I’ll make these quick hits.

For those of you in the Pittsburgh media market unfortunate enough not to have tickets to the game — no offense to shut-ins, I’m sure you are wonderful people, really — WTAE will actually be doing a Pitt pre-game show. In a city where if a Steeler has the sniffles, the media knows whether it was Kleenex or Puffs that he used, this is significant.

Tyler Palko gets a very good puff piece on how quickly he grew last season. This was an AP story, and ended up in lots of media outlets. Cool.

Actually, one of the more interesting pieces I’ve encountered in the challenges ahead of Charlie Weis at ND.

Finally, still more predictions in addition to the ones I added to the list.

At least someone is picking ND (Osceola).

An Orlando Sentinel guy picks Pitt by 7.

The Gainesville Sun guy picks Pitt.

Finally, Dennis Dodd at Sportsline.

Really, who would you pick? Notre Dame traveling to Pittsburgh for its opener is not a good start to the Charlie Weis era. Try to look at this objectively:

In this battle of Pete Carroll wanna-bes, Dave Wannstedt has all the chips Saturday night. The former Panther has the city fired up after Walt Harris left him a load of talent. This year, it’s a perfect mix. Wanny is a defensive guy armed with a bunch of offensive playmakers.

Let’s not forget Wannstedt has been a two-time NFL head coach (just like Carroll). Weis is making his head-coaching debut with a team coming off a 6-6 season. Oh yeah, and it’s on the road. Call it 30-18 Wannies.

You know, if it wasn’t for the fact that it’s Pitt, I’d probably find more humor in the “Pete Carroll wanna-bes” line.