Stuck working all afternoon, and no where near a computer. This is why I was really ticked about the SI.com story. It meant no chance to do any basketball stuff before the game.

So, I have to set this up now, and set it to go out a little later.

This is one of the can’t lose games. USF is really bad. Pitt, though, didn’t give a good effort last time. They had about 15 minutes and that was enough. They need to do more this time.

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Crud. I wanted to focus on basketball today and for a little while. That went out the window with the SI/CBS News freakout piece on Criminal Records in College Football. I still would have ignored it as being yet another piece without a lot of context, but plenty of scary numbers and implied accusations.

But there’s a problem. Pitt got to be the poster-boy for this.

Few football programs had a more difficult season in 2010 than the University of Pittsburgh. Led by running back Dion Lewis, a Doak Walker candidate, the Panthers were the preseason pick to win the Big East and go to a BCS bowl. But things quickly began unraveling — on and off the field.

In a span between mid-July and late September, four players were arrested for four separate, violent crimes.

…

Before this rash of arrests, Pitt had no procedure for screening football recruits for past trouble with the law. But after Knox’s arrest Pitt’s athletic department implemented a new policy requiring coaches to seek more detailed background information on potential recruits.

“This evaluation is not a legal criminal background check,” the school said in a statement. “Rather, it is a checklist of questions that attempts to gain greater knowledge of the behavior and citizenship of an individual prospect from a variety of people.”

It’s a good first step, but doesn’t go far enough. An unprecedented six-month investigation by Sports Illustrated and CBS News found that Pittsburgh had more players in trouble with the law (22) than any other school among SI’s 2010 preseason Top 25. The joint investigation involved conducting criminal background checks on every player — 2,837 in all — on the preseason rosters of those 25 teams. Players’ names, dates of birth and other vital information were checked at 31 courthouses and through 25 law enforcement agencies in 17 states. Players were also checked through one or more online databases that track criminal records. In all, 7,030 individual record checks were performed.

Pitt chancellor Mark Nordenberg and athletic director Steve Pederson declined requests for comment, but the school issued another statement, which said, “We have publicly acknowledged the unacceptable number of off-the-field incidents involving members of our football program during the past season. We have addressed these with the appropriate sanctions and spoke out against such behavior.”

And if you believe the undercurrents of rumors/message boards with the subtext of AD Pederson’s comments after Wannstedt’s firing, then you know part of the way it was addressed.

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