You know it won’t be easy to post today, when your daughter sits bolt upright the minute she hears the door close behind the wife. Kid’s been up from the get go. PBS is mixing pledge drives into sesame Street to disrupt any chance for a real break — the kid is properly bothered by this, especially the one guy with (I swear this is true) a frozen gelled mullet cajoling membership pledges.

Plenty of stories, though. You can order individual tickets or get a travel package.

I have to conclude that the sportswriters in Pittsburgh have a lot personally invested in having Coach Harris leave Pitt.

Pitt’s football turnaround this season has been remarkable, but it only sets up another strange chapter in the tenure of Walt Harris. Insiders still don’t believe the Big East Coach of the Year will be back. The late-season run and BCS bowl berth still hasn’t gotten him a vote of confidence from the university and by most accounts, it doesn’t matter because he doesn’t seem happy to stay anyway.

Had the Panthers finished 5-6, this would be normal. But now, it’s like a married couple that hasn’t been getting along, heading toward divorce, and suddenly they find out they are pregnant. What to do now, what to do?

Again, see Tommy Tuberville and Auburn. The divorce was even further along. Now? Winning tends to cure a lot of the problems. I have no doubt that all could be worked out with sufficient coin.

In fact, with all the extra time before the bowl, there will be plenty of time to speculate, listen to rumors and ruminate.

Despite the fact that Pitt is the Big East co-champion, the Panthers are going to a lucrative bowl and Harris was voted Big East coach of the year by his colleagues in the conference, Harris’ future with the team remains unclear.

He has been pushing for a contract extension and a raise since before the season but has still not been offered one. Earlier this season, Harris’ agent, Bob LaMonte, publicly called out the administration and said the school needs to either extend his contract and offer him a raise or let him go. So far, the school has not addressed the situation and, as a result, speculation that the two sides will soon part ways has reached a fever pitch.

But unlike before the season — when his job was in jeopardy — Harris is negotiating from a position of strength and he has suddenly become a hot candidate for other vacancies around the country.

He is considered the top candidate for the vacant job as Stanford’s head coach and, according to the San Jose Mercury News, is expected to meet with Stanford athletic director Ted Leland this week to discuss it. Leland was formerly the athletic director at Pacific and hired Harris to be the head coach in 1989.

Harris also will likely have opportunities to become an offensive coordinator in the NFL, should he choose, as he has a number of ties to current head coaches and is widely regarded as a brilliant offensive coach.

Harris, who has two years remaining on a contract that pays him about $500,000 per year, denied last week that he has been contacted by Stanford and the school has not yet contacted Pitt for permission to talk to him, which is standard for school’s seeking to interview coaches still under contract. Now that the Panthers’ regular season is over, however, the talks should heat up.
…
Pitt quarterback Tyler Palko said Harris, who has been the subject of much criticism and has been under intense scrutiny this year, has proven his mettle and should take a bow for a job well done. He also said the administration should do whatever it takes to retain Harris.

“I’m happy for him, I’m proud of what he’s accomplished and how much he’s been a rock throughout this whole season,” Palko said. “He’s done a tremendous job and the administration would do a grave injustice in having him be anything less than our head football coach. They expect perfection, they want to have their cake and eat it to, but they should recognize he’s done a tremendous job.”

Regardless of what happens with Harris, the Fiesta Bowl berth is affirmation that he has successfully rebuilt the program into one of national prominence. That is a far cry from the ashes he inherited when he was hired after the 1996 season. The Panthers were coming off five consecutive losing seasons.

And that is something to take into account. Yes, there has been plenty of things going on that may have conflict with the administration. Yes, the fans (including me) have been impatient at times and ridden Harris. Yes, there are issues with recruiting and local relationships with WPIAL coaches. The fact is Pitt is going to a BCS Bowl under Coach Harris. He runs a clean program that is graduating players. This is everything we have wanted. We have to admit, that anyone looking in at the program would have to assume the people running Pitt are delusional and idiots.

I can’t help but suspect that the players are being, ahem, “coached up” a bit by Pitt’s information department when pushed on the deservedness of Pitt’s BCS bid:

Pitt, ranked No. 19 by The Associated Press and No. 20 by USA Today/ESPN Coaches Poll, is the lowest-ranked team to play in the Fiesta Bowl under the BCS format. The Panthers, however, are already defending their presence.

“That’s the way it goes,” Pitt linebacker H.B. Blades said. “When Purdue went to the Rose Bowl, they weren’t even ranked. Nobody said anything about that.” Actually, two unranked teams played in the Rose Bowl under the BCS format: Stanford, which lost to Wisconsin, 17-9, in 1999; and Purdue, which lost to Washington, 34-24, in 2000.

I’ll leave that to Lee to defend that, as that was part of the special deal carved out for the Rose Bowl.

It doesn’t change things that Pitt is going to the Fiesta Bowl against Utah. Some see this as a match-up of underdogs.

The No. 5 Utes (11-0), the Mountain West Conference champions, became the first non-BCS affiliated school to earn an at-large berth by finishing in the top six in BCS standings and are aiming for a perfect finish.

“At Utah, we don’t just to go to bowl games; we go to win them,” said Utah coach Urban Meyer, who will leave for the University of Florida following the game. “There will be some distractions, but we’ll get this thing organized. The focus on this team is great. They want to go 12-0.”

Where Utah wants a perfect ending, Pitt is treating the Fiesta Bowl as a building block. The Panthers are vowing to use their fifth consecutive bowl berth — their third in Arizona, following two Insight Bowl appearances — as a stepping stone to greater things.

“We want to soak all this in,” Pitt sophomore linebacker H.B. Blades said. “Next year, we’re thinking about a national championship, not just the Big East.”

There is an inherent pressure for both teams to show that they are deserving of this opportunity, not that they are willing to succumb to such talk.

“I don’t think we need to add more pressure than there is on this game,” Pitt coach Walt Harris said. “This is our first experience in a BCS bowl. That experience will help us, because we plan on being back.”

But guess what. Utah fans are not happy.

It’s true that I spent Sunday afternoon walking around the University of Florida campus and am seriously considering becoming a permanent Urbanite, leaving everything behind to follow Urban Meyer’s football teams in the tradition of the Deadheads and other committed fans.

Yet you should know that on my way to Gainesville, I stopped Saturday in Tampa to check out the Pittsburgh Panthers, anticipating Utah’s Fiesta Bowl matchup and proving that Urban and I can devote some of our efforts to the Utes’ preparations this month, besides playing golf and assembling the Florida coaching staff.

Certainly, though, this is not the way anyone pictured the Utes’ historic entry into the Bowl Championship Series.

The BCS pairingswere released Sunday, leading me to fantasize about other matchups.

Games I would pay to watch: Utah-USC, Utah-Oklahoma, Utah-Auburn, Utah-Texas, Utah-Cal.

Game I would not pay to watch: Utah-Pittsburgh.

To be fair, this wasn’t the match-up I and I think a lot of Pitt fans wanted. Pitt-VT would have been my choice. Would have tanked in TV ratings, most likely, but you’d get a sellout and I think a fiercely competitive game.

The Salt Lake Tribune headline writer even busted out with a “Pitt” play on words. Fine, they’ve never faced Pitt, to them it’s original. Will be interesting to see how Pitt is fairing on ticket sales. Utah seems to be doing quite well:

Utah fans who want to make the trip to Tempe, Ariz., will have to get creative to land tickets if they haven’t already requested them. As of Sunday afternoon, Utah was allotted 19,000 tickets, but had already taken 26,000 orders, according to Dave Copier, Utah’s director of athletic ticket sales.

Copier said his office was still taking orders with the hopes that the Fiesta Bowl gives Utah more tickets, or ones Pittsburgh can’t sell.

The difference at this point, though, is that they have pretty much known where they were going for a week. It was still up in the air for Pitt with an outside shot of ending up at the Sugar Bowl.

Utah is installed as like a 15 point favorite. Everyone is expecting a wild offensive game, as the QBs seem to compare well:

Alex Smith versus Tyler Palko.

This year’s Heisman Trophy candidate versus next year’s Heisman Trophy candidate.

When Utah and Pittsburgh collide in the Fiesta Bowl on Jan. 1, Smith and Palko could trigger the biggest offensive explosion of the BCS season.

Utah fans know all about Smith, the junior who has directed an offense that averaged 46 points per game.

But Palko?

“He’s a tough one,” Ute coach Urban Meyer said.

A sophomore, Palko has completed 56 percent of his passes and thrown for 23 touchdowns this season.

His numbers are Smith-like, for good reason.

He is Smith-like.

Well, now we know more about Alex Smith. Utah fans shouldn’t be that confident. You have the head coach trying to be in 2 different parts of the country at once, looking to the future and probably taking a few of his present coaches with him to Florida. The offensive coordinator is going to take the UNLV job. The defensive coordinator could be getting the BYU job. And who knows who will be in charge of Utah after January 1? In some ways, Pitt’s coaching situation seems more stable.

Utah fans are trying to learn more about Pitt and are getting crash courses so far.
Plenty more to come to be sure.