In the aftermath of the ACC Grant of Rights, it has been a lot of fun to take potshots at the numerous Hoopie message boarders and Twitiots who have spent the better part of a year flogging their sources for the imminent demise of the ACC.

The rumors and whispers of an ACC grant-of-rights have no basis in fact.

The beleaguered conference is not close to signing a grant-of-rights and discussions about one have been met with stiff internal resistance.

Internal resistance that my sources say could only be overcome by a significant increase in television money that puts the ACC on par with the Big 10, Big 12, Pac 12 and SEC.

Money like that could only come from a 24-hour ACC branded sports channel much like the Big 10 Network or the upcoming SEC Network and that doesn’t seem likely. Why not? Why shouldn’t the ACC, with perhaps the largest media footprint of any conference, be able to launch its own network?

It’s simple economics — ESPN won’t let them. ESPN owns the ACC’s tier 3 television rights (along with Raycom) and doesn’t want the ACC competing (in much the same markets) with the SEC channel set to debut in 2014.

I don’t think there was an ACC-based blog or twitter account that didn’t either get directly hit with this stuff or had to address it in some form from a reader for the past year.

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Since everyone is still bummed about yesterday’s loss, here’s a distraction.

For the most part, I haven’t given much thought to our erstwhile Backyard Brawl brethren. Still certain stories catch the eye.

Turns out those travel burdens in the Big 12 are as onerous as expected. If not more so. To the point where the Big 12 may have to help.

West Virginia University’s athletic department and the Big 12 Conference have agreed to attempt to make some travel changes to accommodate the problems the Mountaineers faced during their first season in the league.

Athletic Director Oliver Luck says the league offered no guarantees because “scheduling is always a challenge” but the league has agreed to attempt to make life on the road easier in a number of areas when it can.

WVU geographically is out of place in the Big 12, with every trip not only being of 1,700 miles round trip or more but fighting a time zone change which costs them an hour returning to Morgantown.

Football did not present as much of a problem as basketball, with weekly trips and mostly weekend games, but, according to Luck, the league was agreeable to trying to arrange it so the Mountaineers do not have to travel on back-to-back weeks for conference games during the season.

The Big 12 has to be as helpful as possible to the Hoopies. Oh, they aren’t going anywhere, but if the Big 12 ever hopes to snag a school from the ACC — as WV message boarders often predict to be imminent — then they need to make it appear as if the travel problems are not insurmountable and screwing teams in the Eastern timezone that happen to be over 1700 miles from the rest of the conference members.

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No doubt, you are aware that the Big East web site sell’s gear for all member schools. This still includes Pitt. It’s nice to see that they have embraced the  Pitt’s departure to the ACC.

It’s the description that really drives it home:

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Amidst all the hoopla of signing day, the Paul Chryst press conference praising the newest Panthers and promising that a DC will be named soon. There was information about the Spring practices and the annual Blue-Gold scrimmage.

The spring practices start on March 5. Seems a bit early when you are limited to only 15 practices, but okay.

They culminate with the Blue-Gold scrimmage that will be held this year at Bethel Park High School. Okay, we knew that the plan was to rotate to different high schools in Western PA. Just so happens to be the same HS as a big 2014 recruiting target for the O-line in Mike Grimm. Nice.

The game will be played on April 12 at 7pm. That’s a Friday. What the hell?

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There’s plenty of good to recap from last night’s 80-48 win over Mount Saint Mary. There’s plenty to admire in Cam Wright having his best game, when he decided to play as a way to honor his father. The father that passed away that day. And I’ll get to that. Unfortunately, all of that had to be marred by petulance from John Johnson.

When friends on Twitter asked about the game he answered their questions.

Friend: “Yo bro, you didn’t play?”

Johnson: nah cuz, smh (shaking my head)

On Wednesday, Johnson sent out some cryptic messages. “Basketball is more political than the election.”

Here’s another: “Hard work doesn’t always pay off.”

And this is why college athletic departments have employees whose jobs are to monitor the Twitter accounts of athletes.

It’s easy to understand Johnson’s frustrations. He is watching a true freshman come in and start ahead of him. And according to Dixon, Johnson made great strides over the summer in his transition to point guard. Dixon praised him last Friday after Pitt’s second exhibition game.

It may not even be the fact that James Robinson is starting. Or Cam Wright playing more minutes than expected. Trey Zeigler seemed to be slipping because of defense, but he got the minutes (and played well).

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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: p.twimg.com/AzKnlPVCAAATTm…

— Chris Peak (@PantherLair) August 1, 2012

What is the image? Oh, this:

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In case you missed it, Pitt fans got to have a bit of fun on Twitter yesterday.

The Panther faithful hijacked a Twitter thread designed for fans to ask questions of Arizona State coach and former Pitt coach Todd Graham at Pac-12 media day on Tuesday afternoon, Within an hour, the #AskASU hashtag became one of the top trending stories in Pittsburgh on the social website.

Initially set up by the Arizona State social media director to take serious questions for the first-year Sun Devil coach, the #AskASU thread was quickly bombarded with hundreds of “questions” from testy Pitt fans.

Graham, who unceremoniously left Pitt for Arizona State after one year and informed his players by text of his decision, was derided for everything from his high-octane offense to his lack of loyalty.

The hashtag was the No. 2 trend in Pittsburgh on Twitter by mid-afternoon Tuesday, getting upwards of 20 new tweets every minute. There were roughly 300 “questions” in the first hour and the traffic increased rapidly after that, drawing interest from national college football writers.

Deadspin posted on the bit too. A lot of credit should go to the guys at Cardiac Hill, who really led the dog pile of fun then kept it going. Some small factual corrections/background to the story, though, is needed.

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I believe there are people in the University of Pittsburgh Athletic Department, and in the school’s administration that read this site regularly. I try not to give too much advice, but…

Next July, when Pitt makes the move into the ACC. No videos. No “cute” gimmicks. Just a simple, understated splash page on the website to say, “Pitt is in the ACC.”

Why? No one is ever as clever as they think they are. Texas A&M drove that point home with this… this… thing.

This surfaced last night, and was immediate subject to such derision, that A&M pulled it around midnight central time. But it was too late. Having learned from the loss of TCU’s “Call Me, Maybe” video, it was quickly copied and survives to the everlasting shame of Texas A&M.

I’m trying to imagine what WVU has done for their move to the Big 12. Presumably it involves burning something.

Slimmed down and showing more leg in the 24th century (via i09).

Sorry everyone. We couldn’t even make it to Memorial Day without more Todd Graham spin-time. The latest is an ESPN piece by Ivan Maisel.

So much that could be (and probably will be) picked apart. But, just as I was about to do some, I realized that FraudGraham’s son just contradicted one of his earliest lies.

Todd Graham made the decision to leave Pittsburgh for Arizona State so suddenly in December that he caught his own son Bo unaware, and Bo is a member of his coaching staff. Bo walked out of a recruiting visit in Philadelphia at 9:30 p.m. and his phone rang.

“Hey,” Todd Graham said, “you need to come back here. Where are you?”

“You sent me to Philly,” Bo said. “Don’t you remember? Why do I need to come back?”

“Because I resigned my job.”

“You did what?”

“I resigned my job.”

“Why? Why would you do that?”

“Because I took another one.”

But… But… I thought Todd Graham resigned, without having the ASU job in hand. It was his leap of faith for his dream job.

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You know, just before the Memphis news broke I was actually working on a post on Pitt, the ACC, the Backyard Brawl and all the other things. Then Memphis happened and much changed. So I had to junk it and restart.

Heading into this past weekend, there were interesting comments by AD Steve Pederson about moving to the ACC and the future schedules. I didn’t think much of it, other than being water cooler talk. The ACC put out its future plans for the conference layout including the 9-game conference schedule for football.

Pederson went on the media rounds as expected to talk about it. Much like he has said before, they are keeping an eye on things regarding the WVU lawsuit as you would expect.

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Todd Graham can’t leave it alone. Well, if I’m going to even pretend to be fair, there is no way to leave it alone. Any appearance or interview he does will bring up the issue of his departure from Pitt.

What FraudGraham can’t seem to stop doing is constantly changing the story. To try and drive up the drama of how bad things were for his family. Basically, to spin any tale he can to try and get sympathy.

When it started at his intro at Arizona State, he called it his latest “dream job” and pushed the idea that he was doing it in no small part because his in-laws are in Arizona. The kind of statement that even Arizona reporters and columnists said, “huh?”

Arizona State University just hired the first football coach in NCAA history who, if you believe him, changed jobs in order to move closer to his mother-in-law.

The spin quickly shifted to his wife really wanted the move to be closer to her family — and Fraud Graham would make the hard choice just for her. Which of course generated more outrage. Prior to the move, Penni Graham was a one-woman PR machine for her husband. Constantly tweeting about how much she and the family were loving Pittsburgh. Tweeting about Pirate and Pens games. Interacting with people on Twitter. Putting out photos of her kids dressed up for Halloween as the Pitt Panther. Building up a lot of goodwill that to some extent would be extended to FraudGraham.

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Some weak-ass Haiku in what I hope will be a very peaceful weekend.

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There was a pleasant  attack on Fraud Graham (Yes, I would like to make that one stick) from the Steelers.

The Steelers practically threw a party when they heard that Pitt coach Todd Graham quit. That goes from the top to the bottom, from those who work in the offices to the coaches and every-day workers who came into contact with Graham and his staff in the building.

They described Graham as an arrogant man who had no use for anything the Steelers might have offered, and they say he resented having to share the building and the indoor practice field at the UPMC complex with them.

Before Graham, the Panthers and the Steelers ate in the same cafeteria, although at different times. Graham came in and put an end to that. The cooks at the cafeteria still prepare the food for the Panthers, but it is then brought over to the other side of the building, where Pitt created its own cafeteria to serve Graham’s players and his wishes.

Instead of embracing the advantages that an association with the Steelers might bring, Graham rejected them, even if there was little he could do about the shared facilities. That really came down to just sharing the indoor practice field and the parking lots because everything else is separate, including weight rooms, outdoor practice fields, locker rooms, etc. It’s one building, but it’s really two, like a big duplex.

I admit, I don’t understand the resentment. Other than the fact that just about every college football headcoach has at least a touch of “little dictator” in him and hates the idea of not controlling everything.

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Oh, what a day.

It has been hard to keep up. Exactly a week too late for this crap to start going down. Too much stuff coming to a head, and now this again? Okay, let me apologize in advance for the expected lack of coherence. It has just been too chaotic and too insane today.

I am a natural cynic. Just the way I have always been. Not sure how or why. I just am. Being lucky enough to have had a few years writing at the now defunct AOL FanHouse gave me the opportunity to observe many turns on the college coaching carousel. Everything from Dana Altman taking the Arkansas job and then running back to Creighton. Lane Kiffin napalming Tennessee. Yet, this one even blew me away.

Yet the Tennessee-Kiffin-USC situation is probably the closest parallel. You had a brash coach. One who critics would say was much more style over substance. Makes radical change to the program. Lots of people affected.  And for the most part the fans went with it because it may be a time to shake things up a bit more. A guy who struggled in the first year as the players transition to a new style. But at the same time, there’s hope because of the recruiting class that is coming.

Then the abrupt bailing — taking almost all of the new staff he brought in with him to leave a crater. Yet, somehow, as much as the “Fall of Saigon” chaos that ensued when Kiffikins bailed. He had the balls to speak to the players directly to tell them he was leaving, and to at least pay false lipservice to the media.

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