Not a lot of real news today. A puff piece on Tyler Palko, concerning his competitiveness. Greg Lee going back home to Tampa. Much the way Antonio Bryant used to talk about how he looked forward to playing Miami because they didn’t recruit him, Lee is talking about how USF overlooked him. Of course, we should be hoping that Lee comes up bigger than Bryant did against Miami.

The kicking game has been having trouble with snaps — for both punting and field goals.

Pitt got a new commit. Tommie Campbell, a 6’4″, 195-200 pound WR/DB. He had offers from Eastern Michigan, UConn and Cinci; and was drawing interest from Michigan St. and Syracuse. He is also a standout in track. Clearly an athlete, with raw talent, so he would appear to be something of a project/diamond in the rough. Potentially more important is that:

The 6-foot-4, 200-pound receiver-safety broke an eight-month wall of silence from WPIAL recruits toward the Panthers by choosing Pitt over offers from Cincinnati, Connecticut and Eastern Michigan. Pitt hadn’t landed a local player since Burrell tackle John Brown — a Panthers legacy — committed in March.

It suggests that WPIAL coaches might be believing that Harris will stay at Pitt and/or there has been some fence mending between Pitt coaches and the local high school coaches.

Now on to the always fun subject of speculating about Coach Walt Harris.

Mike Prisuta is kind of all over the place praising Palko for wanting to “wake the echoes” (sorry been hearing and reading too much about ND in the last day) of past players of Marino and Dorsett, then moves to how Coach Harris hadn’t quit on the team and nor did AD Jeff Long — by not firing Harris. Of course, the fact that Long is maintaining that nothing regarding Harris’ contract will be discussed until after the bowls seems vexing for those wishing to speculate.

Bob Smizik also has a column. It’s one of the few times I am not in total disagreement with Smizik. Well, this part I disagree:

Pitt should take immediate action regarding Harris’ contract after its game Saturday at South Florida, the final one of the regular season. It needs to either extend Harris’ contract or buy it out and immediately begin the process of finding a new coach.

Yeah, fire the guy who leads you to the BCS. That will get the team up for the game.

Having said that, if they don’t want to retain Harris, they should be at least sending out quiet feelers and at the very least refining a list of candidates. Especially in light of the competition for good coaches this season.

Smizik is also on target with some other things.

…Pitt officials have consistently insisted they would do nothing until the end of the season.

That philosophy doubtlessly was based on the expectations Pitt would have an ordinary or worse season and Harris would be bought out of the final two years of his contract. Such thinking made sense. There was no rush to fire Harris, who is being paid about $600,000 annually. He was running a good program with few problems and was graduating his players.

What he wasn’t doing was winning often enough, particularly in big games.

All that changed a month ago when Pitt, which looked pathetic early in the season, beat Notre Dame and West Virginia, and Syracuse upset Boston College. Those wins and that loss moved Pitt into a first-place tie in what is an extremely weak Big East Conference but one that has an automatic bid to a lucrative BCS game. The tiebreakers have gone Pitt’s way and the team will be playing in either the Fiesta or Sugar Bowl next month.

This significantly altered situation means Pitt needs to adjust its policy.

I think the fact that Harris runs such a clean program has been very unappreciated, and I’m including myself, by the fans and possibly by the administration. In Harris’ tenure at Pitt, the only off-field incident that raised eyebrows was the Rod Rutherford parking lot matter last year. And even that was resolved without any major hoopla.

That’s why Pitt needs to act quickly.

If the decision is to extend Harris, that not only would be a morale boost for the team, which figures to be an underdog in its bowl game, but also a major impetus for recruiting. The speculation on Harris’ future might have caused some recruits to look elsewhere and others, who remain interested in Pitt, to ponder their options. With a coach firmly in place, the recruits can make their decisions.

It’s hard to argue against keeping Harris. He has Pitt right where people said he couldn’t take the team. What’s more, he did it in what was expected to be a down year after significant departures from last year’s team.

With most key players returning, Pitt will be among the favorites to win the Big East next season and advance to another major bowl game. It possible that after eight seasons, Harris has hit his stride and has Pitt on a roll.

I mostly agree, except on one niggling point that tugs at me. The lines. There are a lot of key seniors on both lines. As critical as we’ve been of them, who’s to say they will be better next year? And if the lines aren’t good…

He saves his best point for last, and it kind of annoys me that I didn’t think harder about it previously, because it is in its way so obvious.

But the success of this Pitt team has raised another option.

It long has been believed that Harris has tired of his situation at Pitt. He doesn’t like what he considers the negative media coverage and he certainly can’t like the lack of respect he has received from Pitt administrators. The speculation was that he would walk away from this job and become an offensive coordinator or quarterbacks coach in the NFL.

Now, however, he’s viewed as a hot coach. It’s not often a coach who takes his team to a BCS game, a coach who has taken his team to five consecutive bowl games, becomes available. Other schools are bound to show an interest in Harris.

Pitt just might come to Harris with an extension and he might tell them where to put it.

This would be a bit of an embarrassment to Pitt to lose Harris. Of course it could also be the strategy if the administration doesn’t want Harris anymore, but is afraid to fire him now. Make a lowball offer, have him reject and bolt to another school. That way they can hire someone else without looking like complete idiots for firing the coach that brought the program back from the depths all the way to a BCS bowl during his tenure.