Here is the Doctor who also worked very hard to help James in his battle.  Thank You!!

So – A few days then the medicinal entry port comes out of Conner’s chest… then however many days it takes to heal and we are back to full contact for the fall camp.

Note especially here that Conner didn’t want any special treatment as a patient.  That is he wanted to be in the cancer ward with every other patient and did what he could do to make the world a better place for them, and I’m sure their families.  His initial diagnosis wasn’t good, the cancer was very large according to his Dr. and yet he was joyful and, at least publicly, calm every day.

I’d like to take a second and mention someone who most fans don’t know.  Mike Gallagher from Erie, PA is much like a surrogate father to Conner.  He himself has had multiple physical problems that stemmed from a sideline hit in a college game he was covering for his local  newspaper… so he was a great role model and support – as was Gallagher’s family I’m sure – during this entire process.

Mike Gallagher and James Conner are two of sports success stories and I’ll say a big Thank You! to Mike also for all he has done, not just for James, but anyone he has come in contact with. I met Mike last fall and he and I had a long conversation about many things – not all Conner or football related. With guys like Mike involved, even if just on the outskirts, of Pitt’s football program we are in great shape.

One last Conner bit:

Anyone who has watched the sun set over Lake Erie can attest to its beauty.

Two years ago, 15-year-old Meghan Gallagher couldn’t see it from her hospital room at UPMC Hamot, where she spent three weeks getting treatment for a kidney ailment.  And that bothered her friend, James Conner.

During one of his regular after-school visits, Conner decided to do something about it. He knew how much Meghan loved going to the beach and watching the sun set with her father Michael. So he picked Meghan out of a hospital bed, cradled her in his massive arms and set her down in front of a window.

“The sunset relaxed her mind,” Conner said.

Kind of says it all…

Two days ago the Trib had another Chris Peak Podcast, this time with Ken Laird, and they start out talking about the Pitt-Penn State game’s kickoff at noon on Sept 10^th and the accompanying bitching done by Pitt fans. This is a good listen to have on at work in any event:

I’ll say now, and fans may not like it, that the Pitt-Penn State game is important to the state of PA but other than that – and for the rest of the nation – the game is like any other.

It certainly wasn’t like that in the past.  Back when both teams were at the top of the ranking regularly this match-up was an event. Now however we are two programs that college football fans have a short memory about.

Jerry DiPaola has an fun blog about the complains regarding the noon start.

Here we have an example of what I do when I’m bored.  I was thinking about Pitt’s history, uniforms, Pitt-PSU and all the previous doings of Pitt football that we like to discuss on here and came up with the novel idea of … talking about recruiting.

With the above discussions by Peak and Laird about the departures of players and the numbers game to get down from the current 87 (with recruits coming in) roster players down to the mandated 85 bodies I wonder not only who the next two guys to go are, but also, as they discussed in the podcast, which players from the ’16 recruiting class will be prepping at a secondary high school (like Fitzgerald, McCoy and Dion Lewis did) or will be taking a greyshirt.

Here’s a quick guide to what each of these terms means, with some more explanation below.

At Pitt Redshirts are common, Greyshirts not so much.  Trey Anderson was a Blueshirt in that Graham convinced him to come to Pitt right after fall camp started and then once the season started he was put on scholarship.  And of course Pitt always seems to have one or two “Greenshirts” who finish up their SR year in HS early and enroll for Pitt’s Spring semester so they can get a jump on the other recruits in their class.

Chawntez Moss is a good example of this as he came to Pitt before the spring drills even though he is officially in the recruiting class of 2016.  If you remember fans were really hoping Thomas MacVitte would do the same but he elected to have a normal SR year in school with the accompanying summer of fun after graduation… and that is an excellent choice also.  All depends on the kid.  I think most recruits know that their time is going to be alkmost 100% taken up with student/athlete responsibilities as soon as they set foot on the Southside in the beginning of August so they want to cram as much normal time as they can into their lives pre-Pitt.

Sticking with recruiting; three more HS QBs have been offered in the last two weeks.  This is going to be a problem for us, at least in next year’s 2017 recruiting class ’17 class, folks.

To date we have offered 12 QBs and seven of those are already committed.  If you remember just over two weeks ago every single QB we had offered committed elsewhere – thus this 2^nd or 3^rd round of offers which are farther away and of lesser quality than those we first offered.

Pickett was on Pitt’s campus not too long ago and seemed to enjoy his visit:

Overall my visit went great, I want to continue to talk with coaches and stay in communication building a relationship with them. Both my parents and I came away impressed from the coaches , facilities, support staff and campus. I gave Coach Canada and Coach Narduzzi my timeline for making my decision and they were both very supportive.”

Pickett tells me that he plans on deciding between Pitt and Boston College, a place that he recently visited.   The 3-star quarterback plans on making a decision in June.

Talking about QBs – Peak reiterates what I have been saying for months; Voytik’s leaving was big loss because he was an experienced backup. Bertke’s departure takes depth off the roster and while he was probably never going to play it sends a message. And I don’t think that message is just about playing time either.

This head coach is not an easy guy to play for.  He is demanding and has no compassion for anyone who may have negative thoughts about their place on the depth chart… especially if they verbalize them.  Voytik, Bertke, and James fall into that latter category and Narduzzi held the door wide open for them to walk through.

I’m very concerned about QB depth going into the 2016 season and can’t help but think that this staff will have badly missed the boat if we don’t get an experienced QB transferring in before fall camp ends to provide QB2 depth instead of Manny Stocker.

I’d hate to see a season tank because of the lack of depth in one position, but it could well happen. Peterman play very well up until the last two games of last season – but those two games brought us crashing back to reality in understanding that he could very well revert and not play well enough for us to win games.

It isn’t just injuries that competent back-ups are needed for,  we may need a relief QB out there to stop the bleeding if Peterman’s play turns south.

Woolgathering the other day… and you know that during the off-season our thoughts always turn toward recruiting… I was wondering about how highly ranked our very best players were as recruits. So with that here is a chart of our All-American players since the recruiting services started awarding stars (2003) based on that recruit’s potential to succeed in the college ranks.

When discussing recruiting I always refer to Rivals.com because 1) they have been the closest in their guesses (and that’s what recruit ranking is) and 2) the need for consistency across the board with the subject of recruiting.

There aren’t a lot of surprises there on the AA list actually.  I have been saying for a while that there is a small margin of difference between a recruit being given 3*s as opposed to 4*s. Note: Even though Otah was “NR” he had a very good reputation as a JUCO before deciding to attend Pitt.  But you can see that 3* kids can certainly play above their rating and excel on a national stage.

I followed the All-Americans up with a chart of the Pitt players who I feel succeed well above their star rankings.  Again this is back to 2003. Of course the last two recruiting classes still have time to show who the better payers are as not many of them have gotten playing time yet… but it is an interesting list:

^^^  Add 2009 recruit Dion Lewis to that group as per Barvo’s orders (see comment below).

WR Greg Lee, (at one point named the nation’s #1 WR), TE Darrell Strong, DE Greg Romeus, DT Gus Mustakas and LB Max Gruder, C Ryan Turley and DB Andrew Taglianetti all were good and solid players for us.  Some on the list were even Big East All-Conference star players such as Lee, Romeus and Turley.

One thing to remember about the subject of recruiting is that all of the services say that their star rating systems are based on what their scouts believe is the HS player’s capabilities of success in the college ranks as mentioned above.

That isn’t entirely true – most of them factor in the success, and certainly pure statistics, the kids generated in HS and make wild projections of how well they will do at the higher level.

What the recruiting services don’t, or actually can’t, take into account are all the external factors involved in the player’s time in college – especially his first two years or so. Some of those are as follows.

Intelligence – both on the field and innate, new and harder academic challenges, the much higher level of athletic competition, homesickness, missing their girlfriends and breakups, being with a different social crowd, being a small fish in a big pond for the first time, and experiencing much more public scrutiny are all very real and sometime very powerful reasons why success doesn’t come for a highly rated recruit where as it might well happen for a lower rated recruit.

We fans tend to forget these players are not just stats and photos on paper but living, breathing and feeling human beings who have whatever problems they encounter magnified by the public expectations put on them… something that regular student don’t experience.

Here is a piece from Spring Drills that helps understand why the teams loves Peterman’s leadership on offense: (Note the guy in the medical mask.)