Okay. Nothing like late breaking news for a Friday, but…

Quarterback Mark Myers, who had a chance to be Tino Sunseri’s backup this season, is leaving the Pitt football team and hopes to transfer to a Division III school.

Myers’ departure leaves Pitt with three quarterbacks, including freshman Chad Voytik and sophomore Trey Anderson.

Well, nothing like waiting until the last minute. Best of luck to Myers.

Mildly surprised he’s dropping all the way down to D-III. Best guess is he’s moving back to the Cleveland area and will attend one of the many D-III schools — John Carroll, Baldwin-Wallace… That would explain dropping down that far.

That narrows the field of the back-up QB spot to Anderson or Voytik. I really don’t think they are sending Gonzalez back to the QB spot. Voytik’s odds of redshirting just got a little slimmer.

UPDATE: Oh, boy. Left Tackle Juantez Hollins has been suspended for the entire season. For the always nebulous “violation of team policy.” Hollins had also been suspended for the spring game.

Freshman Chris Davis has a suspension for the first week of training camp. He’ll be permitted to join the team on August 12.

Sorry football, this is another basketball post. It’s a significant recruiting item.

St. Benedict's Prep F Mike Young will announce his college choice Saturday, head coach Mark Taylor confirms to @SNYtv. MCA says Pitt or UF

— Adam Zagoria (@AdamZagoria) August 3, 2012

A bit surprising in that Mike Young had not indicated that he was going to be making a decision this soon. So, there is always reason to be nervous. Especially if Billy Donovan and Florida are the other finalist.

Young is a big target for Pitt. He’s a Pittsburgh native who started at Shadyside Aacademy before heading to New Jersey for better basketball competition.

Young is a consensus 4-star power forward. He’s 6-8 and somewhere between 210-225 pounds. He plays in the post. Even better, wants to play in the post. Rivals.com ranks him at #102 nationally. Scout.com says #92. ESPN.com says #67. All of these rankings are from before the summer tournament season, so the rankings are subject to some significant revisions in the coming weeks.

A few basketball items to put out there before football becomes the primary.

Lists. Lists. Lists.

Okay, just one. Athlon follows up ranking the coaches in each conference with an overall list of top college basketball coaches. Coach Jamie Dixon ranks 13th on the list which is more than respectable. Izzo ranks first in case you were wondering who was #1.

Still no word on the final game for the non-conference schedule. And hence, no schedule announced from Pitt. As part of the trend, the only pre-season tournament that hasn’t announced its seedings is the one in which Pitt will participate.

The Atlantis Bracket announcement Thursday leaves just one major tournament to be completely unveiled: the 16-team NIT Season Tip-Off Nov. 21-23. The four hosts are Kansas State, Pitt, Virginia and Michigan. If you were to seed this event then it would probably go 1. Michigan. 2. Kansas State. 3. Pitt 4. Virginia. Virginia and Pitt probably have the most to gain. Michigan and Kansas State play in power-rating rich conferences and are playing strong schedules. Pitt is in the Big East, which will provide plenty of RPI pop and quality wins, but has a soft nonconference slate, putting even more pressure on this event.

No matter what, Pitt will get hammered by the punditry for its non-con this year.

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Ever since Cinci joined the Big East, they have been trying to play catch-up in terms of facilities and bringing in money. Really, for most of their time in the Big East they have been in the red. Now, they want their cut from the extra money the Big East has to deal with their issues.

“We had some conversations about it yesterday,” said UC athletic director Whit Babcock. “Hopefully we’ll know by the end of the calendar year. Not all of those payments are in lump sums. Some of them are a five-year payment. There’s also entrance fees, which for Houston, SMU and those schools is $2.5 million to come in to the league — $500,000 for five years. So we’ve got entrance fees. We’ve got exit fees. I hate to see those schools go, but we’ve got a new successful league and I’ll be happy to take the funding.”

Babcock said the school is continuing to move forward on plans and funding for the renovation of Fifth Third Arena and Nippert Stadium.

The Big East, of course is saying, “Whoah. Slow down with all this money talk. We don’t really have that much… Or a plan.”

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A big theme for Big East Media Day was the status of Ray Graham’s ACL. There’s no specifics on it. Just that it is coming along and Graham plans to be ready.

Senior running back Ray Graham said he plans to play Sept. 1, when Pitt opens the season against Youngstown State, but he won’t push his recovery from a serious right knee injury beyond the limits of his body.

“You definitely ease your way into it,” he said. “I think I’m Superman, but at the end of the day, we aren’t really Superman.”

He and Coach Chryst are definitely planning on taking it cautiously in getting him ready. That means protecting him in training camp.

Graham says his knee feels good, but coach Paul Chryst prefers to be cautious with his star player and won’t rush him back too quickly. Graham will open camp with a non-contact jersey, and then the training staff will take it from there to see how he does.

“No matter how your workouts go in the summer, once you start doing the football over and over, we have to be smart and say let’s make sure he’s progressing and not taking steps back,” Chryst said. “I’d rather be a little bit cautious than speed it up out of the gates too fast.

“He has to get where he can trust himself first and build the pieces of contact. So I’d err on being much more cautious with him, until you know they know they’re not thinking about it and they can just go.”

Graham says he plans on wearing a knee brace initially just to be sure he has enough stability in his knee to be able to make his cuts without thinking about getting hurt again.

“I feel good, my confidence is there. At the end of the day it’s more of a mental thing,” Graham said. “I don’t want to be out there timid because I don’t want to get hurt again. I worked too hard for this. I put too much sacrifice and hard work to getting back to being healthy.”

And let’s be really honest. Graham has NFL RB potential. That’s his economic future. He’s already going to be downgraded by NFL front offices regardless of how well he comes back because of the ACL injury. Coming back slowly lessens the chance of any setbacks — and more red flags.

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When they post them I’ll put up links to the Big East interviews of players and coaches. After the interim and associate commissioners took their turns to start Big East Media Day, the Big East Coaches all got turns at the podium. Let’s just say that Chryst won the award for brevity. He got up there said a few words and was done. It really did seem to be a blink and you will miss this situation. The contrast between him and Fraud Graham is very obvious at times. None more so than when it comes to getting in front of a group and a camera. Right now it’s refreshing, charming, and looked at as a positive. “He’s a coach. He doesn’t care about the self-promotion and wasting time with the other BS. He gets “it.” It’s refreshing…”

It’s also real easy to see how that can be turned against him if things don’t go right. “He doesn’t get it. It’s not just the coaching, but selling the program and what he wants to do. It’s not helping recruiting. He’s alienating the fans with his unwillingness to engage…” He might want to give Walt Harris a call and see if he can get some pointers about what to avoid on that respect.

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Okay, I really would love for this to stop at some point. Yet Fraud Graham makes it just too damn easy.

Chris Peak at PantherLair passed this along.

RT @WACJack: OK, I admit to laughing at Todd Graham making his players sign a commitment pledge: http://t.co/KRcPmoPY

— Chris Peak (@PantherLair) August 1, 2012

What is the image? Oh, this:

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Let me echo (in a variation) the comments Paul Zeise made about “rooting” for the Big East’s survival. I’m rooting for the football schools in the Big East to survive. USF, Louisville, Rutgers, Cinci and even UConn. They’ve been stuck in the same boat as Pitt for a while. And their path really doesn’t get any easier. They’re stuck in the conference because there is no other choice right now. These aren’t programs that haven’t put any effort into their football and sports. They aren’t coasting on the conference. Yet they are stuck. It could very easily have been Rutgers or UConn heading to the ACC instead of Pitt or Cuse, and we’d be bemoaning Pitt’s plight.

Yeah, I have nothing but contempt for most of the conference framework. The basketball-side that controls too much. The continuing kow-towing to Notre Dame. Even that chunk of media that somehow romanticizes the Big East of the 80s as something pure — when it was created solely to make money for the programs and try to shield basketball-only schools from the growing power of college football. And the host of other issues.

That doesn’t mean I want the football schools screwed.

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