(to follow on from this article’s Part 1.  If you haven’t read that please do so now and this piece will make more sense.)

I did grab James Conner after a while and had a nice talk with him.  I started out by asking him if he was going to let any of the other running backs get carries this season and he said “I hope so, they are real good”.  But what I really stopped him for was to let him know I just had a long conversation with his ‘step’ father Mike Gallagher and it was so obvious that Mike was proud of everything Conner has done since he was a kid.

There really was more to the conversation with Mike Gallagher, who has a strange back story himself, than just his pride in his surrogate son.  Mike is dealing with a serious case of diabetes and will need a kidney transplant sooner than later. I mentioned to him that I was all set for surgery last year for transplanting my kidney to my next door neighbor friend.  That conversation between Mike and I happened at around 9:30 am.

When I got home from Pittsburgh I found out that a kidney had become available for my friend and the hospital’s transplant team called him to tell him at 9:30 – the same time Mike and I were talking about it.  That surgery went well and my friend’s on his way to normal times.

Life is surely inexplicable sometimes, isn’t it?  I mention all that because I told Conner that his work with the kidney foundation is going to pay off big time soon.  I think Conner had expected another stock interview and was pretty happy to have an honest man to man conversation instead.  He’s lost weigh and looks fantastic.

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(This is a long article so I’ll break it up into two parts)

Pitt football held its annual Media Day for fall camp yesterday and I drove up to attend.  It was an interesting day and we media types had time for as much access as allowed given the closed portion of the practices.  We had escort with us so that we can break off separately and tour the new parts of the football facility.  Thanks to Ted Feeley of the Media Staff for doing that with me and answering all of my questions.

All in all it was a good and worthwhile day with some info and ideas we have heard about Pat Narduzzi and the program reinforced and some other bits of new info coming to light with questions asked.

Because most fans don’t get a chance to see these practices and the facilities I took a bunch of photos and will take you all on a tour now and then later on in this article.  What I’ll write here are my impressions from what I learned from talking with the staff, some players and some family members.  My approach was to not repeat what the other media guys will write about,  there really isn’t any ‘football news’ to discuss in the 2^nd day of camp, but to allow you guys a bit of an inside view of things Pitt fans don’t usually get to experience.

Front view of new Players’ meeting room

Comfortable as hell seating

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