Hello everyone. Didn’t mean to take the time off, but the trip to the in-laws is an exile from high speed. What I’ve found is that I am a lot less tolerant of dial-up the longer I’ve been on high-speed. Given the time of the year, and Zanesville, Ohio, nothing that offered any wi-fi has been open for the last couple of days. So I went into withdrawl and coped without any internet for the duration. Thankfully, there was enough to drink.

If you get a chance, try the Rye Stout from Bell’s. Very, very well done. I’ve always liked rye beers, but they are so hard to find and very few that are that good (yes, I like Founder’s). Rye is a tough grain to control in the brewing.

Just starting to immerse myself in the DirecTV. Yay. Naturally I pick the week when the teams have to actually be students and take finals. Not a lot of games this week. Still, I have the DVR, have all the local Fox channels. Definitely better.

Just to pass this from the Andy Katz chat (Insider subs.).

Rusty(Long Beach, NY): How about Buffalo this weekend? That was a tough loss. Do you think that they will be better in the MAC than people anticipated? Thanks

Andy Katz: Yes. Buffalo already has a neutral court win over Miami, too. Still, that was a home game. I always believed Buffalo was going to be a tough out at home. Reggie Witherspoon helped save that program after taking over once the season already started a few years back.

…

Bob (Pittsburgh): Hey Andy, even though they’re ranked #2, the Panthers have not looked dominant. Are the expectations for this team too high or are we actually that good? Each year Panthers fans’ hopes are built up and then crushed. Will this year be any different?

Andy Katz: Please don’t get hung up on rankings. They mean NOTHING. Pitt has the talent, the toughness, the defense, and the depth to win the title.

Hey folks, sorry to go dead without warning yesterday. It surprised me. The DSL went out yesterday. That was a day early. We are finally getting back into our house this weekend and the DSL was to be switched over today. Seems AT&T went a day early. Posting may be spotty this weekend. Roughly 72 hours until DirecTV arrives. Not that I’m clock watching or anything.
Thankfully, this is basketball season and Denis at Pitt Hoops is there to provide a fix as well. Don’t forget about him.

AOL has launched its College Basketball Fanhouse. The format has changed a bit. Rather than have individual bloggers coming individual teams, there are just a couple bloggers for each conference. A bit more wide ranging responsibilities.

Once more, I have been asked to be a lead blogger for the Big East. I’ll be sharing duties with the Mighty MJD — who concedes to something of a WVU bias to make this an interesting dynamic. MJD  has also been doing the NFL Fanhouse this year. His Monday Night Football Liveblogs have been about the only thing to make many of the games tolerable.

This should actually have less of an impact on my Pitt Blather blogging then the college football. The AOL blog will have me focused more on the whole conference not just Pitt.

You can find appropriate AOL links in the sidebar under the various categories.

That’s a phrase I never thought to utter.

It turns out Time Warner Cable is even worse in what they offer and their service.
I was originally going to go satellite this fall, but with the absolute chaos and housing issues we just figured on waiting until things got settled. During that time, TWC started assuming control of the area.

A couple weeks ago, I tried to order ESPN Gameplan (college football package) for the weekend. As I had done on some previous times. TWC was fully in charge now. The Customer Service Rep informed me that TWC doesn’t offer Gameplan on a weekly basis. Only the full package. Very sorry about that. Stupid and annoying, but not ridiculous. I guess. Seems like they are passing up on chances to make more money.
Yesterday, I tried to order ESPN FullCourt for the season. Couldn’t order through the cable box so I called. The CSR said that the computer wasn’t putting it through and that he didn’t know why. I foolishly agreed to let them call back rather than go on hold while he looked into it.

After over 3 hours, I called back. The CSR cheerfully explained that the callback was only 20-45 minutes away. I stopped her before she could hang-up and pointed out that since I had her on the phone and it was a queue issue, not still looking into it. Well, maybe she could just tell me what the situation was now and spare everyone the call back.

She actually had to think about it for a few minutes. Like it was an alien concept.

Finally she told me it seems that TWC doesn’t offer FullCourt in my area. At all. Not weekly, not a full package. I asked why I could locate the channel and the program on the TV. Well it seems that I still have a Comcast cable box, and Comcast offers it. Of course, TWC took over this territory from Comacast and… Hell I don’t know. Typing it out made as much sense as when she tried to explain it.

No sense as to when or if they will offer it.
So, they did it. Got off the phone and went back online and ordered DirecTV. It gets installed in a week and a half.

Congrats TWC, you drove another customer to satellite and you have made me look fondly upon Comcast. The latter just seemed to be a highly improbable shift in my view.

I rarely do this but the amount of vitriol directed here is enough that I have to go direct. I don’t mind people disagreeing. I like it. I don’t think of myself as infallible. I do, however, try to keep things from getting personal. “Firewalt” is pushing things. He seems to be channeling some Mark Madden shock-jock thing trying to get people all riled up. Taking the same approach — changing the subject from the defenses problems to bandwagons, Walt Harris support, the offense, Kordell Stewart?, and anything else just to make it seem like he knows what he is talking about. It’s quite tiresome, and I don’t need it.
This isn’t a message board where you can flame away wildly without any clue. I don’t moderate comments — other then a spam filter that has caught other commentors at times (sorry Steve and Neil). I’m not about to start. I also haven’t banned anyone, though, I have thought about it when someone has gotten a little too close to crossing the line with criticisms of Carl Krauser wholly unrelated to the game.

I don’t like set policies, but here’s a basic thing to follow. Don’t insult the readers and commentors especially because there’s a disagreement. Especially don’t do it by trying to claim a knowledge of their inner-thoughts and dreams. If that is the approach you take in trying to make your case, then I will have to start banning people because that isn’t making an argument. That is just an ad hominem attack to win without having the facts.
So, a few facts, for FW. The only time Walt Harris has ever run a spread offense was for about half a season in 2001. That he thinks the offense under Harris was a spread, well, “I do not think that word means what you think it means,” is being kind.

As for Blades being the leading tackler because the D-line sucks. One does not necessarily follow the other. Even if the D-line didn’t suck, Blades would likely be the leading tackler and among the all-times at Pitt. Likely not by so great a number. Here’s the list of leading tacklers for the country this year. Notice a trend if you look at the position? Blades has played all 4 years, and started for 3. It stands to reason that he would have ended up near the top of the list in all-time tackles with playing this long. Linebackers make more tackles.
It hasn’t mattered what scheme the defense runs. Whether it’s Wannstedt’s or his own choice. The run defense has blown chunks and sucked since 2003. The biggest issue with that, has been the absolute lack of progress on teaching the kids the fundamentals. That has been there with Rhoads for quite some time. That goes directly to the job of the DC. There are these things called archives on the site. It might help to review to see those complaints are nothing new.
Putting the blame for the personnel and try to put the recruiting entirely on the head coach — well, now who’s being naive? Johnny Majors was fired from Tennessee in large part because the Tenn administration recognized who was really bringing in the talent and didn’t want to lose him. What is one of the big reason that assistants get hired by other programs? It has a lot to do with their reputation as recruiters. It is a major part of their job. That the defense has gotten worse the longer Rhoads has been in charge reflects poorly on his skills regardless of whether it’s teaching the schemes or the helping to get the personnel.

As for Dorsett and Marino not setting foot on the campus while Harris was here. Huh? Must have missed the 1999 end of  Pitt Stadium. Must have forgotten about when Marino was honored in-person for his HoF inductions. Just to name a couple times off the top of my head. Again, arguments that are not even germane to the discussion of Rhoads and whether he should stay or go. It isn’t even an issue with Wannstedt’s role in the defense.

Again check archives for the just for the past couple of months regarding complaints about Wannstedt’s inflexibility. Wannstedt deserves and takes blame for that. Despite pretending otherwise, Wannstedt is not being absolved.

That’s it. Keep the arguments on point and not personal.

Happy Thanksgiving.

Specifically,talking about sports information coming from the basketball section. I’ve let it go for a while, but it is a glaring omission that the Pitt 2006-07 basketball media guide is still not on the site. We are now some 2 weeks into the season. The basketball prospectus, the 05-06 guide are still there. No sign of the 06-07 media guide. Something that should have been there for at least 2 weeks before the season started. You can order it, but there is no PDF of it.
Then there was the Tournament Pitt hosted that had way too much confusion about even letting season ticket holders know about it.

I mean, it’s not like there aren’t huge expectations for the basketball team. Lots of buzz, national attention and excitement for Pitt basketball. Not like the fans don’t want to get as much information as possible and have even more reason to be jacked for every game. Not like the disappointment of the football team doesn’t put the fan attention more to the basketball side in hopes of having something good to cheer.
Apparently they don’t want the good vibes to go to anyone’s head or something. Just a poor job right now and I don’t know why. No reason for this.

This was a system wide problem for my host, who reports a massive DoS attack that knocked everything off. Problems are resolved, for now, but I am a bit disillusioned as their performance the last week has been spotty.

I posted a little at AOL today about Wanny and finally learning “what is a rutgers?“

Sorry folks, my host server has been completely messed up all day today. I also needed a little break this afternoon. The downside of 10 hours or so of watching college football and blogging it, is that I have found myself dreaming of blogging and watching football. This is the second straight weekend of that happening. Disturbing trend.

I got something out on Darrell Strong, and I will have more to recap the debacle.

This is one I wanted to get to for a week, but it has been hectic.

Fans for Script

is a place of interest for many, I suspect. I’ve added them to the links area under “School Links.”
It’s a student-based effort to bring back the script and the old colors for Pitt.

I miss the old colors. Have for some time. There’s no secret about that. I think the present colors are boring, common and the whole thing — as I know Lee and I have said on more then one occasion — reminds me of the San Diego Chargers situation. They have those boring dark colors, but when they break out the baby blues, people go nuts. They are one of the cooler pro football unis.

As for the script, well I’d like to say my view is a bit nuanced, but wishy-washy is probably a better way to put it.

I could take or leave the script. The colors are more important to me, and for logo designs I prefer simple. So, the block letter “Pitt” doesn’t really bother me. If getting the script meant junking the present panther head logo, I would probably get on board.

The big stumbling block, though, with the script is ownership. If I understand things correctly, the script Pitt logo is owned by the university itself, not the athletic department (hence, why you see Pitt Campus police with hats bearing the script Pitt). This is important for the funding of athletics if the merchandise sales are not going straight to the athletic department. In fact, this is the issue that probably does more to prevent any serious discussion of the return of the script logo.