As requested by Chas, Tyler Palko did indeed get one of the coveted helmet stickers from ESPN’s College Gameday Final crew last night (midnight Eastern, rebroadcast at 7:00 AM Sunday). And, of course, it was given by our very own Mark May. After he had given the sticker and Trev Alberts had moved on to his next choice (thus drawing the attention away), May casually picked up the Pitt helmet, looked into the camera, winked, and gave a charming little thumbs-up. A proud alumnus indulging in a slightly unprofessional moment, and God bless him for it.

I digress a little, but I remember one Sunday back in the early-to-mid 1990s when Pitt football was at it’s absolute nadir: there was almost no reason to be proud of or even mention the Panthers. But suddenly, Curtis Martin broke out in the NFL. And on one of those network post-game shows, after praising the new NFL star’s latest performance, Mike Ditka looked into the camera and added, “And I just gotta say, hail to Pitt.” For some reason, I’ve always remembered and appreciated that. Maybe it was just the only small light of pride that I could find in those dark days.

But back to the subject at hand… The College Gameday Final crew showed a good 30 seconds of highlights from our win over Notre Dame in South Bend. But the most memorable part was the ribbing that Mark May took (on two separate occasions) for calling for Walt Harris’s job after the UConn loss. May almost seemed to concede that Walt was OK now. I’m not sure that I agree. I’ll admit that one of the big complaints against Walt is that he doesn’t win the big games, and that he just kind of refuted that (as pointed out by JFC in the comments under here). I guess I just want more for Pitt football than a once-a-year-upset of a big time opponent. I want us to become a steady regional power (like Penn State used to be), if not a national power. And I think that Walt has taken us almost as high as he can. We clearly have reached a plateau, anyways…

That being said, is there anybody available out there who could take us higher? Maybe not. If we lose to WVU, if Wannstadt shows no interest, and if there’s no other proven commodities out there, I might be able to live with keeping Walt for one more year now that he’s beaten Notre Dame in South Bend. So in that sense, last night did move me off my hardline stance a little. I guess I was moved a little by how much our offense has improved since that UConn game…

But more importantly at the moment, Tyler Palko’s 36 yard pass to Erik Gill (most of which happened after the catch) is a nominee for Pontiac’s Game Changing Performance award for this week. So log on to espn.com, scroll down to “contests and special sections” towards the bottom of the page, click on “Pontiac Game Changing Performance,” and vote for Tyler already (the last time I checked, Tyler had 16% of the vote). This would be the first time this year that a Panther play has landed there.

Hail to my wife’s forgiving me for skipping out on Thanksgiving dinner to drive to Pittsburgh for a suddenly interesting Brawl.