Ah, Lee. Your problem is you take things too personally, and you forget that most of the “crap” you took was not on this blog. It was in the parking lot — in between your runs to the port-a-john — so it is understandable how you have excreacted with such emotion. A small post in September hardly constitutes “crap,” and that is the extent of your evidence presented.

I am perfectly willing to admit I let myself believe WVU might actually be good enough to merit being in the top 12 of the BCS standings. They have solid lines on both sides of the ball, an excellent secondary, a stud receiver in Henry, a workhorse RB in Harris and a decent QB. Clearly, though, their offense is not firing. Just like last year, where they sputtered through the first half of the season. This may be a legitimate criticism of Rodriguez — who we both agree is a really good coach — that his team does not get out of the gate well. Unfortunately for us, Pitt and WVU play at the end of the year, when they are on track.

Of course since you were so willing to call upon the statements of Fowler, Corso, Herbstreit and Kiper, Jr. to justify your position, then surely you must do the same when my original posts that sparked this was a mention of articles trumpeting the potential BCS postition of WVU. Something that I would say made you see scarlet, but I’m guessing has you seeing purple this week.

It’s quiet in the dailies. Too quiet. I realize Monday is reserved for lots of articles on the Steelers, but the lack of swift and active critiques of Pitt and Walt Harris all weekend has to be unnerving for him. It’s a bad thing. It means the knives are being drawn a lot slower and the cuts will be deeper when they come. Like what? I’m thinking timelines, lists blunders and missteps. Maybe even a well thought out and reasoned column from Smizik — okay, I may be reaching a bit on the last. The Monday press conference should be a very tense event.

Guy Junker’s weekly scattershot column leads with the obvious: the Big East sucks in football. Hell, I don’t think there is a person following college football, not employed by the Big East or member institutions, who disputes that. There’s a reason that Big East officials are already mentioning the success of Louisville despite the fact that they won’t be members until next year. Junker also takes his shot at Harris,

That is a losing mentality. First, how can Palko get game experience when he runs a give up play? What happens the next time he’s facing a third and goal late in the half or late in the game? Wouldn’t it have been better to let him tryfor a touchdown, even if for no other reason than to learn? He says all the politically correct things, but how do you think Palko really feels about Walt Harris showing no confidence in him at all?

Yet, he was allowed to throw out of his own end zone even though he wasn’t allowed to throw into UConn’s. How about a fade or a screen or something fairly safe. And if UConn was expecting a pass, how about a draw play?

Now, I asked myself this question: If the Huskies don’t return the ensuing kickoff to midfield and complete a quick pass before kicking a field goal as time expired to retake the lead, would I think differently?

No, because you can’t play scared. You can’t play not-to-lose football. The message sent to that entire Pitt football team in the last minute of the first half last Thursday was that “we aren’t good enough to compete.”

Essentially along the lines of what Collier said.

The beat writers are doing their job, trying to look to the Saturday game at Temple. Zeise, though, appears to be at then end of his tolerance for the same starting with the very first sentence of his notebook.

Pitt’s running game — and this is an old story — is having a hard time getting out of the gate.
…
If Pitt is to have any chance of finishing with a winning record and making a bowl game, it will need far more production from its running game. With a better running game, Palko, who has been sacked 13 times and is under enormous pressure most of the time, would have a better chance of being successful as well.

Of course, that would mean the offensive line would have to open up an occasional whole or actually push forward, rather than be driven backwards.

The Temple game is seen as Pitt’s “get well” game. Both physically and mentally. Pitt, oddly enough, may feel even more pressure in this game. MAC power Bowling Green decimated Temple this past Saturday by 54 points. That’s harsh. If Pitt doesn’t win by at least 20 after that, then Pitt will look even worse.

Talk about paranoid… OK, here’s Chas‘s latest charge…

What I wrote:

“I know Pat and Lee have their doubts about seeing the Hoopies ranked in the top 15. I think they are at least worthy of the #15 ranking, probably higher.Here’s what really sucks. We have to hope that WVU really is that good.”

If Lee can find where I wrote WVU should be a top 10 team, I’d love to see it. My point all along, has been that Pitt and the Big East needed WVU to step-up this year and finish in the top 12 of the BCS rankings. This ham-handed attempt to distort what I said, is at the Joe Lockhart or even Chris Lehane level. At least I could be accused of reaching Rove-ian heights.

Now, Chas, read what I actually said very carefully…

“Remember all of the crap I took for even suggesting that West Virginia might not deserve to be ranked in the top ten?”

Where in that sentence did I accuse you of writing that WVU should be a top ten team? All I said is that I took crap from you for suggesting that they DIDN’T deserve to be a top ten team.

And you passed the bar exam with reading comprehension skills like that?

Besides, the real point of all of this is that you disagreed with my assertion that WVU was overrated. You were proven wrong this weekend. Deal with it, Rove.

Well, a little, but not much. Not surprising when the Steelers have a game at home. I guess this is what Coach Harris meant by the continual attention and negativity. The PG has nothing today. Nada. Not a single piece.

In the Trib., well there is a piece on Josh Lay dealing with becoming a back-up. And at least he’s manning up to why he isn’t starting ahead of Revis.

Lay admits that he has only himself to blame. He said he failed to complete an administration of justice course in time to be academically eligible for the start of camp, then missed a handful of practices upon his return after aggravating his hamstring.

“I messed up,” Lay said. “I deserve what I’ve got right now. I don’t put nothing on nobody except myself. I made mistakes.”

I think Lay may still get back in as a starter. The biggest fault I find with both Revis and Phillips right now, is that they are playing too far off the receiver. That may be the coaching, but it is allowing the receivers to get open in the middle too easily. Lay has more experience, and may be able to handle playing closer to the receiver without being burned.

There is a Harris-bashing column. This from Goslin. Can’t disagree with it. The nut passage concerning the play:

The point is Harris has left himself open to question by everyone, including his players. Certainly Palko would have preferred to go for the touchdown on third down. Certainly he could have lashed out at the coach in the postgame.

But the young quarterback showed more maturity in some respects than the coach by being the good soldier. He did what he was told and provided leadership afterwards by saying, “It’s not time to panic and point fingers. It’s time to snap your freakin’ head gear on and get ready for Temple.”

That is what I call being right even though it’s wrong.

I know I should not want to hang a coach on one play. But the choice was so bad and ultimately such a microcosm for Harris’ coaching tenure that it fits. Reputation for creativity, “offensive genius,” and “quarterback guru.” But then being too afraid to risk field position in the first half of a close game?

Now Pitt has to go beat Temple. The Owls managed to lose to a MAC team by 54 yesterday. How many Pitt fans actually feel confident of a win, despite that?

What I wrote:

I know Pat and Lee have their doubts about seeing the Hoopies ranked in the top 15. I think they are at least worthy of the #15 ranking, probably higher.

Here’s what really sucks. We have to hope that WVU really is that good.

If Lee can find where I wrote WVU should be a top 10 team, I’d love to see it. My point all along, has been that Pitt and the Big East needed WVU to step-up this year and finish in the top 12 of the BCS rankings. This ham-handed attempt to distort what I said, is at the Joe Lockhart or even Chris Lehane level. At least I could be accused of reaching Rove-ian heights.

And then to do a post where Lee puts himself in the 3rd person. Brilliant!

Remember all of the crap I took for even suggesting that West Virginia might not deserve to be ranked in the top ten? Well, it’s all OK now. That’s allright, Chas. Apology accepted. Stop trying to play along with Lee.

Really, I felt justified even before the game, when the then-seventh-ranked team in the country was somehow a three point underdog to an unranked team. That math don’t add up, and I don’t care where the game’s being played.

But aside from the relatively unimportant matter of justifying Lee’s opinions, there’s little good that we Pitt fans can take from this. The Big East needed it’s champion to be ranked as highly as possible (remember that our champion has to finish in the top 12 over four years for us to retain our seat at the BCS).

Worse yet, of all the teams in the world that WVU could lose to, it had to be Virginia Tech — the lowest of the ACC defectors. At least Miami and Boston College never pretended to want to stay. A Big East team losing to the Hokies sucks in both Morgantown and Oakland. Oh well, at least VT deserved to win. I wasn’t much impressed with WVU. Nice discipline, Rodriguez.

Hail to the Big East Champion winding up in the top 12 anyways.

Midnight Madness for basketball is now less than 2 weeks away.

Not a one. When the beat writers are this critical, it is over.

Here we go again.

You might be hearing those words frequently when the topic du jour is the Pitt defense.

Why? Because just when the Panthers seemed to be turning the corner after a miserable 2003 — a season in which they yielded 402.6 yards per game, including 185 rushing — they’re fading fast.

Their 29-17 loss to Connecticut two days ago exposed deficiencies in stopping the run (Cornell Brockington smoked them for 185 yards) and getting to the quarterback (no sacks). UConn had 395 total yards and managed 25 first downs — 11 more than the Panthers.

A week earlier, Division I-AA Furman amassed 423 yards and 38 points in nearly pulling off an upset.
…
The question is: Can the Panthers stop the run?

“Our run defense is designed great,” sophomore middle linebacker Clint Session said. “Sometimes, a guy on defense makes a bad read, and that can hurt the entire defense.”

Similar words were spoken last season, and the Panthers struggled mightily.

And that was the nice way of putting it. Bendel was trying to find anything nice to say, but there wasn’t much. It comes back to this question. “Where are the Panthers going?” The answer isn’t one we like.

Paul Zeise at the PG writes what everyone who has paid attention for the last couple years thinks.

But truth be told, Palko was the least of the Panthers’ problems Thursday night. In fact, he and his receivers — who are slowly coming around — are among the few areas that probably would qualify as a bright spot.

And if Palko wanted to, he could have put some of the blame for the loss on his head coach, but that is not his style.
…
Pitt’s problems are deeper than a young quarterback making mistakes and a coach making a questionable decision. The problems are the same as they have been the past two or three seasons.

The offensive line doesn’t seem to be getting any better. Palko had little time to throw and often was forced to scramble for yards, dump a short pass to one of his underneath receivers or throw on the run. He was sacked four times, but it could have been more.

“They got pressure on us with four down linemen,” Palko said, when asked if he felt like he was running for his life. “Our [linemen] are fighting, and you won’t hear me say a bad thing about them.”

The Panthers also had trouble running the ball. Pitt was credited with 82 yards rushing, but 49 of those came from Palko’s scrambles. The running backs contributed 19 carries for 33 yards, 16 on one run.

The Panthers also couldn’t stop the run, especially in the second half. Huskies sophomore Cornell Brockington ran 31 times for 185 yards and a touchdown, and got 124 of his yards after halftime, when Connecticut was trying to protect the lead.

When asked why Brockington was able to run wild in the second half, Pitt linebacker Clint Session explained, “We thought we had the game wrapped up at half [Pitt was trailing, 13-10], so we came out flatter than we should of.”

The fact that the defense thought it had the game won — even though it was trailing — is another sign that the Panthers’ problems run deeper than a young quarterback.

He’s right. And I keep thinking about what Collier wrote:

If you can get past the spectacle of a quarterback intentionally sliding to a stop in his own backfield on third down, you can write this off to Harris’ penchant for outsmarting himself. But if you’re Tyler Palko, what are you thinking — this guy will let me throw it from my own end zone, but not into theirs?

Pitt gets pinned deep. Palko behind a bad offensive line and green receivers is to throw the ball. But when Pitt drives down the field in the 2-minute drill, Harris goes ultraconservative then makes the excuse that Palko is an inexperienced QB? Not-My-Fault-Walt is back with a vengeance.

I was surprised that there were not many columns on this game, but Joe Starkey — who has bent over backwards at times to be fair to Harris — declares Harris to be toast.

Fifty years and a day after Willie Mays gave us The Catch, Walt Harris gave us The Slide.

That is how Walt’s cowardly call near the end of the first half Thursday will come to be known in Pitt football annals. The Slide. It could double as The Headline for the program’s current state — and it was, to be sure, a fireable offense.
…
The Slide wasn’t Walt’s only mind-twisting maneuver, but it was perhaps the signature move of his coaching career, sort of in the way Al Campanis’ “Nightline” appearance proved to be a signature move.

One can only imagine what Pitt chancellor Mark Nordenberg, vice chancellor Jerry Cochran and athletic director Jeff Long were thinking when they saw The Slide.

If it wasn’t something along the lines of, “This is unacceptable,” then they’re as out of touch as the coach.

Starkey also caught Mark May losing it, like Lee.

Let’s face it, the only way Harris keeps his job is if Pitt runs the table. I won’t bet against my team, so I’m not willing to put money on what I think of that proposition.

I’ll give one other reason for why it will be good for Pitt at this point to fire Harris. It goes back to things I’ve read on message boards, and a Q&A with PG beat reporter Paul Zeise:

Q: It appears that Pitt’s assistant coaches are not up to par. Why can’t coach Harris get better assistant coaches surrounding him?

ZEISE: Money. It is as simple as Pitt has a hard time attracting top assistants because Pitt doesn’t pay assistant coaches particularly well. Pitt’s assistant coaches are among the lowest paid in the Big East and even, from what I understand, are looking up at such storied programs like Central Florida in the salary department. That’s ridiculous…

As an excuse for Harris, it is about the last one left in the chamber, and if you read the rest, even Zeise doesn’t find that sufficient. If Pitt fires Harris and gets anyone with a name or any juice, they are going to have to pony up money for the assistants. That can only help Pitt with coaching and recruiting.

I really don’t take any joy in saying Harris must go. Not because I’ve been trying to defend him and give him more time to get it right. I have no problem giving in and admitting when I’m wrong — I’m married, you quickly get used to it. It means Pitt is not winning. It means the program is going the wrong way. At this point, you look at the team and you look at recruiting and the only conclusion is this is the end of Harris as the head coach at Pitt. They play out the string and move quickly in December.

I’ll still be at the games cheering and hoping, but this is not a good year for Pitt football.

Really Late, I know. I expect tomorrow will have the real recriminations. The game was too late for the deep articles. So articles tended to have a rushed, beat the deadline feel.

Graessele suffered his concussion making a tackle on that return at the end of the half that set up UConn’s field goal for a 13-10 lead. Punt returns with Allen Richardson was another disaster; and punt and kick coverage was horrible. The O-line took more injuries as Pettiti — who was not playing particularly well in the game — was hurt.

Even in Connecticut, they know Walt Harris’ days are likely numbered, and know that the decisions at the end of the 1st half are a crystallizing moment.

When a program isn’t meeting expectations and a coach is under pressure, the little things become magnified.

Such was the case with one play call made by Pittsburgh coach Walt Harris and his Panthers in the second quarter of their 29-17 loss to UConn at Rentschler Field Thursday night. Trailing UConn 10-7 with 57 seconds left before halftime, Pitt faced a third-and-12 at the UConn 12.

Pitt called timeout to set up a play. Instead of taking one shot at the end zone, quarterback Tyler Palko rushed to the middle of the field for a loss of 1 yard. Josh Cummings then came on and tied the score with a 30-yard field goal.

“I decided to go for the field goal,” Harris said. “It was third down and 12 from there and we’ve got a young quarterback. We tried to run the ball over and get it in perfect position for our field goal kicker. We thought going in at halftime 10-10 would be the intelligent way to play this game on the road. Unfortunately, it didn’t happen that way. It didn’t end that way.”
…
Despite all that, expectations heading into this season were lower and a 41-38 overtime victory over Furman, the No. 2 team in Division I-AA, last Saturday had put Harris in a defensive mood. Things started going downhill last season when the Panthers didn’t live up to preseason expectations with a talented team that included Heisman Trophy candidate Larry Fitzgerald. Pitt lost five games, including a 23-16 setback to Virginia in the Continental Tire Bowl.

That increased the pressure on Harris, 57, who has taken the Panthers to four consecutive bowls. His contract expires after the 2006 season and there is no indication that a new one is in the works.

Arguably, Harris has held a new contract in his own hands with this season. At least show that he understood what needed to improve and take steps towards remedying them. Of course, last year’s Miami game showed what happens when you let a Walt Harris Pitt team have control of its own destiny.

Actually, one columnist managed to get his blast out early on the game. Gene Collier with something of a must read.

While it was easy enough to determine what Connecticut was trying to do on the damp New England lawn, it was impossible to know what Pitt was attempting at the manic behest of Walt Harris.

These are difficult times for the Panthers’ coach. It is the dawn of the Tyler Palko Era, and it is the twilight of Harris’ tenure, and the odd light thrown by unnaturally conflicting career rotations is getting harder and harder to describe.

Harris doesn’t seem to have any trouble putting Palko in situations that are ridiculously high risk, such as throwing from his own end zone into the flat on the road, but can’t seem to bring himself to let the talented sophomore flash his skills and build on his modest successes.

While it is not exactly news that the relationship between Harris, alleged passing game mastermind, and his inevitably skittish quarterbacks is an issue best left to the psychotherapists, the symptoms last night reached absolutely bizarre proportions.

When a Connecticut punt rolled dead at the 2 in a scoreless first quarter, Harris flirted with sanity and sent tailback Raymond Kirkley up the middle for a yard of oxygen. On second down, insanity returned. Palko dropped back into his own end zone and fired into the left flat for Greg Lee.

Connecticut cornerback Justin Perkins stepped in front of it and was in the Panthers’ end zone before he even had to accelerate.

Harris must consider being compelled to punt some kind of school-yard humiliation, which is curious in that sometimes a punt is his best offensive play. Adam Graessle bombed a 74-yard punt out of the Pitt end zone just three possessions after the interception, bailing the Panthers out of a contorted spell in which the offense would commit four pre-snap penalties in six plays.

Late in the first half, with Pitt trailing, 10-7, Harris had Palko execute a series of maneuvers I’d be tempted to call unprecedented if only I’d been watching football for a little more than 44 years. So I’ll just call them preposterous.
…
Before third-and-goal at the 12, Pitt called a timeout to think things over. Unless you’re Walt, there isn’t much to think about. This is what Palko is at Pitt for, to sizzle third-and-goal passes into the end zone from the 12, because ostensibly he can. But he won’t if Harris keeps dealing in the kind of brainstorm he was about to display.

Palko took the snap on the left hash, ran two steps to his right … and … slid.

He slid. I believe he was safe. He lost a yard, but centered the spot of the ball so Josh Cummings could kick a 30-yard field goal for a 10-10 tie that would last 19 seconds.

“No,” Harris said when asked if he considered going to the end zone on third-and-12. “I decided to go for the field goal on third-and-12 with a young quarterback. I thought that going in at half tied, 10-10, would be the intelligent way to play this game when you’re on the road.”

If you can get past the spectacle of a quarterback intentionally sliding to a stop in his own backfield on third down, you can write this off to Harris’ penchant for outsmarting himself. But if you’re Tyler Palko, what are you thinking — this guy will let me throw it from my own end zone, but not into theirs?

If Harris thought there was negativity before, this week should be brutal.

Bitter, bitter, bitter, bitter feelings still. Not feeling any better about this game the next morning. It’s time to vent.

Sat down for the game with a beer, pad and pen. Turned to ESPN2 a couple minutes before 7pm. For amusement, I tabbed the info key on the remote about the game. This is, and I am quoting directly, how the Northeast Ohio Comcast program guide described it:

Pittsburgh at Connectitcut in Big East action at Rentschler Field. Senior RB Raymond Kirkley carries the load for the Panthers in their first-ever meeting with UConn.

Okay, interesting description. The crew for the game is Sean McDonough with play-by-play, Craig James doing color and Heather Cox on the sideline. They kick it back to the studio for a few minutes with Rece Davis and Mark May. Rece brings up Pitt’s D giving up 38 points to Furman, and you could see May dip his head and visibly wince.

You know what, I took some 14 pages of longhand notes and scribbles during this game and even stopped with some 5 minutes left in the game. Looking them over makes me see red once more, so I’ll spare everyone the details and summarize briefly. I still haven’t looked at the dailies or any mainstream write-ups. Just looked at the box score, drive chart and play-by-play.

So let’s start with some depressing facts. The O-line, once more killed this team. Pitt committed 8 penalties. I think the O-line was responsible for all but one. Mostly false starts, because they were so undisciplined and jittery. Pathetic. It is so hard to tell how good or bad the Running Backs are when they have no holes to hit. Kirkley, Furman and Mason all plowed straight ahead, but there was nothing to run through. Craig James kept pointing out that the only running game Pitt had was when Palko had to take off — and Palko really needs to learn to slide at the end of a run.

Same for Palko, the QB. He was only 11 for 31 with 267 yards, but he had absolutely no time to pass. He was their only offense. Pitt had 349 total yards, and Palko accounted for 316 of them (49 yards running, 267 passing). That might be normal if Pitt ran Nebraska’s old option offense, but not for this team.

Pitt’s first 2 offensive series were 3-and-out. They had a total of 7 for the game. Plus 3 drives that were for only for 4 plays. I’m amazed the offense managed to stay out there for 27:05 of the game.

The fact that the defense was out for nearly 33 minutes doesn’t excuse them. It especially doesn’t excuse the coaches who didn’t make adjustments to the pass coverage. The corners played 7-12 yards off the receivers the entire game. It was no wonder someone was always wide open across the middle. Just run a simple slant and there’s an easy pick-up. The defense got lazy or tired further into the game. Once more, they forgot to tackle and just tried to hit the receiver — allowing more yards after the catch. Orlovsky was not sharp early in the game. About half way through the 2nd quarter he was only 6-17. His receivers dropped several balls. After that point, though, he went 17-26 as UConn kept exploiting the middle of the field. There was no excuse not to make the adjustments. James and McDonough were even talking about the need to make adjustments for the second half — which resulted in a harsh, loud, barking laugh from me at that statement. And do I really need to mention the fact that the Josh Lay and Darrelle Revis both let interceptions they could have easily taken in for a touchdown bounce off their hands?

And the run defense. It just kept getting worse further into the game. It actually looked respectable in the first half. At one point in the first half, Brockington had 57 yards on 11 carries. 26 of the yards, though, came on one carry, so the run defense seemed decent enough. In the second half, however, he ran wild and ended up finishing with 185 yards on 31 carries! Way to keep him under 200 guys.

As far as I was concerned, though, the game was lost just before the half. Pitt puts together a nice drive sparked by a solid kickoff return by Furman. They get to the 10 yard line for first and goal. Palko misses DelSardo in the corner. Kirkley gets taken down for a 2 yard loss and Pitt takes a time out with 57 seconds left. I made a note next to that that said “they’ll run to preserve position.” So I expected a running play. But I didn’t expect Palko to just go sideways a couple yards. To not even try to run for any gain. All Pitt wanted to do was tie the game. Not to lose playing.

UConn was playing a different game. An aggressive one. They took a timeout so that after Cummings made the FG, they still had a little time on the clock. UConn had a solid return that brought the ball to midfield with 10 seconds left. A good throw along the sidelines for 18 yards (why was Henry so open over there?) allowing the receiver to get out of bounds with 2 seconds left. They take a crack at a 49 yard field goal and naturally make it. It was like the football gods were rewarding UConn for playing aggressive and punishing Pitt for not.

I don’t think there was a Pitt fan watching who just didn’t lose faith in the game at that point even with UConn only up by 3 at the half.

I honestly think, Harris may have lost just about all support amongst the fans in this game. He’s skirted close a couple times. The 2001 first half of the season with the spread. In 2002, the BC game — where many of us actually gave up and went out to the lot to drink. Last year he lost a lot of support, but you had to give him at least this year to see if he could turn it around. But now? Same mistakes. Same problems. Alienating the WPIAL coaches the way he has is virtually suicidal. For Harris and the team, it’s a good thing to have an away game next week. And by god they better beat Temple.

There were a couple positives in the game. If Palko ever gets protection, I really think he will be a great QB. Greg Lee showed moments of living up to his potential — including a point where he actually fought for a ball, and ripped it back from the corner covering him. DelSardo has been fantastic. This 5’8″ kid is playing so well. Graessle keeps improving on his punting — hopefully the concussion wasn’t bad.

Sorry I took forever to get this out. Had a lot of things to do this morning and afternoon.

Like Chas, I’m a little too frustrated to do a decent post on the UConn fiasco yet. However, I can’t help but mention what I thought was the clear highlight of the game: Mark May practically calling Walt Harris a pussy for not going for the end zone on third down just before halftime. For those of you who didn’t see it, May made his commentary from the ESPN studio just after the teams left the field. I guess what I liked about May so much was the look of genuine embarrassment and anger in his eyes. For a moment, he wasn’t just another allegedly impartial analyst. He was a frustrated Pitt alumnus and Panther fan, just like me.

Despite our allegedly having much better talent than UConn, we deservedly got crushed last night. We had no presence on the line on either side of the ball. Palko ran for his life for most of the night, while we got literally no pressure on Orlovsky. Our receivers rarely fought for balls, and often just tried to avoid getting hit. Sooner or later all of this is Harris’s responsibility. At the very least, there ARE plays out there for offenses with weak lines. I mean, has Harris ever heard of play action? Even though the refs did repeatedly hose us, enough real penalties were committed to question our team discipline. Our game preparation was wanting. Our in-game adjustments were non-existent. Based on his comments from last Saturday’s College Gameday Final show on ESPN, I’m pretty sure that Mark May has about had it with Walt. I’m starting to agree…

…not that “JFC” didn’t make some good points in the comments under this post from earlier this week…

“I still get back to the issue of who are you going to replace harris
with??? Its easy to run the guy out of town but not so easy to find a better
replacement. Granted most of us probably dont buy into Harris being an offensive
genius but it is a reputation thats out there… His reputation still works
for him. We are not getting people like Urban Myer. So who does that leave? Who
is going to bring a reptation for something to Pitt??”

Good point. Harris does have that reputation on the national level (although I doubt he’ll keep it for much longer), and it has kind of worked for him in the past. And although Pitt has allegedly great facilities, it clearly isn’t the best job in the country either. We’re not going to get Bob Stoops sniffing around Oakland. I guess my only response to JFC’s point would be to ask how much longer we can afford to have our program wondering aimlessly — losing like it did last night — with a coach at the helm who has alienated his recruiting base, refused to take responsibility for anything that’s gone wrong, repeatedly attacked his players in public, and shown no ability to call plays, make any halftime adjustments, or worst of all, improve. At this point, a decent coach from the WPIAL might even be an improvement.

This is a tough (and very serious) issue. Hail to some decent discussion on this.

Bitter. Angry. Frustrated. Not yet ready to put my game notes in a semi-coherent manner. This was a bad loss. I’m now starting to believe that Walt Harris wants to be fired. Going to try and sleep this off.