they provide much protection for Rutherford if the defense chose to blitz.

— The game plan is not written in stone. You need to show some flexibility with the plan at halftime. If things aren’t working to this point, acknowledge the problem and adjust. Also, if things are working, be prepared to still make some variations because the odds are that the other side might try to adjust.

— What else?

In light of Nebraska Athletic Director, Steve Pederson, firing Frank Solich as head coach of football; there is the usual speculation as to who will get the job. Harris’s name has been mentioned often. His main qualification seems to be that Pederson (when he was the Pitt AD) hired him at Pitt.

I’ll spare you any suspense: no, Walt isn’t going to Nebraska.

Solich was fired because recruiting was falling off, he was often being outcoached, and he couldn’t win the big conference games — Texas, Oklahoma and Kansas St.

Harris could definitely help on the recruiting, but even there the questions abound about Pitt’s lack of good linemen (offense and defense) that is the lifeblood of any successful program (and even more important to HuskerNation).

If the Panthers are going to become one of the elite teams in Division I-A, they will have to make a big improvement on both line. That means recruiting better linemen, something they have struggled to do in recent years.

There are four freshman from Ohio who redshirted this year who should provide some help on the offensive line, but there doesn’t appear to be many answers within the program for the defensive line.

Here’s a damning number — 2. That is the total number of linemen drafted from Pitt under Harris.

n short, the Panthers could not get it done in the trenches. And, when you look at past history, perhaps that shouldn’t be a shock. In his seven years, Harris has had just one offensive lineman drafted — Bryan Anderson in the seventh and final round this past April — and just on defensive lineman selected — end Bryan Knight in the fifth round in 2002.

As for the other two areas game coaching and big wins, well Harris hasn’t shown much to merit the Nebraska job at this point.

Harris is on the list because people need a list, and he’s an easy name to write down.

A lot of people think Bo Pelini will get the interim tag removed. In Lincoln, they are still trying to get a handle on Pederson.

I think Pelini is a solid candidate to replace Solich, but his lack of head-coaching experience could be an issue.

Also at issue is Pederson’s fondness for surprising people. He likes to wow folks with the unexpected.

His hiring of Northern Arizona’s Ben Howland as men’s basketball coach at Pittsburgh was a shock to many Panther fans, but it turned out to be a brilliant move.

Another of Pederson’s hires at Pittsburgh, football coach Walt Harris, has been mentioned as a possible replacement for Solich.

Don’t bank on that one, and whatever you do, don’t bet against Bo.

Nebraska still doesn’t know how good a hire Pederson was.

Just in case you didn’t watch ESPN’s College Gameday Saturday morning, they showed ESPN recruiting analyst Tom Lemming’s current top ten recruiting classes for 2004. Lemming’s top ten looked a lot like the current top ten in the polls: Oklahoma, USC, Texas, LSU, Michigan, and Ohio State were all there. However, Penn State was nowhere to be seen.

This surprised me greatly, in that all I’ve been hearing from the Central Pennsylvania media (especially Blue White Illustrated and Neil Rudel at the Altoona Mirror) is that Penn State currently has the number one recruiting class in the country. What gives?

Incidentally, Lemming also gave his top ten “surprise” classes. These consisted of five schools who are currently recruiting far below where the should be, and five schools who are currently recruiting far better than they typically have over the past few years. Notre Dame was in the former group (he mentioned that the Irish only have one real blue-chipper to date). And, of course, Pitt was in the latter group. Lemming mentioned that we have one heck of a class coming in — starring Morelli.

On the Men’s College Basketball front, we have the Pitt-Duquesne game at the Polumbo Center Wednesday night and Pitt-Penn State at the Bryce Jordan Center Saturday. I will likely attend the latter of these games, because tickets are just so gosh darn easy to get to Penn State hoops games these days!

Happy birthday to me, goddammit.