Here’s a quick look back at the just-concluded college football season from my perspective.
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Over this past season, I picked 60 games against the spread on this website. Despite my obsessing over college football to a greater extent than almost anybody I know, my final season record was only 29-30-1. I see this as proof of how good Las Vegas really is at setting spreads. I’m always impressed when anybody can bet over .500 for a long period of time.

Incidentally, I went 3-3 on my bowl picks. I correctly predicted that Miami of Ohio, USC, and Virginia would cover against Louisville, Michigan, and Pitt respectively. However, the Gator Bowl, the Fiesta Bowl, and the Sugar Bowl were all surprises to me. How West Virginia could look that pitiful against Maryland is beyond my reasoning: the Mountaineers’s disciplinary problems cannot explain it all. And I’m not sure that anybody saw Oklahoma’s collapse coming against LSU.

Of course, I’d like to personally thank my graduate alma mater for sticking it to me in its bowl game three freakin’ years in a row. The sad part is that I KNOW Kansas State is always one of the most overrated programs in college football. I should have remembered this when I picked the Wildcats to cover against my beloved Buckeyes. It’s just that KSU looked so good in destroying previously invincible Oklahoma.
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Does everybody out there remember how hard Chas pushed us all to play ESPN’s Bowl Mania (presented by Sonic)? Well, I kicked his ass at it. I went 19-9 at picking bowl games without spreads (see how easy it is?) — earning 282 total points (out of a possible 402) and ranking in the 93.5th percentile nationally. Chas, meanwhile, went 18-10 — earning 253 total points and ranking in the 79.3rd percentile nationally. My biggest losses were in the Holiday Bowl (seriously, Texas… you suck), the Sugar Bowl, and the Fiesta Bowl (damn Buckeyes).

However, I only came in second in our little Pitt Sports Blather group. R. DEMICHIEI came in first: going 20-8, earning 298 total points, and ranking in the 97.5th percentile nationally. So congratulations to R. DEMICHIEI. Also, congratulations are due to our regular contributor Pat, who went 0-28 and came in dead last. In Pat’s defense, filling out the submission form properly was much more complicated than Chas made it out to be.
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For me, the highlight of this season was Pitt’s upsetting Virginia Tech (then ranked #5) 31-28 on November 8, 2003. However, this particular incident may well have been our comic highlight. My favorite post of the ones I wrote was this crack back on Penn State for blaming their falling ticket sales on terrorism.
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There were so many disappointments this season that picking an actual lowlight of the year is hard. Maybe I should go with that 52-31 complete asskicking that I witnessed in person in Morgantown on November 15. Our once proud-to-be-tough Panthers were completely out-physicalled. We knew exactly what the Mountaineers were going to do on virtually every play in the second half. We were simply too weak, too undisciplined, and too poorly coached (especially on defense) to stop them.

Maybe I should go with that loss to Miami that knocked us out of what would have been our first BCS bowl berth. Maybe I should go with that first stumbling block at Toledo or that domination by Notre Dame. But I think that I’ll instead go with Pitt’s blowing its best chance ever (1) to be Big East Football Champions, and (2) to finally surpass Penn State as the automatic, go-to-school for top Pennsylvanian recruits. Given PSU’s terrible season, we had a unique opportunity to take the driver’s seat in Commonwealth recruiting. But already, that opportunity seems to be slipping away.
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Well, we might as well make it official. The 2003 Oregon Award for the worst uniforms in college football goes to, who else?

The University of Oregon (seen here losing to Minnesota in the Sun Bowl). Seriously, somebody in Eugene should have sued Nike. Looking different hardly means that you look good. Incidentally, the University of Wyoming earns the runner-up spot with this ode to what’s floating in my toilet.

The Syracuse/Illinois all-orange uniforms get honorable mentions.
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So now it’s on to college football’s second season: recruiting. As I’ve mentioned before, our current recruiting class is ranked 18th in the country and first in the new Big East. Unfortunately, Penn State is currently ranked 8th in the country.
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Hail to a 2004 that is brighter than 2003 was.

First a little self-congratulations for being dead-on:

Pitt is going to be a team, barring an upset to one of its cupcake opponents that will be in the top-15 by conference play, but no one will know whether this team is really that good.

I wrote that back in mid-November after Pitt’s first game. Conference play begins today and Pitt is #15 in both the AP and the ESPN/USA Today polls. Pitt has moved up about 7-8 notches so far.

The counter argument for Pitt’s soft non-con schedule is the fact that they may have the toughest conference schedule in the Big East, because of the new system in place.

In an effort to get more television exposure and ease tensions within the league by some member schools that didn’t like the idea of divisional play, commissioner Mike Tranghese decided to have the top four teams in the league play each other twice and every other team once.

That means Pitt, the defending champs, must play home-and-home games against the other top three teams — current No. 1 Connecticut, defending national champion Syracuse and Notre Dame.

“I think the biggest concern was everyone wanted to play everyone else,” said Rob Carolla, director of communications for the Big East Conference. “There were certain years where Syracuse didn’t play Connecticut, and TV wants to see those games.”

The so-called second-tier teams are Providence, Seton Hall, Boston College and Villanova. They play home-and-home games against one another, but only have to play Pitt, Connecticut, Syracuse and Notre Dame once apiece. The system, which has been widely panned by the first-tier teams, presents an unbalanced schedule that could skew the won-loss records for the Big East season, and as a by-product, affect seeding for the NCAA tournament.
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The tradeoff for Pitt is more national television games, which means more exposure for the program. (The Panthers play seven times on ABC, CBS, ESPN or ESPN2 between now and the end of the regular season). The downside, of course, is the potential for incurring more losses.

As a Pitt alum outside of the local area, more national games is nothing but a positive. The last few years, until the Big East Tournament in March, it would be happy time if Pitt was on ESPN or ESPN2 once or twice.

Now with VT coming into Pittsburgh tonight, the obligatory article on local connections. This is an easy one, since their head coach, Seth Greenberg, used to be an assistant coach at Pitt.

Well, Pitt assistant coach and ace recruiter Barry Rohrssen is a Greenberg protege, so every time Rohrssen lands a player such as blue-chip forward Chris Taft, a small piece of credit should go to Greenberg.
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Rohrssen, while playing at St. Francis (N.Y.), was a counselor at the prestigious Five Star Basketball Camp in 1980 when he met Greenberg, a 24-year-old assistant coach under Dr. Roy Chipman at Pitt.

Greenberg was instrumental in signing players such as Clyde Vaughan, who is Pitt’s second all-time leading scorer.

Part of Greenberg’s sales pitch was talking about the possibility of a new arena on Pitt’s campus.

The one arrived two decades later.

The gregarious Greenberg laughed Monday when recounting the story. He got his first look at Petersen Events Center when his team took the court for a late-afternoon workout.

“This is the building we told recruits they’d play in,” Greenberg said. “It’s just a few years late. Once a facility (the Bryce Jordan Center) was built at Penn State, Pitt’s wasn’t far behind. I really think that helped facilitate the process.”