If you, like Lee, are wondering why the hell I am posting so much. It’s because I can. My wife and daughter are away for a couple of days which gives me a lot of extra time and no competition for the computer. This means I can bang out some things as they come, rather than save it all for one post.

So, despite my belief that Adam Graessle was going to win the Big East Special Teams Player of the Week on the basis of his 79 yard punt (they dropped it from 80, which would have tied the school record) and another overall solid week, it went to the Rutgers kicker who went 3-3 on his kicks in their win over Temple.

H.B. Blades, though earned co-Defensive Player of the Week honors. Blades, “made a game-high 13 tackles. The Panther defense allowed only 56 yards rushing. The Eagles went into the game averaging 183.6 yards per game.” He shares the award with Rutgers defensive back Ron Girault. Excuse my snippiness, but how does Rutgers in a 16-6 home win over one of the worst teams in all of college football generate 2 BE Player of the Week honors?

Just wondering.

Leaving behind thoughts of what would happen in a chess match between BC coach Tom O’Brien and Walt Harris…

For those who don’t want the stories and views filtered by us, and are here just to get the links you can go to the Rutgers Athletics Website; a Rutgers blog; and the Newark Star-Ledger.

While this is a Big East game of the week, if you don’t live in a Big East market or don’t have ESPN GamePlan (I think they’ll have it), and you don’t want to pay Pitt and Yahoo! to listen to the radio broadcast on the internet, Rutgers apparently is smart enough to make their radio broadcast available for free. You will need RealPlayer to listen.

Now for the biases.

Sadly, Rutgers will be having depth issues at defense. Several players were injured during a collision with a drunk driver.

Three Rutgers University football players were among seven people injured Saturday in an accident caused by a drunk driver traveling the wrong way on Route 18 in Piscataway, police said yesterday.

The crash, less than a mile from Rutgers Stadium, occurred just hours after the Scarlet Knights’ 16-6 homecoming victory over rival Temple.

Injured in the three-vehicle crash was defensive back Dondre Asberry, 20, who sustained a spinal fracture and head injury and remained in stable condition at Robert Wood Johnson University Hospital in New Brunswick last night, police said.

Also injured were two key players on the Rutgers defense, Plainfield native Manny Collins, 20, and Eddie Grimes, a 20-year-old recruit from Florida who lives in New Brunswick. Grimes rooms with Asberry.

Collins had only recently returned to the lineup after missing three games with a dislocated elbow.

The players, both cornerbacks, were treated for head and facial injuries at Robert Wood Johnson and released.

“I don’t know if they’re going to play this week or not,” Rutgers Coach Greg Schiano said last night.

I wish a speedy recovery to all of you. Grimes and Collins are not the starting CBs but 2nd on the depth chart.

Rutgers may be just as big an enigma as Pitt. Even Rutgers coach Greg Schiano doesn’t know what his team will do from week to week. This is as much a must win for Rutgers as it is for Pitt regarding getting to 6 wins and bowl eligibility. After Pitt they host WVU, go to BC and then Navy and end the season at home against UConn.

Pitt has to go to Syracuse, then to ND, before hosting WVU and making up a game in Tampa against USF. According to Gold Sheet, Pitt is favored in this game at -4 to -6 points.

Pitt has released its game notes (in PDF). Looking over some things, I see that WR Greg Lee leads the Big East in receiving yards per game and P Adam Graessle is the top punter. Pitt has been given up more yards than it has produced in all but the Furman game — yes, Pitt was outgained by Temple and Ohio. Statistically, Rutgers has an edge on Offense bit Pitt has the advantage on Defense.

This is just some afterthoughts to Chas’s four posts on Pitt-BC.

ESPN’s College Gameday Final — which airs either late, late Saturday night or at 7:30 AM Sunday morning, depending on whether you’re a night owl or a morning person like me — didn’t really offer a recap of Pitt-BC. Not an important enough game, I guess. However, Palko’s blasting Boston College cornerback Pete Shean out of bounds in the third quarter did make their top plays list. Mark May — who really is a great analyst, even if you’re not a Pitt fan — used that opportunity to quickly remark that Walt Harris had been under some heat from a lot of people, including himself. But then May said that this win shouldn’t change anything, and suggested that Harris really needed to win all of his remaining games except maybe (and then May repeated the word “MAYBE”) West Virginia to keep his job.

And you know, I kind of agree. Beating an absolutely terribly coached BC team doesn’t erase the facts that (1) this program is not progressing (especially along the lines), (2) our teams underachieve far too often, (3) Harris is a terrible and cowardly playcaller, and most importantly, (4) Harris has burned too many bridges in the WPIAL and throughout the Commonwealth. Really, we beat Boston College because, as Chas pointed out, we pulled our linebackers into the box to help our weak defensive line and Tom O’Brien was too stubborn or all-fired stupid to realize that the middle of the field was wide-assed open on every play. I’ll give our embattled defensive coordinator, Paul Rhoads, credit for coming up with that cute little card trick. But do you think that it will really fool Syracuse, let alone West Virginia? Rasheed Marshall will chuck it over the middle to Chris Henry all day long without any linebackers there.

Besides, as Chas pointed out, Walt did have another “slide right” moment when he wussed out and kicked a field goal from the two-foot line in the fourth quarter (this time, fortunately, it didn’t wind up costing us). And as if that wasn’t enough to piss me off, he actually chastised Palko for that big hit on Shean that got Pitt on College Gameday Final.

Coach Walt Harris was pleased with Palko’s effort, but was obviously not as
enthused as the players about the fact that his quarterback lowered his
shoulder. “He has a bit of hard-headness,” Harris said. “He really should avoid
the guy, give him a little dip and head back inside.”

Yeah, I know, it’s risky to let your quarterback take a hit. Tell that to Ben Roethlisberger. Look, football is a game a naked aggression, especially in Western Pennsylvania. People (including myself in high school) get hurt. Now either deal with it or go coach soccer. Either way, take off the dress, Walt.

Now to be fair, I’m only one Panther fan. A lot of fellow Panther fans who called into “Panther Hotline” on 970 AM while I was driving back home to Altoona said that this game totally vindicated Walt and that its time for fans like myself to get off him. Of course, I lost 970’s signal at freakin’ Murraysville because they apparently use a toaster oven to power their transmitter. So the show’s character admittedly could have changed after I disappeared into the wilderness of Central Westmoreland County.

As far as the yellow fliers asking our students to watch their mouths, what a laugh. As I approached our gate, I saw four ushers with reams of those things. They didn’t give me one (I apparently don’t look enough like a student anymore), so I just moved on and started up the ramp behind them. I was immediately confronted with the sight of thousands, perhaps millions, of those little yellow pieces of paper scattered across the floor of the ramp so densely that it was hard to see the concrete beneath. Way to kill a few trees for nothing, alma mater.

But seriously, the student section isn’t nearly as vulgar as the regular section next door in which the PSB crew resides. Really, all the kids do is chant “WE’RE GONNA BEAT THE F*CK OUGHTA YOU” at the end of each stanza of “Rock and Roll, Part II,” just like every other student body in the country has been doing since the mid-1990s (at least that’s when I first heard it at Ohio State). You hear a lot more obscenities screamed — generally in conjunction with the word “WALT” and some implication of sodomy — out of our section… and more precisely, out of me… than out of any student. Really, those four ushers should have just thrown the whole stack of fliers at my fat ass.

Seriously though, the kids are there to have fun. If you can’t take a few comments about Walt fornicating with his mother, go sit in the cheap seats in the second deck or just stay home, sip some lemonade, and watch The O’Reilly Factor with the rest of your Sunday School class.

On second thought, don’t watch The O’Reilly Factor…

Of course, on the other hand, what obscenity could possibly be as fun as chanting “A-C-C!” at Boston College as they very slowly walked off the field. Sometimes f-bombs truly are useless accessories…

Hail to all’s being well in John’s family.

I’ve said it last year, and I said it again this year. Do not let Pitt have control of their own destiny. At the very least, keep quiet so you don’t think about it. So what do the beat writers tell us?

Paul Zeise:

Suddenly, the idea of Pitt as Big East Conference champion doesn’t seem so far-fetched.

Sure the Panthers (4-2, 1-1 Big East) have a long way to go before they win the Big East title — which likely would punch their ticket to a BCS game — but, with a 20-17 overtime win against Boston College Saturday, they took a big step toward that goal.

First, the victory means the Panthers control their own destiny in the conference race. If they win their remaining conference games, they’ll win the championship no matter what other teams do. And, even if they would tie for first, they’d own the tiebreakers.

Joe Bendel:

The Panthers have a long way to go before carving their names into the league championship trophy, but they proved Saturday that they can play competitively with any team in the Big East after an eye-opening, 20-17, overtime upset of Boston College at Heinz Field.

Pitt enters its homecoming game against Rutgers with a 4-2 overall record, including 2-1 in league play. West Virginia and Syracuse are undefeated in the conference at 1-0. Rutgers and BC are 1-1, Connecticut is 1-2 and Temple 0-2.

The Panthers have only three Big East games remaining, and the next two are winnable.

Rutgers (4-2 overall) is improving, but lost to Division I-AA New Hampshire, and Syracuse (3-3), which plays host to Pitt on Nov. 6, is inconsistent. The Panthers have won their past five meetings with Rutgers and their past two against the Orangemen.

If those trends continue, Pitt and WVU could be playing for the league championship on Thanksgiving night at Heinz Field. Thus, Pitt not only controls its own fate, but also has the luxury of playing two of its final three league games at home.

I think I’m going to be ill.

While Palko still faced pressure, he wasn’t getting swarmed like the previous couple of games; and the running game was pretty good between Kirkley and Furman. Seems the O-line might actually be showing signs of improvement.

While Boston might not be paying any attention to BC and their coach, some in the Pittsburgh media noticed O’Brien’s shaky playcalling.

And in some catch-up, the Q&A with Paul Zeise from Friday has the usual good stuff, and a nice summary of the feelings about how Pitt has acted towards recruiting in Western PA.

Q: Can you expand on Pitt’s difficulties in recruiting local prospects? You made reference to their unwillingness to look at a number of top prospects and also a need to mend fences with local coaches.

ZEISE: Pitt has taken an almost arrogant approach towards recruiting locally in recent years and it has turned a lot of coaches and prospective recruits off. Pitt has also been very slow to offer a number of local guys they should have been on first. A prime example is Sean Lee from Upper St. Clair. Everybody knows the kid is a player. He recveived offers from Iowa, Wisconsin, West Virginia and a number of others over the summer. Pitt finally got around to offering him a few weeks ago – after Penn State had already offered him. The same thing happened with the John Bachman kid from Moon who just committed to Indiana. Pitt offered him, but way too late. He said he’d have considered Pitt had they got in on him early. There has been a feeling among a number of coaches in Western Pennsylvania that Pitt values second-rate kids from other states over kids in their own backyard. How this happened, I don’t know, but it needs to get corrected. The scouting of players needs to get corrected, too, because there are far too many guys getting out of Western Pennsylvania and going on to have excellent careers elsewhere who were never even offered by Pitt. It is a shame, because Western Pennsylvania used to be the top priority for this staff, but in recent years they’ve slipped. That doesn’t mean every kid in Western Pennsylvania deserves a scholarship from Pitt, but there are far too many that are good enough that don’t even get a look.

This is inexcusable.

Rutgers at noon on Saturday. It’s Pitt’s homecoming. Rutgers homecoming was this past weekend when they beat Temple 16-6. This should be an interesting game. Two teams that no one can be sure of what to expect from week to week.

Let’s talk some hoops. The Trib had a bunch of stories on Saturday about the basketball team. Let’s just say they were a tad optimistic sounding — not that there’s anything wrong with that. It’s just that as a Pitt fan, it can be hard to grasp immediately without looking for the gray clouds.

Coach Jamie Dixon really likes this team and the way it looks. Brandin Knight, still trying to make it to the NBA has been working out with Pitt again. He likes their chances come March. The team has set the goal higher this year. Good. Still, Joe Starkey notes the early rankings are keeping Pitt kind of low. Doesn’t matter yet, who ranks Pitt where. Pitt won’t exactly be sneaking up on anyone this year.

There are questions of who will do what. Freshman shooting guard Ronald Ramon looks sharp and is drawing raves from the teammates. Center Chris Taft has added about 10 more pounds of muscle. Not clear who will be taking over the power forward from vacated by Jaron Brown. Mark McCarroll has the inside track but will be pushed by Levon Kendall (who played well for Team Canada over the summer) and JUCO transfer John DeGroat.

And some good recruiting news. Pitt got a verbal from Tyrell Biggs from Nanuet, NY. Biggs is 6’8″, 270 pound power forward. Rivals has him ranked #71 in their top 150. This is PItt’s second commit for the 2005 class. Considering Pitt had a bunch of near misses in the last couple months, this was a needed commit. Pitt still needs to start getting some kids from beyond the NYC area, especially as new St. John’s Coach Norm Roberts has already made significant progress in repairing relations with the local schools.