Sadly I couldn’t make it out to Pittsburgh for FanFest or any of the practices this time. Hard to believe that the first college football games are in less than a week. The Big East will kick off on Thursday with 3 games as official ESPN programming filler — games on regional, ESPN360 (expect more of it) and ESPNU.

Add another Pittsburgh columnist to the conventional wisdom pile of wait until 2008 just before the start of 2007.

None of that will add up to a breakthrough campaign, but we should finally get a glimpse of how Wannstedt intends to win big in 2008 and beyond.

This year will be about taking the formula from the chalkboard to the trenches.

In doing so, Pitt will turn a significant corner.

That’s reason enough to be encouraged, if not overly optimistic.

If that wasn’t enough, there was this gem.

If the front four can generate consistent pressure, it’ll allow defensive coordinator Paul Rhoads to blitz when he wants to rather than when he feels he has to.

Oh, god no. If Rhoads is allowed to only blitz when he wants to, then we’ll never see it. Really, that’s just an indictment of how little Prisuta knows about Pitt and Rhoads’ tenure/philosophy. He doesn’t blitz. He doesn’t like it. It has never been his thing.

The scrimmage on Wednesday was quite limited contact and a lot of players resting, so it didn’t reveal much.

The scrimmage wasn’t much of a workout for many starters, as a handful were rested due to various bumps and bruises. Starting tailback LaRod Stephens-Howling had just one carry, but it went for 44 yards.

Not to mention banged up lines — and it’s still a week until the first game.

Still, Pitt needs some of its starting linemen such as tackles Jeff Otah (hamstring) and Jason Pinkston (shoulder) and guard Joe Thomas (shoulder) to get healthy in a hurry. The same goes for senior defensive end Chris McKillop (elbow, hamstring).

“Our line is at a disadvantage right now,” Wannstedt said.

From the Zeise Q&A today.

Q: Will Pitt get a marquee victory against Louisville, West Virginia or Rutgers this year?

ZEISE: If I knew answers to questions like that, I’d retire tomorrow and move to Las Vegas and become the next Ace Rothstein. I will say one thing that has been disappointing about the first two years of this new regime is that the Panthers have failed to beat a team they weren’t supposed to beat. They haven’t pulled any upsets, so that would be a great sign of progress if they could knock off one of those teams, or even Virginia or Michigan State. This team needs to beat a team it isn’t supposed to beat this year.

[Emphasis added.]

To follow that up, what only makes it worse is that Pitt has lost 2 games in those first two years that it shouldn’t have (Ohio in 2005 and UConn in 2006). You can argue that but for a play here, a stop there and they would have been wins — and Pitt would have gone to a minor bowl each year — but its still hard to excuse letting it come to that in the first place in those games. It feeds the feeling that the team has underachieved so far.

Part of a sign of progress will be at least beating all the teams Pitt should this season –EMU, Grambling, UConn, Navy, Cinci, Syracuse and either Virginia or Michigan St. on the road. Pitt needs to show something tangible in the wins and losses this year. There has to be more.