But if Herb Pope goes to Memphis or wherever Bob Huggins coaches next there should be some investigations.

An interesting article from Greg Doyel at Sportsline about Eddie Lau, a recruiter for a NYC AAU team, who also just happens to have been advising one of the top players Derrick Caracter who recently committed to Louisville.

For years Lau has been a covert operative, working as a recruiter for AAU-type programs like the Long Island Panthers, but in recent weeks he blew his cover by serving as Caracter’s “adviser,” telling CBS SportsLine.com, “he’s like my godson.”

On the surface, Lau’s advisory role to Caracter means little. But what you see isn’t necessarily what you get when it comes to Eddie Lau, or those like him.

Lau is more than an adviser, more than an AAU recruiter. He works for powerful NBA agent Dan Fegan, whose client list includes Gilbert Arenas, Jason Richardson and Erick Dampier. For Fegan and Associates, Lau is a consultant — servicing current clients and trying to rustle up new ones from the New York City area.

And the best amateur player in the New York City area is … Derrick Caracter.

That connection ought to curdle the Louisville compliance department’s milk — and pique the interest of the NCAA, which has investigated Fegan before. Two years ago, Fegan’s relationship with Charlie Villanueva cost Villanueva the first six games of Connecticut’s 2003-04 season. Villanueva’s AAU team? The Long Island Panthers. Villanueva’s connection to Fegan? Eddie Lau, according to multiple sources in New York City.

So this led me to wonder about the AAU Coach of the Pittsburgh J.O.T.S. — J.O. Stright. Could there be the similar hanky-panky?

It is not the same situation, but there are flags.

J.O. Stright is also a successful businessman who lives in Mt. Washington and owns an Etna insurance business. Stright may have gained most of his notoriety for becoming the legal guardian for a young high school star in the Pittsburgh area in the ’90s — Danny Fortson. By remarkable coincidence, Stright is a close friend of Coaches Bob Huggins and John Calipari — as this disturbing anectode reveals.

Summer 1991. AAU tournament in Memphis. Stright, a Pittsburgh businessman, is coaching a team that includes 15-year-old stars Danny Fortson and Tino Hunter. Huggins attends the tournament. He likes Fortson, a tough kid who fits UC’s physical style. Calipari, then coach at Massachusetts, attends the tournament. He likes Hunter, a great athlete who fits the Minutemen’s athletic style.

Stright, who had taken to looking after both inner-city kids, becoming Fortson’s legal guardian, remembers he, Calipari and Huggins went out for a beer to discuss Fortson and Hunter.

Stright vividly remembers the three reaching an agreement that night.

Calipari: “Look, Bob loves this guy Danny, and I love Tino.”

Stright: “I’ll do everything in my power to get these guys to sign with you guys.”

Huggins: “Fine with me.”

They shook hands and had beers to celebrate the recruiting coup. …

Wow. And this is/was apparently kosher?

Stright, by the way is also a very generous donor to Pitt educational funds. He gets mentioned in the local society/gossip pages.

Danny Fortson, Stright and another have engaged in real estate/business ventures in the area.

Now what this means with Herb Pope, I am not sure. It does bear watching and maybe Stright’s relationship with Pope needs further scrutiny.

The latest BlogPoll has been released.

Nothing too surprising about it. You can see how individual blogpollers voted here. My ballot with comments was here.

I’m not even going to pretend that I am anything but happy about this.

ESPN fired Trev Alberts on Sunday after the college football analyst failed to show up for work at ESPN’s studios in Bristol, Conn.

“He phoned and said that he wasn’t going to show up,” Mark Shapiro, ESPN’s Vice President of Programming and Production, told SI.com on Tuesday night, “and when he didn’t, he was in breach of his contract and we terminated him.”

Alberts, a former All-American defensive end at Nebraska and member of the NFL’s Indianapolis Colts, was embarking on his fourth season as part of ESPN’s popular College Football Scoreboard and College Football Gameday team. But on Sunday morning, in the midst of college football’s first big weekend of the season, Alberts phoned ESPN’s coordinating producer of college football, Ed Placey, and voiced his discontent.

Now we know why it was just Rece Davis and Mark May in the studio.

I wish I could locate the blogger and post I read the other day who commented that May is actually better without Alberts around because he doesn’t have defend his every utterance every 4 seconds.

In the next couple of weeks, they will have someone else from within ESPN’s ranks fill in for the year. After that they plan to open it up again. Oh, goody. Now we know what the next “Dream Job” will be.

Variety of topics in the papers.

The team has moved on to focus on the next game (though the headline used for the AP story makes it seem as if the team is actually still dwelling on ND).

Trying to focus his team on Friday night opponent Ohio University and away from one of the school’s worst opening-game losses ever, Wannstedt said nothing can be gained by talking any more about the then-No. 23 Panthers’ confidence-shaking 42-21 loss Saturday night.

Notre Dame, verboten.

“We watched the Notre Dame tapes, and I brought them back in here at 7 p.m. on Sunday night and I personally gave them a scouting report on Ohio University, and that was it,” Wannstedt said Tuesday. “And I said, ‘I didn’t want to hear another word about that game.’ I think it’s my approach, and the assistant coaches, and the leaders on this team, how quickly we turn it over and move on and learn from it.

“Right now the feeling in our stomachs is not good, and the only way to make it feel good again is to win.”

You know, that is true. The last time Pitt lost a home opener this badly was in ’96. A 34-0 drubbing by WVU. Before that, you have to go all the way back to the grim days of 1967 and a 40-8 loss to UCLA.

The lack of a pass rush by the defense was noticeably missing from the ND game. Coach Wannstedt was asked about that and what changes were possible.

“If you look at the defenses I’ve run over the last 15 years, we’ve always just lined up and kicked people’s tails across the board up front,” he said yesterday at his weekly news conference. “We’re going to get there. Now, are we there right now? Can we do that right now? Not today, which means we’ve just got to adjust and do some things to help ourselves [generate a pass rush].”

Generally, doing things to help a pass rush means blitzing more. The Panthers rarely blitzed against the Irish and, because their defensive front was overmatched, they weren’t able to put much pressure on Notre Dame quarterback Brady Quinn.

As Pitt (0-1) prepares to play at Ohio (0-1) Friday, Wannstedt said blitzing is one way to jump-start the pass rush, but there are other options as well.

“The obvious answer is to blitz, but you can also defend,” he said. “We defended. We weren’t getting to the quarterback so we rushed three and we covered everybody to the point where he had nowhere to throw the ball, but he escaped and ran for the first down. We covered because we can do that well.

“But you can also blitz and take those chances. I think we’re capable of both. We had both in the game plan and we’ll pick and choose and mix it up as we go on. A lot of it has to do with experience, just being experienced enough to do that.”

I was surprised by the lack of blitzing by Pitt. I expected some more aggressiveness from the defense. It reads to me, that he wants to be more aggressive. Perhaps with more play by Thomas Smith and Clint Session returning to action this week, there will be more blitzing and attacking on defense.

There was a brief article about Coach Wannstedt’s handling of his players’ off the field stuff — Kicker Josh Cummings and Tight End Eric Gill.

Wannstedt said yesterday that while he believes strongly in discipline and player accountability, he must deal with each case individually. He said there are too many questions about Gill’s case to make a judgment about it, and Cummings was disciplined based on university and athletic department procedures.

“Josh was dealt with immediately, thoroughly and aggressively,” Wannstedt said.

I think he handled the Cummings matter properly, given its occurrence and immediate publicity and handling in the off-season.

The Gill stuff is troubling because there would appear to have been some attempts to cover it up by Gill and his father. It came out the day before the ND game. I don’t think it was a distraction, but it called for more action. At the very least, naming him team captain for the game — and letting him keep it — was a mistake.

Defensive End Chris McKillop has a nasty gash in his head because, well, because he must like playing concussed.

Above McKillop’s left eye is a large, black and purple bruise and a gash that took three stitches to close. The sophomore defensive end sustained the injury when he was dog-piled in the end zone after a Notre Dame touchdown.

“I wear my helmet so loose, so when I fell on the ground, it came up toward my eye,” McKillop said, wincing. “An offensive lineman fell on me, and it just sliced me open.”

Good plan, keep the helmet loose in a violent, jarring game. No worries.

What were those old commercials where the concussed football player said, “I’m Batman.”? Snickers? Part of the ‘Not going anywhere for a while’ campaign?

One of the few surprisingly good things from the ND game was Ray Kirkley showed some speed and got in the rotation at tailback.

When Wannstedt ordered many players to lose weight over the offseason, Kirkley wondered how it would affect his running ability. But after dropping 15 pounds — he checks in these days at 213 — Kirkley is happy with the results.

“Earlier in my career, I thought that heavier backs could take the punishment better,” Kirkley said. “But I’ve realized that I’m a lot quicker now and I can still take the punishment. I can run around people now. But I can still break tackles and run through people, too. Losing the weight is definitely working for me.”

Kirkley’s speed to the outside is a fine compliment to Jennings’ inside power style.

Just finding enough touches to figure out who should be playing more will still be an issue.

Yesterday was the weekly Big East Coaches Conference Call. You can listen here (Coach Wannstedt came on at 7:30 — following Dantonio [Cinci]). The conference call, according to the Big East website is only up for a week until the next call.

In the call, Coach Wannstedt was nice about Frank Solich and the Ohio QB.

Thomas Smith is still considered questionable but expected to play.

The primary issue for Coach Wannstedt reported in a couple BE notebooks is that Pitt is playing a Friday night game.

Pittsburgh head coach Dave Wannstedt is sensitive to this, and insists efforts were made to avoid interference with the local high schools.

Because of the national television coverage associated with the two high-profile coaches – Wannstedt at Pitt and former Nebraska head coach Frank Solich at Ohio – the game was slated for the prime-time audience.

Wannstedt said the area high school coaches understand the situation, and by no means is the scheduling a slight to Friday night football.

“No one is more sensitive to high school football in western (Pennsylvania) than me,” Wannstedt said. “Sometimes you get into situations because of scheduling and TV. Some of these things we have to do because of the conferences and the program.”

Not related, but something to keep in mind when offseason coaching changes occur, Rutgers Head Coach Schiano is also the Defensive Coordinator — not good when your team blows a 27-7 lead.

As for comments about the ND game, he tried to be philosophical.

“The only comment I will make is how much work we have to do,” he said. “When you are playing a team like Notre Dame you are going to find out real quick, and we did.”

Then there is Coach Wannstedt’s regular press conference, and transcript.

On the receivers:

We’re making some progress. I think we know where all of our guys are. Greg Lee, it’s kind of a shame he didn’t make that one catch in the end zone. I mean, he’ll make that 99 times out of 100. We all know that. He played well. On the touchdown, on the opening drive, he really ran a great route. He beat the guy and got open. Joey [DelSardo], we know where he is. Joey’s going to be a good, consistent player for us. The third guy is really unknown. There’s [Derek] Kinder, [Marcel] Pestano. That’s where we’re at. It’s between those two guys. Kinder, probably right now, is probably faster. He’s more of a natural receiver. You know, Kinder was a running back in high school. He’s a guy that smart, and he’s always in the right spot. So from a coach’s standpoint, that’s kind of what we’re looking at.

To be honest, when Lee didn’t make that catch, it was hard to be too upset considering he’d been doing nothing but windsprints and decoys for the majority of the game. He was probably shocked the ball was actually coming to him.

Greg Lee, however, does need to start dominating again or get help. He’s going to face a lot of extra coverage.

Pitt must develop another receiver with speed to take pressure off WR Greg Lee. After Lee caught a 39-yard touchdown pass in the first quarter, Notre Dame rolled a safety toward Lee almost every play to help in coverage. Lee caught three passes for 24 yards the remainder of the game. Joe DelSardo, who starts opposite Lee, is a solid possession receiver, but Pitt has to look at freshman Marcel Pestano to stretch defenses.

In the ND game, it also didn’t help that Palko rarely had time to wait for him to break the coverage.