He’s as fired up as the players:

Dave Wannstedt had a bit of a bounce in his step as he approached the microphone yesterday to address the media for his first game-week news conference as the Panthers’ head coach. Months and months of anticipation and hype about the program, about recruits, about a new attitude have overshadowed the main reason Wannstedt came to town in the first place — to coach football.

Saturday, the Panthers will play host to Notre Dame at Heinz Field in a nationally televised game.

“We are here! Game week!” Wannstedt declared with all of the excitement of a young kid anticipating opening his presents on Christmas morning.

He’s exerting a calming influence.

Pitt coach Dave Wannstedt does not want his players to get too psyched, too soon for Saturday’s game against Notre Dame.

“It will build up soon enough,” he said. “This is not going to be, ‘Win one for the Gipper,’ because there’s going to be enough emotion and excitement in a game like this. The real key, I think, is not to let it happen too soon. You want to build it gradually.

“If anything, I’m going to be slowing ’em down a little bit, trying to let it take its natural course and not get ahead of ourselves.”

There’s plenty happening this week.

A pep rally and bonfire — “I can’t remember the last time I went to a bonfire,” Wannstedt said, smiling — will be held at 8:30 p.m. Thursday on the Cathedral of Learning’s law.

ESPN will station its GameDay crew at Heinz Field. Lee Corso, one of the cable network’s resident college football gurus, will do a book signing from 7 to 9 p.m. Friday at Petersen Events Center.

“Guru” and “Lee Corso” do not belong in the same sentence together unless a negative modifier is included. Also surprising, is that Corso will not be signing picture books but copies of the ESPN College Football Encyclopedia. No truth to the report that he signs in crayons.

This AP Piece about Pitt developing a running game and more balanced offense has been getting in a lot of papers.

Here’s the one thing to remember about Pitt’s offense last year. As much as it gets characterized as a pass-only offense (as opposed to a more pass-first), Pitt’s problem was that it was unable to effectively run the ball. Taking out all of Tyler Palko’s carries shows that Pitt ran the ball 319 times, or about 26.5 times per game. Also remember that Pitt had no featured back. Whether due to injury and just trying to find the hot hand. Yes, Pitt passed more than they ran, but given the line and where the talent was, that made more sense.

Offensive Coordinator Matt Cavanaugh gets a puff piece looking back on 1977 when he broke his wrist in the opening game of the season — against ND.

Is it any wonder that high on Cavanaugh’s priority list for Pitt’s offense Saturday night is keeping quarterback Tyler Palko clean and safe?

That would give Pitt a better chance of beating Notre Dame than it had in that 1977 game after Cavanaugh was injured. Notre Dame was ranked No. 3 at the time, Pitt No. 7. The Panthers had won the national title the year before in no small part because of Cavanaugh, their quarterback. He was named MVP of their 27-3 rout of Georgia in the Sugar Bowl on a night his more celebrated teammate, Tony Dorsett, closed out his Heisman Trophy-winning career by rushing for a Sugar Bowl-record 202 yards.

“Tony was gone and it was supposed to be my team in ’77,” Cavanaugh said. “I was the guy who was supposed to carry us. That’s why what happened was so devastating.”

Cavanaugh marched Pitt down the field on its opening drive. But at the Irish 12 late in the first quarter, he was chased out of the pocket and forced to roll to his right. Just before the sideline, he planted and threw back across his body to wide receiver Gordon Jones. An instant later, defensive end Willie Fry planted him in the Pitt Stadium turf.

People would joke a few years later that this was the first of two times that Fry would play a cruel trick on Pittsburgh. He was the Steelers’ No. 2 draft choice in 1978 but never made it in the NFL.

No one was laughing after Cavanaugh was hurt, though. It didn’t matter that he completed that pass to Jones for a touchdown and a 7-0 Pitt lead or that the Panthers would add a safety to boost the margin to 9-0. His left wrist was broken. Pitt wasn’t going to win this game against that opponent without him. Backup quarterback Wayne Adams had trouble even getting the snaps from All-American center Tom Brzoza. The Panthers fumbled eight times, losing five. They didn’t score again and lost, 19-9.

Yeep.

The one extra advantage ND can arguably have, is that 2 members of their coaching staff worked with Coach Wannstedt with the Dolphins.

Bill Lewis is not too familiar with Pitt — which is no surprise, considering it has been 37 years since he worked there an assistant coach.

However, Lewis knows a lot about Pitt coach Dave Wannstedt. They spent the past six years together on the Miami Dolphins coaching staff.
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“Whatever information (about Wannstedt’s schemes) that coach Weis would want me to share, I’ll certainly share,” Lewis said. “We’ll try to study Dave’s background and then the background of his coordinators and so forth.”

Just as Weis and Lewis are trying to climb into Wannstedt’s head out in South Bend, Ind., Wannstedt’s crew is doing the same thing over at the South Side complex.

Wannstedt expects Weis to incorporate some of New England’s offensive tendencies into Notre Dame’s schemes.
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In that regard, Weis might have an edge on Wannstedt, because he has another ex-Dolphins assistants on his staff. Irish tight ends coach Bernie Parmalee performed the same duties for Wannstedt the past three years.

“We pretty much knowns that style (Wannstedt) likes to play, but that doesn’t guarantee that he’s going to play that style,” Parmalee said. “We just have to do what we have to do, and everyone else has to stop us. We can’t go into a game thinking about what they’re going to do. They have to worry about what we’re going to do.”

However, if they know what we know, and we know that they know we know, and — oh forget it.