With only 7 full games (he started game 8, but went down in the first minutes of the game) Ray Graham still was impressive enough to be named 1st Team All-Big East. He couldn’t win offensive player of the year (that went to Cinci RB, Isiah Pead), but it is still a solid accomplishment.

Graham — probably not surprisingly — was the only Pitt player named to the All-Big East Team (1st or 2d).

On defense, Pitt placed five players. Only Safety Jared Holley, however, was a 1st teamer. Chas Alecxih, Aaron Donald, Max Gruder and Antwuan Reed were all named to the 2nd team. Somewhat surprisingly, Brandon Lindsey didn’t make either team. The Big East stats stuff list him as a linebacker which may have contributed to the confusion.

You know what’s sad? Well, many things regarding expansiopocolypse, but what is sad for purposes of this post is that the Big Sprawl Logo that FearTheStache did for me last year is now outdated.

We need the entire Continental US on the logo (don’t worry, I’m sure the University of Alaska Seawolves will be invited soon to add that all-important Anchorage market).

It is comical that the Big East is keeping its name. Apparently “Big Least” jokes are funny to the offices in Providence as well. Hell, I realize they think it has cache in basketball, but the name is not like the Pac-[insert number here], the SEC, Big 10, ACC or even the Big 12. This is the time to change it up — and get the offices the hell out of Providence. I recommend the CCC, or Coast-to-Coast Conference.

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I’m drafting an ‘end of the season’ piece that I’ll post in the next couple days but here are some thoughts on the “news” Zeise writes about today in the P-G.

There is nothing out of the ordinary when you have division and complaint after a major coaching staff change.  I wrote back in April that in spring practices it looked to me like there was across the board ‘buy-in’ from the players on roster. The players I watched were all excited and active in going about their practices and drills and the ones I talked to were very upbeat and looking forward to the season.   I think that’s pretty much true today also, with some exceptions.

Playing .500 ball during the season didn’t help smooth the transition between a new coaching staff and the new styles of play as much as a winning season would.  Graham pumped these kids up with some pretty high expectations and those dreams of a big season for the seniors not only didn’t happen but it became pretty obvious early on that it wasn’t going to.  Coming back down into reality means there are hard landings sometimes.  That probably skewed some upperclassmen’s opinions.

One thing we fans have to realize is that all the romantic visions of players and staff linking arms and singing Kumbaya just never happens no matter how much fans want it to.

It’s obvious that a few players didn’t like the firing of Dave Wannstedt and have let that influence their senior seasons.  Nix is one I believe and that may be the reason he hesitated on getting back in the lineup.  I don’t think it was any coincidence that he felt better and played the last two games of the season, one of which was the holiday national broadcast of the Brawl.  He had to show the NFL scouts that his injury wasn’t chronic before draft day and he couldn’t take a chance that he’d be able to do that in a bowl game… as PITT certainly wasn’t guaranteed to land in one.  (more…)