Just a couple things.

Pitt alum and Xavier Head basketball coach Sean Miller was given an additional year on his contract. He is now contracted through 2010.

The Big East announced the entire national TV schedule for the 2005-06 season. These are games on CBS, ESPN and ESPN2.

CBS will air 5 Big East Conference games and 6 more games with a Big East team playing. Pitt will not be shown on CBS this season.

Mike DeCourcy at Sporting News has some thoughts on this TV schedule and the BE.

I don’t mean to be negative about the new, improved Big East, because this really is going to be fun while it lasts, but the inevitability that 16 members will prove to be too many struck me again when I received a press release from the conference regarding its abundance of national TV appearances.

According to the league, 31 of its regular-season games will be aired by either ESPN or ESPN2. Another five will be broadcast by CBS. That’s a total of 36 national televised league games. Add in the 11 Big East tournament games that will be shown on ESPN’s networks, and you discover that more than 33 percent of league contests will have a national TV outlet.

That’s outstanding.

But not everybody’s 100 percent excited.

Somebody at one member school confessed the other day to being a little disappointed at the number of national TV appearances apportioned to his school. Therein lies the problem the Big East will face as a league of its size: It’s impossible to keep everybody happy. And we haven’t even gotten to March to discover whether there’ll be room in the NCAA Tournament for all of the league’s successful teams.

In the aggregate, you can argue that the Big East is getting all of this exposure, but of the 11 CBS games being shown, only 5 teams from the BE are shown: UConn (5), Villanova (3), Louisville (3), WVU (3), Syracuse (1) and Georgetown (1). The number of appearances is in parenthesis.

It’s not surprising, regarding CBS, but with 16 teams vying for attention, that has to piss off some members.

Then there is the schedule on ESPN and ESPN2. There are 75 total appearances of BE teams:

Cinci, Syracuse, Louisville and ‘Nova – 9 appearances each.

UConn and ND – 7 appearances each.

WVU – 6 appearances.

DePaul – 5 appearances.
Pitt and G-town – 4 appearances.

St. John’s – 3 appearances.

Rutgers, USF and Marquette – 1 appearance each.

Providence and Seton Hall – 0 showings.

(DePaul will also be shown twice on ESPNU in games against Cinci and Louisville. More games might get added to the “U” but I’m damned if I know anyone who has that station.)

That means 6 teams will account for 2/3 of the Big East’s TV appearances on the WWLS. 5 teams account for 1/25 of the appearances.

That’s going to cause some frustration.

This is not as much fun as you would think. I feel pretty good about #1 through 15. I’m sure there’s a little off here and there, but nothing too egregious. After that, it feels like it is one step above throwing darts.

You can take a look at individual BlogPoll ballots here. The results should be up some time in the afternoon.

UPDATE: Full Poll results are now available.

Everyone seems to have real question markss. Or at least I have questions about them.

1. Southern California – Still winning
2. Texas – Mack Brown’s moment of truth this weekend
3. Virginia Tech – I still have a feeling about the traditional late October swoon
4. Ohio State – DNP
5. Tennessee – They have at least one more loss in them
6. Miami (Florida) – Can they run the ball?
7. Georgia – They’ve been dominating, but not getting that much buzz
8. Alabama – It’s an issue of health and depth right now
9. Notre Dame – They can score, but do they have enough defense?
10. Florida State – Good defense but can they score enough against the better teams?
11. Louisiana State – Bounce back win. I guess.
12. Florida – Maybe not as good as I thought.
13. Cal – They just keep winning
14. Michigan State – Gave that game away
15. Arizona State – No shame in losing to USC
16. Auburn – Quietly rising in the SEC
17. Texas Tech – Could only hang 30 on Kansas? They feel very shaky now that they actually have to play Div. 1-A teams
18. Georgia Tech – DNP
19. Louisville – Rising only because so many others lost
20. Wisconsin – Typical Badger team
21. Boston College – I guess
22. UCLA – 4 Pac 10 teams in my top 25? Strange days, indeed.
23. Michigan – As long as Hart is healthy they look to hang in and around
24. West Virginia – Lost to a top-5 team. I’ll keep them in a little longer.
25. Nebraska – Hey, they had some offense, finally

Out: UVA, Purdue, Toledo, Iowa St. and Vandy.

In: Wisconsin, Michigan, UCLA, BC and Nebraska

Standing by: Penn St. (and no, I’m not happy about that).

At least I can feel good about not ranking Minnesota last week, just for pulling off an overtime home win against a now completely exposed Purdue team. That’s part of why PSU doesn’t crack the rankings this week.

#16-25 I don’t like at all. I kind of want to group them more as #16a – e and #21 a-e. There doesn’t feel like much of a difference.

Games seen in whole or part: VT-WVU; Iowa-OSU; Mich.-MSU; Minn.-Neb.; ND-Pur; Fla-Ala; and Pitt-RU.

Ladies and gentlemen, the River City Rivalry Trophy:

I think we need a caption contest.

UPDATE: This thing needs to be ripped to the level for which it deserved. I e-mailed and received the equivalent of a fire bombing from the guys at Every Day Must Be Saturday.

You know the worst thing about jury-rigging a rivalry game like this River City Rivalry? It makes it damn hypocritical to make fun of the Land Grant Trophy game between Penn State and Michigan State.

There’s nothing to the RCR in past history.

The UC-Pitt rivalry, such as it is, is barely in the embryonic stage. The schools have met in football only four times, with Pitt winning all four games. Their most recent meeting was 24 years ago, in 1981.
…
“What has to happen is it has to get personal,” said UC coach Mark Dantonio. “The Miami game becomes very personal when you play in that game. The Louisville game, it becomes very personal. That’s what this game has to become. In this first year, we’ll see. We’ll see how we attack the situation and we’ll see how they attack it.”

Pitt’s biggest rivals are West Virginia and Syracuse. How UC fits into that mix remains to be seen.

“This is a nice start,” said Pitt coach Dave Wannstedt. “But I’m sure Mark would agree with me that rivalries come from there being three, four, five games back and forth and then all of a sudden the fans get into it and it means something.”

Just one of many new opponents Pitt will be facing.

And just when you thought mocking the Big East couldn’t be taken to a new low, it gets compared to the sitcom Joey.

The new-look Big East is a lot like NBC’s Joey — watching its cast struggle just makes you wish they’d get the old gang back together. But we know it’s not going to happen.

I am now going to take a bath with the toaster.

Last year, Pitt was very fortunate not to have many injuries. The receivers and running backs were about the hardest hit last year, but even that wasn’t too bad. A good thing considering Pitt’s lack of depth.

Well, there is still a lack of depth, but this year injuries are happening. So far Clint Session, Thomas Smith, Josh Cummings, Brian Bennett, Mike Phillips, Rashad Jennings, Marcus Furman, Terrell Allen, LaRod Stephens-Howling, Tim Murphy, Justin Acierno and Brandon Mason have gone down with injuries ranging from a game to the season. At least that’s who I can think of off the top of my head.

Now, it looks to be potentially even worse as H.B. Blades is going to at least be hobbling on the field.

Middle linebacker H.B. Blades was among the walking — limping, actually — wounded Tuesday afternoon at Pitt’s practice session.

Blades, wearing a boot on his right foot, did not work out for the second day in a row. Blades sustained an ankle injury during last Friday’s game against Rutgers.

Blades leads the Big East with 57 tackles (29 solo), and is arguably the best playmaker on the Panthers’ defense. His absence would further cripple the team’s injury-riddled linebacker corps.

Blades is day-to-day and given the player he is, he’ll most likely be in the starting line-up. How effective he is, will be the issue.

Fullback Kellen Campbell is out with a injury to his left ankle. There will be an MRI today to determine the extent. Campbell had assumed the starting FB role as Tim Murphy had been moved back to Tailback because of all the injuries to the RBs.

Both Brandon Mason and LaRod Stephens-Howling did not practice yesterday because of their injuries. It makes it very unlikely that either will play on Saturday. Rashad Jennings should be playing, though. Pitt is indeed redshirting FB/RB Conredge Collins.

One player who is not going to step in is Conredge Collins, a heralded freshman from Miami. Collins is redshirting and Wannstedt said he isn’t going to waste a year of Collins’ eligibility at this point.

“We talked about [using Collins] at length and I talked with Conredge about it,” Wannstedt said. “I just don’t think right now it would be fair to do that. We have two guys who are very capable.”

Jameel Brady, a redshirt sophomore, has been out with an injury but is actually returning to practice. He is second on the depth chart at Free Safety behind Tez Morris.

Kicker Josh Cummings has been practicing the last couple of days and may play in the Cinci game. Reserve offensive tackle Jerald Robinson is done with football permanently after it was discovered that he has a congenital spinal cord condition.