The local punditry weighs in with gut feeling expectations for what Pitt’s record should be this year. It’s couched in the usual stuff about how it is really about seeing progress and making strides for the long term. No, let’s keep it simple. It’s about the Wins and Losses. That’s how they and everyone else measures things.

It’s nice to say things like how what you really want is to see the growth of the team. Improvement as the season goes on. Talk about the long term plan and vision by the coach for the team. It comes back to winning more games than last year. Meeting or exceeding the expectations — whether inflated or not.

Joe Starkey puts the wins and losses a bit higher than the reasonable mark of 7-5 (which seems to be the expected record for Pitt if they have an average season).

All those question marks up front. Precious little depth. Too much youth. I could see 6-6.

Palko-Revis-Blades. Highly favorable schedule. Gifted freshman class. I could see 10-2.

So, let’s split the difference and say Pitt will go 8-4 in coach Dave Wannstedt’s second season. That sounds about right. It would mark a significant upgrade on last year’s 5-6 fiasco and point Wannstedt’s semi-rebuilding job in the right direction.

Anything worse than 6-6, and you’ll have every right to seriously question Wannstedt, who addressed reporters on the South Side Monday on the eve of Pitt training camp.

I guess the bright side to severe underachieving last year is that it shouldn’t be as hard to go up. The big issue for the season as far as the column is concerned, the lines.

Does anyone disagree with that conventional wisdom any more? Everyone with even a passing interest in Pitt knows it will be all about the lines.

Ron Cook says something with which I agree. The opening game against Virginia is absolutely crucial for Coach Wannstedt and Pitt.

Sept. 2 wouldn’t be too soon to start.

The opener against Virginia at Heinz Field.

Pitt badly needs to win it.

Wannstedt needs it.

It’s almost unreal how the perception of Wannstedt and the Pitt program has changed so drastically in a year. Last August, people around here were fired up about Pitt football. Wannstedt was seen as the right guy at the right time, the perfect coach to pick Pitt up and carry it to greater heights after Walt Harris had taken it as far as he could. Wannstedt had come in eight months earlier and done everything right. He was a Pittsburgh guy — a Pitt man, to be more specific — and came with a long NFL resume. His energy and enthusiasm were contagious. He mended fences with the local coaches and recruits. He reached out to alumni and fans. He recruited aggressively. And — get this — he talked openly about competing for a national championship.

How sweet that sounded.

Now I don’t buy a lot of the sky is falling, people are turning on Wannstedt stuff locally. Yeah, there was a fair amount of that nationally, but that was just reinforcing past perceptions from the NFL head coaching stuff. Wash out of the NFL and don’t come in like Charlie Weiss in his first year, and that perception will be presumed until proven otherwise. Pete Carroll changed it after an unimpressive first year. So did Al Groh, though, he is regressed back in perception. Chan Gailey and Rich Brooks haven’t changed the perception of inconsistent and overmatched.

The Cook article is great for lowering expectations with some ridiculous predictions for the season and continuing the theme that people have turned on Wannstedt.

Now the man isn’t seen as a savior by nearly so many. If you had a dime for each time someone said, “They should have never let Harris go,” you’d be a wealthy person.

There also are minimal expectations for the Pitt team this season. There isn’t nearly the same anticipation for the Virginia game that there was for Notre Dame. Some have predicted 3-9 or 4-8 for the Panthers.

Shame on ’em.

Shame on those who have given up on Wannstedt after just one season, disappointing and embarrassing as it was.

Shame on those who have lowered the bar so drastically for this Pitt team.

It’s a strawman argument. Now, admittedly I don’t catch Pittsburgh sports radio, so in between the Steelers, Pitt basketball, complaints about the Pirates and Penguins performance and such, I don’t know how the team is being treated for what 5 minutes a week? I have noted the P-G chats and most other media. It doesn’t seem particularly harsh and neither do the fans. I definitely haven’t seen anyone predicting only 3 or 4 wins for the team.
That said, he is absolutely right about Pitt needing the Virginia game. It’s the season and home opener. A definitely beatable opponent. The team can’t come out flat. It doesn’t have to be a blowout, but Pitt, Coach Wannstedt and all the coaches have to look like they know what they are doing. Have a recognizable and working gameplan. And yes, win.

Finally, a column about the “wall” around Western PA that Coach Wannstedt is trying to build.

With photos to be taken of all the players individually, with their position mates and with their high school alumni, someone needs to be in charge. But, predictably, a mild form of chaos can ensue as players file to and from the photo area.

Yet, five letters managed to bring Media Day to a halt when Borghetti bellowed, “WPIAL” at the top of his lungs.

A drove of young men filtered from all sections of the practice field on Pittsburgh’s South Side to near the 50-yard line. Thirty-eight in all found their way to the lineup, and two (media darlings Darrelle Revis and Tyler Palko) didn’t hear the command and had to be dragged away from pressing interviews.

And that mass didn’t include a pair of City League alumni and two players from nearby Johnstown.

Dave Wannstedt’s wall around western Pennsylvania? It was formed by the 60 or so remaining players who watched photos being snapped.

Pitt’s second-year coach and Baldwin native made the wall a platform for his coaching campaign, even after a 5-6 record last year. He said he’d do whatever necessary to keep western Pennsylvania’s best prospects in western Pennsylvania.

Hoopie fans and Penn St. fans point to any WPa kid that doesn’t go to Pitt as proof that either the “wall” Wannstedt wants has already failed or that it galvanized their coaches to recruit and work harder in WPa. Of course, the idea was to build a wall, not claim it was just going to be formed the minute Coach Wannstedt and the coaches started recruiting. But whatever sets their mind at ease that trying to get prospects from Western Pennsylvania away from Pitt is not harder and more challenging than before.