6-6 overall is starting to look really good.
Reports are, that Luke Getsy is going to transfer. No official confirmation yet. (Shouldnt’ that be coming from the others of PSB who actually live in Pittsburgh?) Crap. I don’t begrudge him. It’s his call, and his right to do so.
It is purely selfish, as a fan. I don’t trust the O-line to keep Palko healthy throughout the season. That means Joe Flacco is the back-up, and I guess Strong is the emergency QB.
Other things
Coach Harris’s press conference regarding USF is posted. In a great moment in evading the question and its implications:
South Florida runs a scheme that has given Pitt challenges in the past.
They play a spread offense, no huddle. They gave us problems before. They are well conceived and that’s difficult to play against. We played against a couple of them in our conference, and some of them gave us a challenge; West Virginia has, and Temple has as well. That will add to it and the fact that there is no huddle will make the execution harder on our defenses. That’s why we have to make the plays, execute the calls, and get off the field.
Uh, “given Pitt challenges?” Try burned our asses. I’m not even going to say anything about his comments regarding the loss in 2001. It still burns me to this point, that he won’t admit that it was his @$^&* mad scientist attempt to impose a spread offense on a team and QB built around a pro set style that cost Pitt that game and several others that year.
Pitt B-Ball: Roadtrip to Toronto
The Pitt basketball team, is taking a roadie to Toronto this weekend. They will play some really early exhibition games up there. The NCAA allows “schools to take one foreign tour every four years and permits 10 practice days prior to the date of departure.”
Practice for the 2004-05 season officially begins on October 16. No mention of the present schedule, especially the non-con. Though, they do reveal what they will be stressing in trying to sell it — that Pitt has the best winning % of any school over the last 3 years.
Under/Over Achievers
General college football info. The lead question from SI.com’s Stewart Mandel’s mailbag concerned overrated teams in polls.
Trying to find pre-season and final rankings on the Net is a lot harder. I actually looked once — just going back 5 years — and finally had to give up, so I wish he could have placed the raw data out there.
With the help of Lexis-Nexis, I went back and found the first and last AP poll from every season and counted each time a team finished at least seven spots lower than predicted. Why seven? I don’t know, It just sounds more dramatic than six.
Ladies and gentlemen, the nation’s most overrated program, with eight such occurrences in 14 seasons, is … the Washington Huskies. Not far behind were — here’s a shocker — Notre Dame (seven), USC (seven), Auburn (six) and Texas (six).
While I’m a little surprised at Washington, overall the results aren’t too shocking. With the exception of USC and Texas’ recent resurgences, these are all teams far removed from their heyday (with the Huskies peaking right at the beginning of the period in question), yet many voters have a hard time looking at tradition-rich teams objectively. On paper, Notre Dame could have the exact same qualifications as, say, Iowa, but nine out of 10 times the voter is going to favor the Irish. It’s something I try to make a conscious effort to avoid myself. Case in point: Minnesota finished 20th last season and returns nearly its entire team, yet is starting the season five spots lower, while Auburn, which finished last season unranked, is suddenly 17th.
Anticipating what your next question was going to be, yes, I compiled the same data for teams that finished at least seven spots higher than predicted. Teams didn’t make nearly as many regular appearances in this category, probably because after exceeding expectations a few times voters got the message and started picking them higher.
The leaders, with five instances each, were Ole Miss, Iowa and Alabama, followed by LSU, Washington State, Virginia Tech, Kansas State and Texas A&M at four. The Rebels, Hawkeyes, Crimson Tide, Tigers and Cougars are textbook examples of teams whose breakthroughs have been sporadic enough so as to catch voters off guard when they happen. I was surprised, however, to see Alabama on the list. You’d think, with their tradition, voters would be more likely to err on the side of optimism.
There seems to be a flaw in the reasoning for Kansas State and VaTech to be considered underrated.
