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.

Strange, Pitt is finishing its exhibition games as a bunch of other schools have already begun their regular season with early tournaments and games. Pitt had no problem with the Gannon Golden Knights. They won easily 69-44. Krauser was back after his minor injury, and played 30 minutes. The box score is here (PDF).

Pitt did not shoot well from 3-point range. Just 2-13 in the first half, and 7-23 for the game. The only minor worry was at the end of the press release.

Chris Taft did not play because of an injury and Keith Benjamin sat out because of sickness. Both Benjamin and Taft should be ready to go for Pittsburgh’s season opener next Saturday against Howard.

Why don’t they tell us what kind of injury? I don’t know. I just hope it is as minor as is suggested.

As for Pitt’s recruiting class for 2005. Apparently it compares well.

Longtime recruiting expert Clark Francis of HoopScoop ranks the Panthers’ class of forwards Tyrell Biggs, Sam Young and Doyle Hudson at No. 18 in the nation, equal to Syracuse and two spots behind Connecticut.

Cool.

The Big East players of the week honors aren’t announced until tomorrow. Offensive Player might actually be something of a tough call between Tyler Palko and Walter Washington of Temple. The game Washington had for Temple in beating Syracuse was impressive.

Still the edge has to go to Palko because of the high profile victory. In fact, Palko was already named the Walter Camp Football Foundation National Offensive Player of the Week.

Also, here’s the official Pitt press release on the win.

The service acted up this evening. It ate my long delayed post recapping some of the views from Indiana and Chicago media. Don’t feel like retrieving the articles and putting them back in post form. Everyone gets their money back.

Yes, Lee, I too got up early this morning to watch the College GameDay Final. The other thing Mark May, proud alum that he is, did was to keep his hand on the Panther helmet from the time he put the sticker on it. I’m sure some purists of sports highlights considers this little swelling of pride in his school to be wrong and biased. It’s boosterish, but it was harmless. The same way Rich Eisen used to preen a little when it came to Michigan highlights or Stuart Scott with UNC. As long as you aren’t denigrating anyone, it is mostly harmless.

This game was all about Palko. That’s who everyone was talking about. In a game where the defenses were more like props than actual units, Palko was outstanding.

But let’s also say that the whole offense was just so up for the game. The much (deservedly) maligned O-line gave Palko a lot of time, and when they did break down, it wasn’t blindside so Palko had more chances to avoid the rush, scramble or just throw the ball away. Left Tackle Rob Petitti played the kind of game in containing Justin Tuck and protecting Palko that was textbook and why he is a one of the few pro prospects from the O-line from Pitt. The O-line actually backed up what it was saying earlier in the week. Apparently it helped that ND showed Billy Gaines being tackled on the cover of the game program. A little something extra.

While the running game wasn’t great, there was just enough running to keep ND off guard. Murphy had some good bursts at times to keep ND honest, and Kirkley got a few good runs through the tackles.

The receivers and tight ends just stepped up. With the exception of the ball DelSardo let bounce off his chest during the drive at the end of the 1st quarter, they caught everything, and they were blocking for others downfield. The TE especially were huge in the game. Eric Gill seems to be coming into his own, and Steve Buches — his father played for ND — caught 2 TDs.

Initially, after the game (actually still, judging by the searches that lead people to this site), all people were focused on was Palko’s f-bomb on national TV. I know, as a parent, I’m supposed to be shocked and outraged when this happens. It just doesn’t bother me. I’ve always been amazed it doesn’t happen more often when they interview athletes right after a big, emotional game.

In one of the few downers, Josh Lay did twist his ankle after his second interception. He has a week and a half to get better. What a great turnaround for his year. From academic issues and deep in the coaches doghouse and not starting behind freshmen, to returning to the starters role and being one of the few bright spots on a defense and especially a secondary that was just lit up in the game. Lay’s coverage was solid for the game, leading ND to focus more on over the middle passes and exploit Mike Phillips and then Darrelle Revis. Both kids have a lot to learn with covering. As has been seen all season, they are no longer physically superior to the receivers they covered as they were in high school. I do find it annoying that the coaching has not improved their performance as the season progressed. I put that on the secondary coach. Who also happens to be the defensive coordinator, Paul Rhoads.

Even Bob Smizik was feeling love for Pitt. Well, at least for Palko. Coach Harris is only mentioned once, when he cites him for a quote about Palko. All credit and praise was directed to Palko. Even for adjustments.

For the dark side, well Ron Cook feels like bitching about how bad the Big East was this week. Like this topic hasn’t been beaten into the ground a few times just in Pittsburgh. Actually, I will have more to say about the Big East situation in a later post.

Then there is a Goose Goslin column that was, shall we say, poorly timed. Obviously written during the week and held for the Sunday edition. He was clearly anticipating a loss, so this piece doesn’t come off very well.

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.

Hell, I don’t know where to begin. Here’s the Box Score, Recap, Drive Chart and Play-by-Play.

I took so many pages of notes, but most are incoherent because things were happening so quickly and I spent a good chunk of time talking with Lee on the phone while the game was happening (and of course, the Makers Mark didn’t help the coherence).

Some things that stood out, the NBC/ND play calling crew absolutely blew chunks. It wasn’t the fact that they were ND homers. Kind of expect that. It’s that they were so busy most of the game talking over the action with their pre-scripted story lines that they would forget to mention things like who caught or ran with the ball, where the ball was spotted, generally speaking — what was actually happening on the field of play.

Tim Murphy was actually running the ball well from the tailback position. They wasted him on a couple of dumb, predictable pushes at the goal line. Brandon Mason never made an appearance.

Notre Dame really hurt themselves by not running Freshman Darius Walker more. Their best RB, but they insisted on giving the Senior, Ryan Grant about half the carries. He wasn’t bad, but Walker was far superior. Really dumb.

Greg Lee may have fallen 5 yards short of 100 yards, but he was impressive. Not just with some deep catches, but the way he fought to take the ball from defenders. A big improvement from the first couple of games. He is now less than 80 yards from 1000 yards for the season.

Pitt really exploited the ND secondary. Mixing deep and medium passes along the sidelines with some great underneath passes to the RBs and TEs.

Palko’s flip to Furman on the last drive took about 7 years off of my life. It worked, but one of these times a defender is going to step in front and take it all the way back for a score.

The Walt Harris look with the leather jacket and stylish shades was something. You’re 58, isn’t it a little late for a mid-life crisis?

With WVU laying an egg against BC, Temple finally winning a game in the Big East against Syracuse, and Pitt’s win — Oh, god, I hate to type this, but Pitt is once more in control of it’s own (DON’T SAY IT!!!) destiny.

Well, I’ll angst over that in a couple days.

Right now, I’m just looking forward to seeing some highlights on College GameDay Final, and Palko better get a helmet sticker.

Guys, you have your own frickin’ national network. How you can even type with a straight face (check the comments) that NBC is anything but in your corner blows me away.

As for the refs. Cry me a river. Karma’s a bitch. I know, all calls went Pitt’s way, and you didn’t get a one. Right. The fix was in. Uh-huh. Had nothing to do with a porous pass defense, and good receivers. Sure.

Break it down just a bit. You committed a total of 9 penalties for 102 yards.

2 were on special teams — plowing over a receiver signaling for a fair catch and a block in the back on a return for 28 yards total
2 offensive holding penalties on the same drive in the first half for 20 more yards.
2 defensive holding/pass interference calls for 20 yards at the end of the 3rd/start of the 4th Quarter, which had to be bogus because ND was right there with the coverage all game.
2 more pass interference calls in the 4th quarter when Pitt retook the lead 38-35 for 24 more yards.
1 penalty was a personal foul that was offset, so no yardage.

So, you are claiming that your secondary, an admitted weakness, that got torched for 331 yards, surely couldn’t have committed the interference penalties. Those replays were a trick of the camera, and clearly NBC was in the pocket of Pitt not showing anything questionable like say a late hit call against Pitt to help the domers get within field goal range to tie the game at the end of the 4th. But then the refs clearly helped Pitt march right down the field in a minute to kick a game winning field goal by, by, help me out here. Oh, that’s right there were no whistles. ND let Pitt roll down the field all by themselves.

Live with it. Your team blew it. They didn’t get jobbed. They didn’t get the game ripped from them. It was an all offense game, you committed one more turnover than Pitt, and ultimately the last team with the ball won.