A good article on the struggles of the lines of Pitt. Complete with observations from former Pitt coach Foge Fazio and player Tony Siragusa.

Foge Fazio found himself cringing this season while watching the line play of the Pitt football team. Ditto for Tony Siragusa and countless other alumni.

They looked on in disbelief, as Miami, West Virginia and Notre Dame owned the Panthers in the trenches. It was ugly at times.

“You’re kind of like disappointed,” said Fazio, a former player and head coach at Pitt. “I’d sit there with guys I played ball with in the ’50s, and it would be hard to watch. Pitt always had rough, tough guys on the offensive and defensive lines and the theory always was, ‘You might beat us, but you better go over the top to beat us, because we’re going to control you up front.’ We didn’t see enough of that this year.”

They cringed? Every Pitt fan cringed.

Meanwhile, after last week’s debacle against Miami, it was widely assumed that Larry Fitzgerald would lose the Heisman to Jason White, the Oklahoma QB. To quote Lee Corso, “Not so fast, my friend.” White layed an egg in the Big 12 championship, and Sports Illustrated named Fitzgerald its player of the year. The final result next Saturday will be interesting. Tim Layden of Sports Illustrated explained why he voted for Fitzgerald.

Might actually waste part of my Saturday evening watching the presentation now.

Ron Cook of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette with a pathetic piece on jumping on the Pitt basketball bandwagon.

There might be hope yet for the long, hard winter.

It comes in the form of the Pitt men’s basketball team. Heaven knows we need it after watching the underachieving Pitt football team lose too many games at home and seeing the exasperating Steelers lose too many games, period, and hearing of the inconsequential Penguins and their depressing financial plight day after day.

Maybe it’s unfair to put a city’s sports hopes on one college team, but these Panthers seem up for the challenge. If their ridiculously easy 64-37 win against Penn State is any indication, they have everything they need to take another run at the Big East Conference championship and have a long stay in the NCAA tournament.

Nice.

Get realistic. Pitt is likely the 3rd best team in the Big East, behind Syracuse and UConn (and it is a very close #3 with Notre Dame right there). Expectations for Pitt are hopeful but modest. New coach, key players gone, and no clue about this team until conference play starts.

Yes the win over Penn St. was impressive, even if Penn St. really sucks. Still, let’s not put expectations too high right now. I still have some qualms.

I’m very worried about the backup point guard — Antonio Graves. Carl Krauser, the starting PG, played 33 minutes. Graves, a freshman, played 14 minutes. He had no assists, 1 turnover and was scoreless on 0-4 shooting. In the 6 games this year, logged a total of 53 minutes, 4 assists, 3 turnovers, and 13 points (5-16 shooting, 3-8 on 3 pointers). Graves needs a lot of work. An injury to Krauser and the season could be toast.

Really, is there any other way to describe what has happened with the BCS? When Syracuse beat Notre Dame so handily yesterday, I knew the possibility was there for USC to get screwed out of being number 2 in the BCS, despite their win. That would be something of an outrage to some, but it wouldn’t be that much worse than what happened to Miami in 2000 when it was edged out of the BCS by Florida State (a team Miami had beaten head-to-head) to play Oklahoma. Both happened because of the drop in their strength of schedule by the end of the season.

But this. This has been amazing. No one thought Oklahoma would lose to Kansas State, especially so badly. Oklahoma was playing for history, and K-State never beats a team that is clearly better than them. That changed everything. Oklahoma was so far ahead in the BCS rankings that even though it lost the Big 12 championship and dropped to #3 in both the coaches and AP polls, it still remained the #1 BCS team.

Then Louisiana St. beat the snot out of Georgia, which moved them up in the computers and with the pollsters.

The results: USC, the #1 team in the coaches and writers polls won’t play for the BCS championship. The first time this has happened. This also means, that if USC wins in the Rose Bowl against Michigan, there will be a split championship — despite the best laid plans of the BCS.

This will not be the end of the BCS, despite my wishes — and the wishes of many others, and the number of sportswriters wishing for it will be legion — but it has once again exposed it for a complete fraud and joke. There is no spinning this away. There is no way to “tweak” the system. The system failed.

It’s funny. I know a lot of sports pundits have been waiting for it. But, in a way, no one actually wanted to see it, because then it meant actually having a real team screwed over. Not just some construct or hypothetical. I think Jim Rome will be rather ranting filled tomorrow.