The Pitt Athletic Department announced that the athletic department’s extortion fundraising unit is changing its name. Gone is “Team Pittsburgh.” It is now “Panther Club.” Why the name change?

“As we continue to implement plans that will energize our fans and help us achieve excellence throughout our athletic program, I have been continually reminded of the one symbol of strength that unites us all — the Panther,” Pittsburgh athletic director Jeff Long said. “For nearly 100 years, the Panther has been an enduring symbol of our program and University. The Panther is highly visible across campus and our athletic venues.”

Hmmm. This is pure speculation on my part, but this strikes me as part of Pitt’s slow move away from the forced use of “Pittsburgh” when talking about the athletic department at all times, and a re-embracing of “Pitt.” I notice, Pitt is used in the press release a couple of times.

I have to think that the strong merchandising sales of the retro Pitt gear is a factor, along with alumni and students consistent and persistent refusal to call the school anything but Pitt. They’ve had better success with the media than with the fan base on that count.

Wishful thinking, perhaps.

The Big East announced that it will be a single, 16 team division next year and that only the top 12 teams will play in the Big East Tournament. There will be 16 conference games, but not everyone will play every year. There will by 10 single game match-ups and then 6 games of home-and-home (3 teams) to be determined every year. Most of the 10 single games will be on a rotating basis, but some rivalry games (Pitt-WVU, Louisville-Cinci, Seton Hall-Rutgers will be permanent).

The single division set-up was clearly about maximizing the number of teams to get into the NCAA Tournament. Divisional play tends to get unbalanced quickly. One side may have too many good teams beating the crap out of each other, killing their chances while the other side may just be too weak.

The set-up for conference play was about TV money. Those home-and-home match-ups will be determined by their geographic proximity, attractiveness, national interest and competitiveness. Next year, you can expect Pitt to play home-and-home against any combination of UConn, Syracuse, ND and/or WVU. ND would likely be seeing Pitt, UConn, Marquette and/or DePaul. Louisville would be Cinci, Providence, WVU and Marquette. And so on.

No matter what, it will be ugly and unwieldly and the Big East will have to split within 5 years.

A couple places that had to mention Pitt. Well, Tyler Palko, anyways. Stewart Mandel’s SI.com column gives him “honorable mention.” The best though came from FoxSports/Sporting News/CollegeFootballNews.com:

Oh who cares about an F-word fired out on NBC; we’ve all heard it before and we’ve all probably said it 15 times in the last hour. Tyler Palko on the field has been unbelievable over the last three games completing 64% of his throws for 991 yards and 11 touchdowns with only one interception. The bizarre part about this run? He completed 27 of 43 against Rutgers, 28 of 42 against Syracuse and 27 of 43 against Notre Dame.

The lack of bowl eligible teams, that I mentioned previously. Apparently Dennis Dodd at Sportsline was already talking about it. The column came before this past weekend’s games, but apparently there will be a lot of vacancies at this rate.

I’m expecting more bitching about how bad the Big East is and undeserving of an auto bid to the BCS — Matt Hayes did just a snippet complaint. Of course, Hayes previously was telling all members in the Big East to relax and be happy about Miami and VT leaving, because all would be better. Now he wants to rip the auto bid away. How would that be better? Maybe that was why we weren’t happy. Still, if there is something that would help, just on rep alone and unite the Big East in hating one coach, this weird rumor from Peter King’s Monday Morning QB column could be it:

I think, as strange as it sounds, there are some Florida scribes who believe Steve Spurrier could become a candidate for the South Florida job if it comes open after this year. Four reasons:

1.) Spurrier’s son, a high school receiver in Virginia, is being recruited by the Bulls, and evidently it’s down to South Florida or Marshall for the young Spurrier. Imagine Dad coaching son.

2.) South Florida enters the Big East next year, so there’s a chance it will become a big player in college football.

3.) There are many golf courses in the Tampa area.

4.) Did I mention the golf courses already?

Just add it to the rumor mill.

Tyler Palko was named Big East Co-Offensive Player of the Week. He shares the award with Temple QB, Walter Washington, who is fairly deserving for essentiallybeating Syracuse on his own. Just kind of amusing that Palko wins the national player of the week award, but has to share the conference version. The Big East Press Release for the rest of the honors is not yet posted. I’ll add a link as an update later.

Looking at the BE “football report” (PDF) for the week, I see that the BE game of the week is BC at Temple. I don’t know, but if I’m BE Commish Mike Tranghese, I’m making a quiet offer to the Temple AD that if Temple can win they get to stay in the BE for another year. Just a thought.

UPDATE: Here’s the BE press release. The Defensive and Special Teams Players of the Week were Mathias Kiwanuka and Wil Blackmon respectively, both from BC.

This is a very simplistic approach, but it should illustrate the situation.

Pitt has 3 games left. WVU, USF and a bowl game. In terms of wins and losses, Pitt’s final record has 4 possibilities: 9-3; 8-4; 7-5 and 6-6. There are, though 8 scenarios of the nature of the wins and losses:

1. Wins WVU, USF and Bowl Opponent — 9-3 Final Record
2. Wins WVU, USF, but Loss in Bowl — 8-4 Final Record
3. Wins WVU and Bowl, but Loss to USF — 8-4 Final Record
4. Wins USF and Bowl, but Loss to WVU — 8-4 Final Record
5. Wins WVU, but Loses to USF and Bowl — 7-5 Final Record
6. Wins USF, but Loses to WVU and Bowl — 7-5 Final Record
7. Wins Bowl, but Loses to WVU and USF — 7-5 Final Record
8. Loses to WVU, USF and Bowl Opponent — 6-6 Final Record

I think it is clear that scenarios 1-3 are no-brainers that Coach Walt Harris returns with some sort of extension.

Just as clearly that outcomes 6-8 dictate for Harris’ termination.

Situations 4 and 5 though are the muddy area. I would think, though, that the leanings would be for Harris to return. In #4, just on the sheer number of wins. The other one, would be because Pitt beat their main rival.

Pretending each scenario has an equal chance of happening — which is a complete falsehood, but is the only way this works — there is a 62.5% (5 out of 8) chance that Harris will be the head coach of Pitt next year. Even if you weight each scenario by likelihood, I would still put it around 60%.

Not much to add from the earlier report as far as the game itself. Krauser was disappointed with his shooting and the team hitting only 39% as a whole. He said he wasn’t fully back physically (then why did he play 30 minutes?). The worrisome thing was that Chris Taft was out with an infection in his left elbow. While he is expected to be back for the season opener on November 20, an infection makes me nervous. Freshman guard Kieth Benjamin was also out with a sore knee and a cold.

Coach Jamie Dixon spun positive about the better defensive effort. Dixon also said he was still trying to figure out the best way to rotate some of the players in and out of the game. That will be the thing to watch. When the competition gets tougher does he just default to his 5 starters and maybe limit his bench to 2 rather than 4 players.

Well, Tyler Palko did not win the ABC Sports/Cingular/ESPN All-America Player of the Week. It went to Carnell Williams of Auburn. This was just part of the national attention given to Palko after this weekend’s performance. Still, it will be hard for Palko to even get named to the All-Big East Team this year:

Paul Peterson of Boston College has his team in the national rankings and led the Eagles to a crucial win over West Virginia on Saturday. Dan Orlovsky of Connecticut is the top passer in the league, Ryan Hart is rewriting the record books at Rutgers, Walter Washington of Temple is the best quarterback you’ve never heard of and Rasheed Marshall still has WVU in position for a possible Big East title and a BCS berth.

Palko is 4th in the Big East in Passing. In Passing Efficiency, he is 2nd to Rasheed Marshall; 2nd behind Walter Washington in Points Responsible For; and 4th in Total Offense.

Josh Cummings was still feeling good about kicking the game-winning field goal.

“I said before the kick, that it really couldn’t get much worse than what happened to me the last week, except for the fact that we hadn’t won (at Notre Dame) in 18 years and it was the final second of the game,” said Cummings, tongue in cheek. “It felt good to put those last points on the board.”

Now there is bowl speculation. Pitt could still, technically, make the BCS bowl if: Pitt beats WVU and USF, and Boston College loses to Syracuse and/or Temple. While the Gator Bowl might be Pitt’s best hope, they don’t want Pitt. Worse, they don’t have to take Pitt and neither do other bowl tie-ins if Pitt splits their last 2 games:

If Boston College wins out, however, Pitt could be looking at a case where it wins its final three games to finish 8-3 and ends up in the Insight Bowl — or worse if Notre Dame can somehow upset top-ranked Southern California. That’s because even though Pitt will have beaten West Virginia, the two teams would have the same record and that would mean it would be the Gator Bowl’s choice of who to invite.

The choice would seem fairly simple.

West Virginia has sold out its ticket allotment for bowls the past two years and was responsible for helping both of those bowl games be sellouts (including the Gator Bowl last year), while Pitt sold less than 2,000 tickets to the Continental Tire Bowl last year and has struggled to sell tickets to its bowl games the past four years.

That would mean Pitt, even at 8-3, would head to the Insight Bowl. Connecticut (5-4, 2-3) is reportedly the top choice of the Tire Bowl if it can win one of its final two games against Buffalo and Rutgers, because it is assumed the Huskies will travel well to their first bowl game.

If Pitt loses one, to finish at 7-4, and Connecticut wins its two, the Panthers could be squeezed out of the Big East’s bowls and have to hope that one of the other major conferences fails to fill all of its spots. That’s because Notre Dame (6-4) is the desired first choice of the Insight Bowl.

The Irish already are bowl eligible, but with a trip to USC Nov. 27, another loss would not be good enough to knock an 8-3 Big East team out of a bowl, but it would be good enough to knock a 7-4 team out, because the conference has a “one-win” rule in effect.

The only good news is that as much as people want to rip the Big East for not being good, this is a down year for a bunch of conferences, and there will likely be more bowl bids than bowl eligible teams. Hello, Motor City Bowl.

Again, this is kind of meaningless right now, and the problem can most easily be resolved by Pitt winning.

[Blogger went down again, but I saved this post from last night.]

Damned if I know, but there is going to be a lot of pointless speculation for the next week and a half.

The big speculation will be regarding Coach Walt Harris. Look, it is no question a big, important win for him and the program. It is the one of the few times a Pitt team under Harris has won a game they weren’t expected to win (not counting Virginia Tech the last 3 years). Usually Pitt has, at best, just played a game close but still loses — like at Miami 2 years ago.

So, yes, ND is not a great team, but this is the first time Pitt has one in South Bend in almost 20 years. It is only the second win over ND in the Walt Harris era. There will be plenty of people looking to denigrate this win. You have to expect that. Just as they would have denigrated a win over Nebraska if it had happened. Doesn’t matter. This was a big win. A great win for Pitt.

Getting back to Harris. Right now, it just means he has a little breathing room. Fact is, though, he still has to win. Pitt is now 6-3. They technically have a shot at the BCS bowl, with help from Syracuse if they can beat BC, but realistically it is at best the Gator Bowl or the Insight Bowl.

It comes down to the Backyard Brawl (and then winning that make-up game in Tampa against South Florida). Pitt, under Harris, is 3-4 against WVU. The last win came in 2001. WVU is coming off a bad loss at home to BC. They will be pissed. Much the way Pitt couldn’t handle the expectations placed on it last year, the Mountaineers have spit the bit twice this season. They are definitely beatable by Pitt, but the match-ups tend to favor WVU a bit. They also have extra time to prepare and WVU under Rodriguez is 2-1 against Pitt.

Now even if Pitt loses to WVU but wins against USF and wins their bowl game. Pitt would end the season 8-4. You almost have to say that Harris earned another year, but it isn’t that simple. He would also be looking for an extension. Pitt couldn’t delay that decision any longer. It would have to be at least a 2 year extension, but maybe a 4 year. Not sure how common option years are in college coaching contracts, but any extension for Harris practically screams for those.

This was a rebuilding year, and the team has visibly improved from the start of the season on offense. Yes the Temple and Furman games were ugly, but they were wins. Big wins over BC and ND.

The negatives — the defense has shown no signs of improvement. In some ways, it seems to be getting worse (reality is that as the competition has improved it has exposed the D more). Disturbingly hard times winning against Furman and Temple. Bad losses to Syracuse and UConn — the “slide right” call still burns. Appears to have alienated the local coaches and hurting for recruiting.

In Walt Harris’ tenure at Pitt this is his record by year (PDF, page 228), and how close to expectations

1997: 6-6 — far exceeded expectations, same team that went 4-7 the year before beat Miami and WVU
1998: 2-9 — met expectations, what talent there was graduated; a very bad team
1999: 5-6 — met expectations, the team improved; minor disappointment of not beating WVU at end of season to get bowl eligible
2000: 7-5 — met expectations, more steady improvement; beat Penn State; lost Insight.com Bowl to Iowa St.
2001: 7-5 — did not meet expectations; expected to be 2nd or 3rd in Big East, and ranked; lost 5 straight games including to USF; recovered after junking the spread offense (Walt Harris overdoing the tinkering on offense)
2002: 9-4 — slightly exceeded expectations; 4 losses by a total of 24 points. Beat the teams it was supposed to, lost to teams it was supposed to — excepting the beating of VT and losing to WVU, a wash.
2003: 8-5 — well below expectations; Pre-season top 20. Popular dark horse BCS team. Cracked the top 10, then crashed hard. The senior heavy defense collapsed. Could not win meaningful games (excepting for VT); ended year losing 3 of 4.

This year, Pitt is 6-3. The big wins over BC and ND are offset by the bad losses to UConn and Syracuse. You can make a really good case that Coach Walt Harris’ tenure as Pitt head coach comes down to the Backyard Brawl in a week and a half. Pretty much as Paul Zeise called it at the end of October.