I don’t have the energy tonight, I’m just going to pass this along with little more than a blog-esque raised eyebrow and eye-roll.

University of Pittsburgh head football coach Dave Wannstedt will provide guest analysis for FOX Sports’ television coverage of the FedEx Orange Bowl on Jan. 2, 2007, in Miami, Fla.

Wannstedt will join hosts Chris Rose and Jimmy Johnson for pregame, halftime and postgame coverage of the 2007 Orange Bowl matchup featuring ACC champion Wake Forest and Big East champion Louisville.

Well, um, maybe that will be something else to help with recruiting?

I’m not going to do the liveblog tonight. There’s a ton of other b-ball and football I have to keep at least a little bit of attention to watch at the same time. I’ll be posting comments along the way in this post tonight.

8:10: Nice. Pitt off to a 7-0 start before A&M could get their first bucket. 13-5 Pitt, with 15:52 on the clock. Pitt has nailed 3-3 on 3s. The hardest thing in this game, may be keeping interest of the players.

8:28: Pitt now up 24-13. Six Pitt players have scored. Gray already has 7 rebounds in 9 minutes. Cook leads with 8 points. Ramon is only 1-4 shooting, missing a couple wide open 3s. 7 assists on 9 baskets.

8:44: Halftime. Pitt leads 37-26. Pitt is struggling to keep interest in this game. FAMU is not a good team. Cook has led in scoring with 13. Gray has 8 rebounds, but not a lot of touches as the zone FAMU runs keeps Pitt taking jumpers and outside shots. So Pitt has shot only 14-35 (40%) with 16 3-point shots (making 7). The eFG% was 50%. Best stat, though, 12 assists on the 14 baskets. That tells you how well Pitt is passing the ball.

9:15: Pitt up 47-26. The Rattlers are yet to score in the half, 15:18 left. It isn’t that Pitt is even trying at this point. FAMU is just no where near the same class. Jarvis is an idiot, complaining that Pitt isn’t moving the ball enough. 17 baskets, 15 assists. The “problem” is that Pitt hasn’t had to force anything because FAMU isn’t good.

9:18: Greene for FAMU was tossed, after clocking Sam Young somewhere around the head. The refs didn’t hesitate, there is some speculation that he had done something close to it earlier, and repeating it even harsher was enough to toss him.

The Rattlers seem like they are just pissed about being so outclassed. 50-30 with under 14 minutes left.

9:36: Pitt is just playing this out. The best you can say is that Gray has gotten a lot of rest in the second half. This is the time to give Gilbert Brown and a few others some real time. To go cliche, you just want to get this game ended without anyone getting hurt. The body language for FAMU is they just want to go — they’ve taken enough abuse in the non-con and are tired. I can’t say I blame them. Sanders and Jarvis talked about how Gillespe, the FAMU coach, raised over a million for the athletic department by scheduling guaranteed games like this over the last 7 years. That isn’t raising money. That’s just using the players they have as cannon fodder to build their funds. Send them out there to get the crap beaten out of them.

9:57: Jeff Rizik gets statistical relevance!! He gets his first basket a few seconds before the end of the game. The smiles on the bench makes it great.

It wasn’t an impressive win, despite cruising by 26, 77-51. The best thing you can say is no one got hurt. The team gets to celebrate the New Year and then everything gets real serious.

Big Day of college basketball today. In the Big East, the marquee game will be the first real game for WVU and UConn as they face off down in Morgantown (2pm ESPN2). I’m more than a little curious about how each team will react to a foe that is not there simply to cash a check.

That, of course, leads in perfectly to tonight’s game against Florida A&M (PDF). The bad news to me, Mike Jarvis will be providing the color commentary. Nothing like some hack, cheating, incompetent coach who doesn’t say anything bad about anyone because he wants back into coaching providing insights. John Sanders is okay. I here him often enough calling MAC football and Cleveland Indians games that he doesn’t bother me.

This is a game, even with the expected win, that will drop Pitt’s RPI.

Florida A&M lost to Florida by 15 points (72-57), but it lost to Illinois by 21 (84-63) and was hammered by Maryland (93-54), Bradley (107-75), Illinois-Chicago (75-57) and Miami (Ohio) (52-33).

The Rattlers, who have an RPI of 205, also eked out a 66-65 against North Florida (1-10) in their previous game. And three of their six victories were against non-Division I teams Warner Southern, Edward Waters and Albany, Ga., State. They also beat Savannah State and Bethune-Cookman, both of which are considered among the worst 10 programs in Division I.

In other words, Florida A&M appears to be the perfect opponent for a Top 10 team in need of an easy tuneup before conference play.

Uh, yeah. The team seems to be past the little nagging injuries. Naturally there are half-hearted attempts to build up the opponent.

“They’ve played a few teams real tough,” Gray said. “They have some good players. It’s going to be a good test. If you overlook one team, that’s when they make it a close game or even beat you.”

Said Young, “They seem like they shoot it well.”

That’s fine and okay with me to end the non-con with a patsy. Especially with the BE schedule about to kick in rather harshly — at Syracuse, USF (okay, that’s not the harsh part), at DePaul, Georgetown, UConn and Marquette. All in eighteen days. That DePaul to UConn stretch is a 6 day period. That’s going to be the brutal part since it’s at DePaul and you just don’t know which Blue Demon team will appear.