Not much locally. I found this interesting:

ESPN Radio 1250’s Tim Benz took callers voicing their biggest disappointments in local sports for 2005.In no particular order, here are the top four:

1. 2004 Steelers
   After riding a 15-game win streak into January’s AFC Championship, the Steelers lost their fourth home title game under Bill Cowher.
2. Pitt. Panthers Basketball Team
   The nationally-ranked squad were knocked out of the first round of the Big East Championships and the NCAA tournament.
3. Pitt. Football Team
   After being trounced in their opener, Dave Wannstedt’s team never got it together en route to its first non-bowl season since 1999.
4. Penguins
   After winning Sidney Crosby in the NHL draft, the team has spiraled down to the basement of the Eastern Conference.

I’m not at all disagreeing. I just take it as a small positive that Pitt’s disappointments in 2005 remained that high in the local populace’s thoughts. The continuing disappointment of the Pirates didn’t even make it.

The P-G Pitt basketball beat reporter Ray Fittipaldo has a Q&A. I guess he didn’t get a lot of questions, but a good one on what Coach Dixon will be doing with the rotation. Looks to keep using 10, but the amount will probably change. For the bad, it would appear that Mr. Fittipaldo doesn’t pay much attention to the net, and especially this blog.

Question: Why did Trevor Ferguson leave? And what did the coaches think of him as a player?

Fittipaldo: Ferguson’s AAU coach told me that he was homesick and that he wanted to play closer to home. I am not sure where Ferguson wound up. What likely happened was he saw how deep Pitt was at the guard position and saw the writing on the wall. These guys are realistic. He spent the summer here playing with the guys he was competing against and probably figured he’d have a better chance of playing somewhere else. It probably didn’t help that Dixon signed another guard, Mike Cook, in July. Cook is expected to come in and be a contributor next season after sitting this season out under NCAA transfer rules.

This was posted on Tuesday, and their rival even mentioned it by the Trib. by Wednesday. Lazy work.

When Joe Paterno was named the AP Coach of the Year, I decided against saying anything. It would seem snide, petty and hardly that legit coming from a Pitt partisan. Lucky for me, Orson at EDSBS said everything I was thinking, and then some:

Instead, they go with sentiment and Joe, whose notable achievements in the past five years have been hanging referee dolls from his door and slowly watching his son turn quality quarterback recruits into scrambling, concussed pick machines. Because he’s 79! And won a lot of games a few decades ago! And he’s good ol’ Joe Pa! (Pass the scotch and tell me the one about Beano Cook and Doc Blanchard in a bar in Singapore again, Joe!)

Which are all true, of course: Joe Pa exemplifies both the Tao and De of how to be a college coach the right way, devoting the better half of his life’s effort and a considerable amount of his money to the university he calls home. Was he the best coach this year, though, comrade? And do you reward someone for cleaning up their own mess? Do you dig rhetorical sentences at the end of mini-columns? The answer to all of these questions is no, comrade. Joe Pa got it for being cute and old and venerable, and that’s lazy like falling asleep with half a burrito stuck in your mouth. (We’re looking at you, Aaron Taylor. You know it happens all the time–otherwise, how would you explain the perpetually askew mouth?)

And definitely read the comments. There’s some fantastic ND myopia. The piece mentions other candidates that were more worthy, but because it failed to mention Charlie Weis, the ND readers freaked a little. Missing the main point of the piece to complain that ND and Weis were dissed by the omission.