Just a couple other things. From Bruce Feldman’s ESPN.com blog (Insider subs.):

In the process of working on ESPN The Magazine’s college preview, I talked to some coaches for some scouting stuff and came up with some extra that I thought was pretty intriguing. The following was compiled with the help of four different coaches:

Most underrated QB?

* “[Tyler] Palko from Pitt. He’s a gamer. Much better athlete than we thought. I think he’s a guy I’d hate to be facing on fourth-and-4 late in the game because he’s finding a way to win the game right there. [New Pitt QB coach Matt] Cavanaugh’s gonna help him get to that next level. Watch how much sharper he’ll be this year.”

Given all the credit and he keeps making lists as one of the top-10 QBs in the country, how can he still be called underrated?

I don’t have time to go into the piece right now, but ESPN.com/Blue Ribbon Yearbook has their Pitt profile available (again Insider Subs.)

Final, but probably the most important piece for college sports in general, and a rare smart move from the NCAA. They are going to actually start paying closer attention to betting lines.

One response from an NCAA task force on gambling would have the organization start checking in regularly with a longtime antagonist — the Las Vegas sports books.

Rachel Newman-Baker, the NCAA’s director of gambling activities, said Tuesday the group hoped to re-establish contact with the oddsmakers to watch for instances where heavy wagering has caused significant changes in point spreads or for the casinos to pull games off the board.

This is generally how betting scandals have been discovered. Not by investigations, but by such heavy shifts in the line that someone would finally point it out. It’s such a no-brainer that it defies belief that they haven’t before.

I don’t bet, but the anti-gambling on sports legislation stuff always struck me as moronic. It would still happen, and having the info as public knowledge is a way to keep things more honest.

Final installment. The subject, Coach Dave Wannstedt.

Some actual notes of interest. It looks like College GameDay is almost assuredly going to happen.

A Pitt spokesman said the deal is not yet finalized, but yesterday coach Dave Wannstedt made a reference to “Gameday” when talking about the 8 p.m. game against the Fighting Irish.

Also, there is still no answer regarding the status of back-up QB Joe Flacco as to whether he will be coming back to Pitt.

At Big East Media Day, Wannstedt was the celebrity coach given his NFL past, and having won national championships as a player and coach and has a superbowl ring.

“I talked to Pete Carroll (Southern California), Chan Gailey (Georgia Tech) and Mike Shula (Alabama) before I took the job,” Wannstedt said. “I got a little something from each of them. Pete talked about recruiting, Chan talked about building a staff and Mike talked about going back to his alma mater. It was very helpful.”

Wannstedt said the biggest changes from the NFL are the year-around commitment to recruiting, which he was prepared for, and the importance of time management, which he’s still getting used to.

“In the NFL, if I wanted to keep the players from 7 a.m., to 7 p.m., it was fine,” said Wannstedt, who’s taking over for Walt Harris, now the head coach at Stanford. “But now, you get an hour and a half here and an hour and a half there, and you have to maximize that time. You can’t waste time in your meetings, and you can’t waste time in practice.”

Wannstedt also emphasized that while he expects to win and wants to win, that he appreciates that winning isn’t everything at the college level, an attitude after being let go by the Dolphins despite averaging 10 wins per season.

He also knows that he’ll be able to make a mark on his new community.

“You’re going to have a chance to do things in the community outside of football, you get to give back,” Wannstedt said. “To me, that’s exciting.”

Well, you definitely don’t want to talk to Chan Gailey about recruiting.

A West Virginia columnist tries to put cold water on Wannstedt erecting a fence around Western Pennsylvania.

“Now we’ve got it turned to the point where we’re going to dominate Western Pennsylvania. We’re going to be competing with Penn State and West Virginia because they’re there, but we’re going to eliminate most teams from even coming in here. We’re going to put a fence up around it and we’re going to dominate that area. And I don’t care who it is.”

That, of course, is easier said than done. Harris couldn’t do it. Johnny Majors couldn’t do it again. Certainly Paul Hackett and Mike Gottfried and Foge Fazio couldn’t do it. Jackie Sherill and Majors the first time pulled it off, but that’s really the only time in modern history — we won’t go back to the Jock Sutherland days, thank you — that Pitt was able to recruit Western Pennsylvania with anything resembling a fence around the place.

But then he has to concede that it could actually happen.

Somehow, though, you tend to think that if anyone can pull it off again, it might be Wannstedt. He has the charisma, the NFL background kids love, the Pitt connections to the glory years. He’s got a network of Dorsett and Mark May and Dan Marino and Bill Fralic and, yes, even Johnny Majors, to make it happen.

But it won’t happen overnight.
…
All in all, it makes for a pretty perfect situation for Pitt’s new coach. With all of that, maybe he can build that fence.

We shall see.

It was apparently a very foggy morning in Newport, Rhode Island. Many of the stories led with that. It was also well attended by various others.

The upbeat mood at the well-attended Big East functions, which included visits by officials from ABC, CBS, ESPN, the National Football Foundation and numerous bowls, was a drastic contrast from the last two years when the conference seemed to be falling apart due to defections.

“There was a lot of animosity and not much optimism,” said Connecticut coach Randy Edsall.

Depending on where this AP wire story was published the headline was either positive or negative about the state of the BE. Keep in mind the actual content is no different — just the headline.

Louisville seems aware they are going to be a target in the league this year, but are going to stay aggressive.

It is noted that the hoped for favorite has spit the bit, the last couple of years.

Pitt had the chance two years ago under Walt Harris and fell short. West Virginia followed suit last year. This year, it appears that newcomer Louisville will carry the mantle, increasing the burden of being a new player in the league.

Other than that, no pressure.

West Virginia Coach Rich Rodriguez is fine with being picked middle of the pack.

Cincinnati, picked last this season, seems a bit awed by the whole process. Or at least the beat writer is a little unnerved in the step up in class.

For the University of Cincinnati, it was the first tangible evidence of the new company it’s keeping and the benefits it will reap from membership in the revamped league, one of six members of the Bowl Championship Series that determines the national football champion.

More than 130 representatives from 60 media outlets gathered Tuesday for the Big East Football Media Day, the first for the league since the addition of UC, Louisville and South Florida to the football mix after the defection of Miami, Boston College and Virginia Tech.

Actually, it would appear that all 3 of the newbies are a little taken aback by what it means to get out of C-USA.

On a foggy Monday night at a Rhode Island state park, coaches, players, administrators and media covering the new Big East Conference gathered around a smoking pit and watched while cooks unveiled … clams.

Lots and lots of clams.

For the University of Louisville athletic program, which has been salivating at the opportunity to join a big-time conference, the chance to join the Big East represents a chance not only to make considerably more clams but to gain considerably more exposure doing it.
…
Signs of a new day dawning were everywhere. When the prizes were handed out for winners of Monday’s golf outings and many participants were awarded sets of Nike irons, U of L sports information director Kenny Klein looked over at football SID Rocco Gasparro and said, “We’re not in Conference USA anymore.”

Jim Leavitt, coach of new member South Florida, left Monday night’s clambake with a big tray of lobster.

“It was either this,” Leavitt said, “or I was going to put some lobsters into my pockets.”

You always judge meetings, conferences, conventions and groups by the kind of free schwag given away.

There’s a lot, and I haven’t even really looked too far or deep yet. Judging from the quotes and photos, Pitt’s contingent to the Big East Football Media Day consisted of Athletic Director Jeff Long, Head Coach Dave Wannstedt, Linebacker H.B. Blades, Wide Receiver Greg Lee and Quarterback Tyler Palko. All apologies if I missed anyone.

The BE Coaches pre-season poll has Pitt firmly in 2nd behind Louisville. These are about expectations and what the coaches see in the returning teams.

Louisville received 23 of a possible 24 first-place votes. The Cardinals are coming off an 11-1 season which included a 44-40 victory over Boise State in the AutoZone Liberty Bowl. The U of L’s final rankings of sixth in the Associated Press poll and seventh in the ESPN/USA Today poll were the highest in school history. This season, the Cardinals, under coach Bobby Petrino, return 14 starters.

Pittsburgh was picked for second place and received the only other first-place vote. The Panthers, under new head coach Dave Wannstedt, welcome back 16 starters, including nine on offense. Last year, the Panthers were part of a four-way tie for the conference crown and were the BIG EAST’s BCS representative in the Tostitos Fiesta Bowl. Pitt finished 8-4 overall and 4-2 in league play.

You have nearly a wash in returning starters, recruiting classes not too far apart, and the only difference is coaching stability/questions. It really is not that outrageous for Louisville to be picked to win the BE over Pitt. Louisville Coach Petrino, of course poor-mouthed it, saying they were chasing Pitt since Pitt won the BE last year. The Pitt players aren’t bothered.

“They deserve it, so it doesn’t bother me,” Palko said. “But all this preseason stuff really means nothing. We were picked fifth or sixth (in the league) last year, and look what happened.”

Said Pitt linebacker H.B. Blades, “It’s a great motivation for us.”

There are of course stories on the overall state of the BE, and the sense of optimism that the worst has passed.

People said the Big East was falling apart. They said it would be stripped of its Bowl Championship Series bid. They said it was going to lose its basketball-only members and cease to be relevant.

“I stand here two years later and none of that is true,” Big East commissioner Mike Tranghese said Tuesday at the league’s football preseason media day.

Tranghese welcomed three new teams — Louisville, Cincinnati and South Florida — into the conference’s football fold. He also said the league will have a new postseason destination in 2006, if the NCAA approves a proposed bowl game in Toronto.

“It’s a pretty historic day — probably the most exciting day in the 26-year history of our league,” Tranghese said. “We’ve got eight programs, all on the upswing. We just need time to stabilize (the league) and play.”
…
“What it was before was, people were playing for second place,” Tranghese said. “Now, there are a lot of people who think they can win in this league. I see it in the eyes of our coaches. There are a lot of coaches here who think that down the road they can be the dominant program in this league.”

Tranghese indicated that the Big East’s main issue for now will be finding enough games for each team to play with the 12th game situation, but only 7 conference games.

Half the schools will get four home conference games a year, while the other half will have three. While the league is not opposed to adding a ninth football member, Tranghese said it is more likely the conference will enter into some sort of a scheduling alignment with another conference or several teams. The conference’s top targets for such a deal are Army and Navy.

“Your seeing a lot of creativity in scheduling out there,” Pitt athletic director Jeff Long said. “The Big Ten and the Mid-American Conference are on the verge of entering a scheduling agreement, and you are going to start to see more of that kind of thing as we move forward. And that is something we need to look at in the Big East in order to satisfy our lack of an even home-and-home conference schedule.”

Tranghese said: “I don’t think we’re interested in taking on a ninth school. In order to take on a ninth school they have to make you better, it can’t just be adding a ninth team to add a ninth team. We need to give our schools a balance of four home and four away games so this is the next big agenda item for us.”

This is going to be tough because I think a lot of conferences are leaning towards adding a 9th game. Boost the overall strength of schedule and get more match-ups in 12 team conferences.

As far as bowls for the Big East are going, it looks like there is a good chance over half the tie-ins could involve cars:

The Big East has two slots tied up with a BCS Bowl and the Gator/Sun agreement. Other possibilities are the Auto Zone Liberty Bowl in Memphis, the Music City Bowl in Nashville, the Champs Bowl, the Meineke Car Care Bowl in Charlotte, the Motor City Bowl in Detroit or a new bowl proposed for Toronto.

[Emphasis added.]

Just one of those quirky things, I guess.

I think this could be my favorite quote from media day:

“We treat one another like family and we are very close,” South Florida’s star running back Andre Hall said. “We listen to the same music and like the same kind of girls.”

The odds for fireworks and a locker room brawl at some point just went to even money.