I’ll keep this short. One of the most tiresome topics is back.

One of Fran Ganter’s new duties as associate athletic director for football administration is the task of future scheduling.

So who better to ask about the revival of the Pitt-Penn State series?
…
“A big part of me wants to see us play Pitt every year. I realize why [we don’t], but I really thought that was it. I still feel like we can do that. That’s personal.

“I’m just shooting from my hip. Curley would have the biggest say. Well, that’s not true. Joe would have the biggest say. Personally, and this might just be because I’m from Pittsburgh, but they were great games.”

It’s not that I don’t want Pitt and Penn State to play annually. I do, in perpetuity. Very much. On a home-and-home basis. It has been a long standing tenet of this blog. It just is not going to happen for the foreseeable future.

I’ll put it bluntly, there is no way Pitt and Penn State will play each other in football until Joe Paterno is in a box in the ground 6 feet deep. I’d say retired, but I doubt even that; and besides I suspect both will be — let’s just call them — interrelated.

Fran Ganter, was the scapegoat for Penn State’s offense after 2003. Penn St. basically created his position in the athletic department in an effort to make it less obvious that they were blaming the offensive coordinator to deflect it away from Joe and Jay. (I have to believe some small part of Ganter had to be laughing bitterly at the team’s offense in 2004.) His influence on this sort of thing is about as strong as, say, Pitt’s Special Assistant to the Chancellor and Athletic Director.

I have no doubt Penn State loyalists will see this as yet another attempt by the evil Pittsburgh media to “stir things up”. (And even they are starting to worry about Morelli’s intelligence when he describes the Penn State Offensive Playbook as “never-ending.”)

Idle thought, do you think Ganter was the “former assistant football coach” the target for prank calls by 3 PSU players?