Meanwhile, the Pitt Basketball team is now #16 in the AP Writers Poll and #15 in the ESPN/USA Today Coaches Poll. Just for beating up on one of the worst teams in Division I basketball. Well it helped that Arizona got thumped by Virginia and dropped like a rock.

Games against Robert Morris (Wednesday, Nov. 24) and Loyola-MD (Saturday, Nov. 27) this week.

If Pitt loses to WVU, they will be facing the liklihood of being shut out of the Big East tie-in bowls.

BC to Fiesta (assuming they beat Syracuse)
WVU to the Gator
ND for the Insight (assuming they lose to USC)
UConn to Continental Tire

This would mean waiting to see what openings in other bowls where conference tie-ins couldn’t produce enough bowl eligible teams — and competing with the MAC for an offer.

The options grew, though, because both South Carolina and Clemson will refuse to go to bowl games after the brawl this past Saturday.

CollegeFootballNews.com now projects Pitt could end up facing Oklahoma St. in the Independence Bowl in Shreveport, LA.

Of course, Pitt can avoid the concerns by winning the Backyard Brawl and then taking care of business against USF.

Pitt has signed on with a collegiate sports marketing agency. The company is called ISP Sports. They have deals with a bunch of schools, including Auburn, UCLA, Miami, Syracuse, Villanova, Cincinnati and Wake Forest. It seems like a good situation for Pitt.

With the partnership, the university is guaranteed an annual rights fee while sharing in additional revenues generated by ISP Sports as well. In consideration, ISP will manage and produce all sales and marketing opportunities associated with the Panther athletic program, including live play-by-play and coaches’ shows on the Pittsburgh ISP Sports Network, internet programming, print advertising in various athletic publications, and all signage and promotions at university athletic events.

You let a company that specializes in this area handle matters with image building and promotion (and honestly, this is an area that Pitt could use the help). They take a cut, but you count on the increase in volume of sales and publicity to more than offset it. For any Pitt alum with sales experience, they are hiring an associate general manager.

Start drinking early next Saturday. ESPN2 will be broadcasting the Pitt-USF game at 11 am on December 4. On the bright side, it’s not like it’s a Pitt home game where we would have to get to Heinz Field at some insane hour.

Coach Walt Harris had his pre-WVU press conference, and Pitt has posted the selected transcript. Some of the comments worth noting not directly related to the actual game planning:

What are your thoughts on the recent fights occurring in sports?

“I talked to the team about that on Sunday. That kind of activity is not part of University of Pittsburgh football and IÂ’m sure it’s not part of West Virginia football. Both teams have good, talented, classy and young football players who work extremely hard. It’s a rivalry and it’s a highly contested game but that’s between the whistles. They’re an outstanding football team and we’re working to be an outstanding football team so we don’t need to get involved in any of that stuff. Football is a great game and we want to respect the game in everything we do. Fighting is not part of football. There’s enough physical activity going on out there and you don’t need to get into a fight.”
…
Does the game have a bowl-like atmosphere because youÂ’re playing on Thanksgiving Day?

“I think this [is] better than a bowl atmosphere because this is the regular season and this is a guaranteed game. You have to qualify for bowls. This is a huge game between two great universities that are two of the cornerstones of the Big East Conference. There’s a lot on the game obviously; for pride’s sake, bragging rights and possibly more. We’re going to do everything we can to do the things we need to do in order to be successful.”
…
You talked about the implications of this game for the team and players, but what about for yourself?

“I don’t think the season has been about me. I haven’t thought about myself. I’m not trying to be this humanitarian. I have a responsibility to these football players to try and teach them how to play the game. I feel like they have responded to our coaches and have tried hard to get better. That’s tremendously exciting to me regardless of what anyone else says. I’m a coach, I’m a teacher and you can say what you want about all this other stuff. What matters to me is being a good coach. I want to coach our players good. For me to spend my time on anything else is wrong and disloyal to our football players. I’m going to be loyal to the profession of teaching our players. That’s what I like doing and that’s my responsibility.”

Translation from coachspeak, in order. (1) I’ll yank guys from the game if they push it too far. And just wait until the fans try to come into the game liquored up. Security will be tight, tight, tight. (2) Of course it’s bigger than a minor bowl game. It’s the frickin’ Backyard Brawl. The rivalry game for the schools. (3) I’ve been ripped in the press for complaining about lazy players or bad camp attendance; for my agent complaining about a lack of extension; for Joe Paterno refusing to renew the Pitt-Penn State game. You think I’m going to say something now? To you?

Comments about the game:

What makes WVU’s offense difficult to defend?

“They have good players; that always makes a difference. They have a good scheme and they are extremely well coached. At times they make calls off of your defensive alignments after they’ve seen how you’ve aligned. Another factor is that they change their tempo. Some teams they’ll play a normal tempo but against us they play more of a two-minute tempo; they keep going play after play. It restricts your continuity on defense and I think they do a good job of attacking what you do.”

What is the key to stopping their offense? They run the ball well but also pass efficiently.

“You can’t let people do both things to you. You can’t let them run it up and down the field and you can’t let them pass it up and down the field. When we’ve been successful against any offense, we’ve been able to do a good job on the run. We’ve got to concentrate on doing a good job on the run game and trying to hold that back and trying to deal with the passing game secondly. Rasheed has played extremely [well] in this game and it’s a great credit to him and his coach. He’s a threat when he runs, whether it’s a called run or whether he scrambles. He’s extremely fast and he’s the Big East’s all-time leading rushing quarterback; that says quite a bit right there.”
…
What are your thoughts of WVU’s special teams? They had some breakdowns versus Boston College.

“I think in special teams one guy getting out position costs ten other guys and a football team, a touchdown or the game. Boston College has an outstanding returner in Blackmon and with him it doesn’t take but a little space and one little breakdown and he’s gone. That’s what happens. It opens up holes for us. If they don’t improve it, we need to take advantage of it. We haven’t had a lot of success in the punt return game and that’s something we need to address.”
…
Will tackling be important in this game?

“No question. If we don’t tackle well then we’re in for a long day because we’ll be in a lot of one-on-one tackle situations by nature of their scheme. Our guys have to build a base, get their heads across, move their feet and finish the tackles off.”

Again, to translate. (1) They don’t give our defense a chance to think. Our defensive coordinator doesn’t do well at calling schemes quickly. (2) They actually have a running game and a passing game. They can do both. We can’t. (3) Can we get Wil Blackmon on loan from BC? Our punt returner is lousy. (4) What the @$%^ kind of question is that? When isn’t tackling important?

Sometimes there are amusing searches that land here. Looking into the referrer logs can be enlightening. For example.

This Google Search for “jay paterno bus hit by a” listed us at #14 . Not sure if that’s wishful thinking by a PSU fan after reading this article. More likely, it was not realizing it was Joe Paterno’s son-in-law who was injured a couple months ago.

Now this search scared me — Chris Taft arrest — but there was no news of such. Still we were #2 on the search.

Then someone did a search for “old school pitt.” A favorite topic here. There were only two results. We were the second one, from a year ago. I brought up an SI.com story on some schools going retro football unis. Never returned back to that story — specifically the reader feadback SI.com got. A lot of support (and pictures) for Pitt. Other support was for Oregon — mainly so poeple didn’t have to look at the present unis.

Fox has bought the rights to the BCS Bowls.

FOX Sports and the Bowl Championship Series (BCS) announced today that they have reached an exclusive four-year agreement covering all media distribution and sponsorship rights for the Tostitos Fiesta Bowl, FedEx Orange Bowl and Nokia Sugar Bowl from 2007 through 2010, and a new, stand-alone, BCS National Championship Game from 2007 through 2009. Financial terms were not disclosed.
…
In addition to telecast rights, the contract also covers national radio rights; Internet rights; all sponsorship rights, including naming rights, signage and virtual signage opportunities and in-game enhancements; ancillary programming on FOX and/or FSN; and a joint venture (FOX, BCS and Bowls) to identify and exploit merchandising opportunities.

Emphasis Added.

The rumored price tag was about $80 million per year. I look forward to reading more about how this wasn’t about the money. How this was for the good of the student athletes. And all the other joyous hypocrisy.

A little closer everyday. Rob Petitti’s comments about his dislike of West Virginia as a whole got reprinted in Charleston. At least ESPN has another story to talk about over the action. Right now, no one from WVU is saying anything back. Probably because WVU is still trying to work on its special teams. Hey, maybe Pitt could try that with the punt returns — you know, work on them some more.

Another puff piece on TE Eric Gill.

The toughest job for Pitt’s questionable secondary will be trying to cover WR Chris Henry. Henry is arguably the best receiver in the conference (him or Pitt’s Greg Lee). Coach Walt Harris compares him favorably with another notable hotheaded Big East WR, Antonio Bryant.

Speaking of Coach Harris, one writer in WV almost acts surprised that he is on the hot seat. That Harris’ job could depend on the outcome of the Backyard Brawl. He does a nice job, though, of noting that some media types will not give Harris an inch any longer.

Walt Harris knows all about this. Two years ago, he won nine games at Pitt. A year ago he won eight. Nice seasons, but not good enough. The Pitt unfaithful were clamoring for his scalp.

This year those cries have reached a crescendo and he may have done his best coaching job. With a young team, a new quarterback and a bad start, Harris has rallied his Panthers to a 6-3 record, including a thrilling 41-38 victory against Notre Dame, in South Bend.

Nothing’s changed. Not only is it said the administration wants to rid itself of Harris and the two years remaining on his contract, but also there are sources in Pittsburgh who say the feeling is mutual.

You can hear it in his voice during Big East coaches’ conference calls, where he’s as apt to answer a question with nothing more than a disinterested “yep” as he is to offer any information at all.

He sounds fed up with media criticism in a city that isn’t really as tough on its heroes as its media think it is. Win, as the Steelers are doing presently, and it’s pushing and shoving to get on the bandwagon.

Harris, however, has outlived his welcome. The administration cringed when he went public with his complaints about his camps and fans cringed when he publicly did everything but call some of his injured players pansies earlier this year.

That the team responded and became tougher because of it was lost in the shuffle, but by then the wedge had been driven so deeply between him and the media that he would get credit for nothing.

I noted that last week Harris was answering some questions about the calling out of players. Haven’t heard a peep from Smizik or Cook about that. The columnist notes that this is the first time since Coach Rich Rodriguez took over the Hoopie program that they have failed to even meet expectations, and naturally there is some grumblings. Not surprising. They were probably the same people who were complaining about him in his first year when he was teaching the spread offense. Nature of the job.

Finally, a little something to stick in the craw. A story of some of WVU’s heroes from past Backyard Brawls. We need some bile, and reading this brings up from my stomach.

Ronald Ramon’s getting a lot of early love. The idea of this Pitt basketball team with an outside threat even has his teammates raving and dreaming. And this was just after the glorified exhibition game against Howard.

On the other side, though, Pitt needs to take better care of the ball. Coach Jamie Dixon is a little concerned about the carelessness in the game. 25 turnovers in the game is not a good thing. Some of it was inexperience from the new kids, some was unfamiliarity with each other, and according to Troutman, some was first game jitters. We’ll see.

In other basketball notes, according to College Basketball Blog, ESPN will be doing a sort of college gameday thing for basketball this coming year. The live show from a game site. They won’t be in Pittsburgh, but they will be in Connecticut to cover the UConn-Pitt game on January 22.