Okay, let’s get it out of the way. Pitt appears to have had a second member of the 2015 signing class flip to PSU. Last week it was TE Nick Bowers, today LB Kevin Givens. Penn State  has closed strong. In addition to flipping 2 verbals, they beat out Pitt for Shareef Miller and John Petrishen.

It’s frustrating, and it adds an extra level of annoyance because of to where they flipped. And if it happens next year, I might muster some real anger. Not this year. Not after a coaching change.

At the end of the day, this is not atypical after a coaching change. It’s flux. Guys who seemed sure and stable to commit have to rethink things. New coaches that have come in and may be able to make most of the players feel good about things, but it won’t be that way for all of them. It’s why coaches for other teams will still “touch base” and check in on players even after they commit. You never know.

(more…)

This is a long post but since there isn’t a PITT basketball game for a few days it’s something for us to read,listen to and discuss.

At first I wasn’t that excited about listening to the interview but once I realized how in-depth Paul Zeise was getting I re-started the interview and took four full pages of notes. I had to paraphrase some of the info below but these are Paul Zeise’s thoughts (not mine). I added some background and italicized some of the more interesting info.

Linked below is a interesting and detailed interview with the P-G’s Paul Zeise conducted by the Wisconsin Football Blog Buckaround.com which is much like The PITT Blather is to PITT football. The interview is Episode 63 titled “Paul Chryst: PITT Head Coach with Paul Zeise” The podcast is about 50 minutes long and I urge all of us PITT fans to take the time to listen to it.  Zeise doesn’t pull any punches when discussing the recent history of PITT football and has some very  interesting ‘inside info’ .

It is a pretty hard hitting and very insightful discussion by someone who was right in the middle of everything as a PITT beat writer working with PITT’s football program from 2014 on back. With the recent, welcomed changes in the football program and how the administration is unfolding and the fruits of that happening, it is inevitable that when discussing PITT football we’ll cast back to the last three HCs we had before Narduzzi and their impacts on the program.

Something to remember about Paul Zeise is that just because he was taken off the P-G PITT football beat prior last season he still was very involved and privy to the inner-working of the football program, especially with his family’s’ experience with the recruiting process, but he wasn’t writing about it due to a conflict of interest. (more…)