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May 27, 2008

The good news about the passing of the Memorial Day weekend, it is the point when the previews for the 2008 college football season starts. Lindy’s will kick things off on the magazine previews this week, followed by Athlon. Sometime in June, will be the Holy Grail of college football previews — Phil Steele (who has Pitt listed at #25). There’s actually one less preview mag this year as Street & Smith’s was bought out by Sporting News (also late June).

As for online previews and punditry, they are already happening. Sunday Morning QB has his preview for Pitt.

If you want one big, optimism-fueling, over-the-rainbow moment, though, it’s obviously the season finale over West Virginia, a sudden display of ball-hogging physicality and defense that set the Mountaineers a-cursin’ their coach right out of town. This was a B12 shot not only for turning the tables on a rival set to play for the mythical championship, but for turning them with defense after a pair of unholy beatings the previous two meetings – White and Steve Slaton alone had 440 total yards in 2005 and an unseemly 639 in 2006, back-to-back 45-point efforts by WVU that could have been much worse. It was, you know…

He’s got some skepticism, and I keep thinking it is warranted. As much as I want to believe this is the year, and the idea that the WVU game will be the springboard, the defense will remain as strong, that the O-line will come together, and the QB issues will be solved. If I was saying this about another team other than Pitt, objectively I’d probably have a lot of doubts.

One thing I can say that SMQ got dead wrong — but I think we will read a lot of this summer — that if Pitt doesn’t deliver Coach Wannstedt is on the hot seat. Not true. There will be fan discontent and anger.

But hot seat to me means job in jeopardy. That isn’t happening. Not with his new contract. Not with the administration and wealthy alumni in his corner. It just won’t happen.

Interestingly enough, 2004, the year Harris took Pitt to the Fiesta Bowl in a very bad year for the Big East might play out again this year. No team in the conference looks particularly dominant or starting from a position of strength. Every team has questions. New coach (WVU), loss of key players (Rutgers and Louisville),  was it smoke and mirrors/can they do it again (Cinci and UConn), who will fail to qualify academically (USF). So, I have to agree with Stewart Mandel at SI.com when he says the Big East is wide open.

That said, if you were to ask me, “Who do you predict will win the Big East,” I would say … probably not West Virginia. Much of that is based on my aforementioned lack of faith in the Bill Stewart regime and the entirely realistic possibility of that program suffering a Louisville-type implosion (though that would more likely come next year), but it’s also because there are a whole bunch of other Big East teams sitting on the verge of a breakthrough. I’m just not sure which one it will be.

Pittsburgh is certainly one of those teams. As inexplicable as the then-4-7 Panthers’ Championship Saturday upset in Morgantown seemed at the time, the result wasn’t entirely fluky. (Remember, Pitt also beat 10-3 Cincinnati prior to that.) The Panthers’ defense was tremendous all season, finishing No. 5 nationally in yards allowed, and anyone who’s watched McCoy knows he’s an All-America-caliber back. The problem, as Pete noted above, was the absolute lack of a passing game. It’s no guarantee, but the return of last year’s opening-day QB Bill Stull and All-Big East WR Derek Kinder from injuries could help solve that.

More later.





Can someone tell me how someone has Pitt ranked 25th? This has to be a joke, just like with Spurrier giving Duke a vote in the coaches’ poll at the beginning of each season. Just because last season’s team caught lightning in a bottle for one game and beat WVU? To me that still doesn’t cancel out the horrible rest of the season. And I’ll be waiting to hear from the Bill Stull cheerleading club, who opine that if only he had not been injured, Pitt would have been undefeated or some crap like that. Ooh, I get what the excuse for the team sucking next season is going to be: bad OLine. Yeah, since last year it was musical QBs, this year it has to be bad OLine if the QB keeps getting rushed. Yeah, just keep defending your Messiah Wannsh*t.

Comment by Joshua 05.27.08 @ 5:26 pm

WOW! So which one are you Josh. Bitter WVU fan? PSU fan who can’t take the old coach jokes from the west? Arrogant ND fan? Perhaps our new favorite breed here at PITT blather…..jealous Akron fan! True, PITT has question marks and has yet to prove anything and everything is based on speculation. And yes, PITT does have holes. But it would be very unfair to write them off. Four of those losses could have easily have been wins. Most of those are against teams they play again next season who lost far more talent than PITT did. Games like Rutgers, L-ville and Navy are very winnable for PITT next season. Nobody is saying they’re the BE favorites but Shady and the defense should be enough to get us 7 or 8 wins this year without a passing game.

Comment by Pabs 05.27.08 @ 5:52 pm

Pitt was a decent team last year. Watch the games before you post nonsense.

Comment by Omar 05.27.08 @ 8:11 pm

I don’t think that Joshua hates Pitt, he hates Wanny! To each his own. I think that last year was really two seasons: Up to and including the Navy game (bad), and; following the Navy game (good, competitive football). I don’t know what changed after the Navy game, but there was a different team on the field. Some say Joshua’s best buddy took over the defensive game planning from Rhodes, others say it was just a matter of the team making steady progress over the season. What ever it was, the Pitt defense played excellent against CIN, Lville, Syracuse, RU, SoFla, and WVU. So, to answer your question Joshua, Pitt is being ranked in preseason polls not just for their dominating performance over WVU…repeat after me “13-9″…but also for the fact that the defense was very good in the last half of the season. It does not figure to get worse this year, and there is reason to belive that offense will be better. By the way, we have been complaining about our OL for the last four years, welcome aboard!!!

Comment by HbgFrank 05.27.08 @ 8:54 pm

Mark Madden gets fired tonight. Boy did he ask you it.

Comment by alcofan 05.27.08 @ 10:14 pm

I am personally disappointed to see Mr. Madden get fired and I hope to see him back in the Pittsburgh sports scene soon.

If you liked him, he provided free entertainment. If you hated him, feel you should have felt free to go up or down the dial. Either way, the guy was a fan of the Pens and more importantly to this site, Pitt athletics.

On a personal note, when I moved out of town, if I was feeling a little homesick in the afternoons, I would stream his show and feel like I was still connected to the local scene.

Smizik is a joke. Mr. Madden will be back.

Comment by johnny 05.27.08 @ 11:08 pm

[…] So, yes, Lindy’s came out yesterday. Pitt’s Athletic Department was ready. Not surprising. They receive advanced copies of these preview guides for a reason. […]


Madden was a fan of Pitt athletics? Did you put something funny in your Lucky Charms this morning? I listened to Madden for about 10-15 minutes, 3-4 times a week, often flipping back and forth between him and that boring guy on Fox 970, and when I did hear Madden talk about Pitt football, he had good things to say about Shady, and offered superficial analysis of the rest of team and its play. He clearly didn’t even bother to watch most Pitt hoops games, well, at least not until late in the season, and it’s fairly clear he didn’t have the hoops knowledge to say anything of particular interest or value about Pitt hoops.

Madden’s problem was that he felt he had to be the Howard Stern of sports radio. “What will he say next?” And, sadly, many people in Pittsburgh fell for it. Personally, I don’t understand the attraction of some guy acting like a megalomaniac and making fun of 80% of his callers.

Don’t let the door hit ya’ in the ass, Mark.

Comment by Carmen 05.28.08 @ 9:07 am

Madden cared more about soccer than Pitt football.

Comment by alcofan 05.28.08 @ 9:25 am

what changed after the navy game was wannstedt injured himself spen the navy game in the booth, saw rhoades crap wasn’t working and why, started defensive game planning and play calling.

Comment by Kurt 05.28.08 @ 9:54 am

Joshua, your only argument is that nobody should be ranked in the preseason. It’s too bad for you that ambitious people publish their thoughts on the upcoming season, but that’s the way it is. Rankings are bandied about very early and luckily for everybody (including all Penn State fans)
Pitt is present in some preseason rankings. I could sit here and ask why BYU, Arizona State and Oregon are ranked by some… but I’ll save it until I actually see them play. That’s the main purpose of these preseason mags for me; they build excitement and speculation for the upcoming season.

Don’t hate just because Akron sucks.

Comment by ChrisA 05.28.08 @ 11:36 am

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