Gottlieb has a nice gig. He has his schtick where he attempts to be controversial by going against the conventional wisdom and popular things. It gets him pub, generates attention and makes his minders at ESPN happy. Reality and consistency have no place in this world.

Right now, Pitt is hot, so it is time to hate on Pitt. Keith got into it with him during his chat (Insider subs) today. Keith specifically challenged him with regards to a comparison to Florida. He refuses to directly answer.

Now it starts to get fun as we have Mr. Gottlieb as one of the first ESPN.com “experts” to put Pitt in his Power-16, back in December.

Pitt makes my Power 16 because they played and won a road game! Their stay could be short-lived if they do not become more effective on offense as Wisconsin comes to Peterson Events Center.

His definition of “effective” must be different from others. The South Carolina game was ugly, but proved to be the exception.

Now, Gottlieb on the air and in his chat denigrated what Pitt has done so far, because they just haven’t done enough — other than winning — even if no one really expected much from them. So what does he write in his weekly watch, this week?

Texas A&M lost two games but gained a ton of respect in the Big 12 this week. The Aggies lead most of the Oklahoma State game behind Acie Law‘s 35 points before falling 79-77 on the road and then controlled Oklahoma at home Saturday before Terrell Everett‘s 3-pointer with six seconds remaining helped the Sooners to a 45-44 road win.

Billy Gillispie has charged life into a program that has never won a Big 12 tournament game. He has caught some heat in the conference for playing the league’s weakest non-conference schedule during both of his seasons in College Station, but this week, A&M is at Kansas State and Iowa State and we’ll find out if all the confidence the Aggies built up in the nonconference season will hold up, especially after two tough losses.

So, let me get this straight, a team that has a non-con SOSof 303, had home wins against Auburn and Penn State by a total of 10 points compared to Pitt by a combined 74, has lost their close conference games to teams like Oklahoma State and Oklahoma, not to mention losing to Pacific (not that there’s any shame in that), and beat North Texas by 2 points. But they are impressing?

The cheap and easy assumption (and shot) is that since Gottlieb got his second chance at Oklahoma State after his, uh, incidents at Notre Dame is that he is showing just a touch of bias. I don’t think so. It’s part of his schtick.

Really, how do you argue with someone who has no opinion, only a desire to generate “controversy?”