A recent visit to the Pitt site may have piqued your curiosity about the teaser press release for “Panthers All-Access.” It did for me.

Panthers All-Access” is a must for the serious Pitt fan. Providing the most comprehensive Pitt coverage on the web, Panthers All-Access gives you such exclusive content as live game broadcasts, highlights, press conferences, special behind-the-scenes features and more!

Panthers All-Access will be available through a $69.95 annual subscription or $9.95 monthly subscription. Come back to www.PittsburghPanthers.com on August 7 to begin your FREE trial!

Now, when you are given that kind of limited information, and it sounds suspiciously like the Yahoo! broadcast package that costs less than half that amount, well some healthy cynicism about what is really being offered kicks in.

Despite my urge to just issue a pissed off rant, I actually opted to send an e-mail to Tim Kelly, the contact person the release listed. Tim is the Internet Services Coordinator for Pitt.

I had a 10+ minute phone conversation with Tim on Friday about Panther All-Access. So here’s some information on it.

The All-Access program is part of the CSTV package. CSTV, of course, is also responsible for the Pitt and Big East websites. So this is just another aspect being done exclusively for Pitt. At the present time, there will be no podcasting, but it will be recorded and archived streaming.

By necessity, and not terribly surprisingly, the Yahoo! broadcast package is going away. So, if you have a monthly subscription, you might as well cancel.

Mr. Kelly talked about a rather ambitious slate of offerings for the system.

Panther All-Access (PAA) will be offering live video broadcasts of the football press conferences after practices and during the season. There will also be audio clips from the practice — interviews with players and coaches. These will also be on the site as archived materials so you can listen to them at your leisure.

Other things that will be offered on PAA will be Dave Wannstedt Radio Show. On the Sunday following a Pitt game, there will be a highlight package video. Live chats with players and coaches are also in the plans.

One of the more encouraging things, might be providing feeds for the actual football games. The problem there are the rights issues. For example, Mr. Kelly said they are working to see if they can get the rights to stream the Virginia-Pitt game on September 2 since it airs on ESPNU, and “the U” doesn’t exactly have wide access unless you have a satellite. Personally, I doubt that ESPN will be that accommodating. Providing live feeds for the Toledo and The Citadel games (both not scheduled for any TV) are more likely.

Similar things are planned for basketball season. They are planning a 15-20 minute exclusive PAA basketball show with player and coach interviews. Video highlight packages the day after games as well. The Jamie Dixon Radio Show, of course, will also be available.

The big issue, though, is still figuring out if its worth $69.95/year or $9.95/month. That’s the very controversial aspect. Mr. Kelly admits he is bracing for some negative feedback for that kind of pricing. Especially with the elimination of the more affordable Yahoo! option if you just want to listen to games. Mr. Kelly is in charge of implementing the system and running it, he was not the one to set the price. He did offer to put me in touch with those who arrived at the pricing decision, and I may take him up on that at a later time.

I’m really not sure about the price-point. Especially just as its launching. It would be one thing if it was somewhat established and all the features, offerings and plans were more solidified. The plans are ambitious, but how much of them actually occur is hardly guaranteed. That could lead to some hard feelings as subscribers may come to feel that what they expected/were promised fell far short of the reality and they didn’t get their money’s worth.

This is something brand new, and I’m not sure that a limited trial period during football training camp will be enough time. Especially when they will need to get all the kinks and glitches that have to expected with a new multimedia platform.

This is the sort of thing you offer free for at least a few months while you get it up and running and make it clear how much of a value it is for fans.

A couple weeks ago there was the story about the Pittsburgh summer league in the Trib. Now the P-G adds its own story without much more new info other than to point out that it’s got room to grow.

“It’s something all the college kids around here needed,” Pitt coach Jamie Dixon said. “It’s beneficial for all of the teams from Division I through Division III. It’s been great. All the feedback I’ve been getting from the coaches at all the schools is that they’re very appreciative of the league.”
…
“The competition is good,” said Mike Cook, a guard/forward at Pitt who is preparing for his first season with the Panthers after sitting out under NCAA transfer rules last season. “The guys from Duquesne and Robert Morris are good and the guys from the smaller schools can shoot. Everyone is good. Everything I do here is getting me ready to play in Big East games.”

Cook spent his previous summers in his native Philadelphia playing with college and NBA players in a Pro-Am League. And while the Pittsburgh Basketball Club Pro-Am pales in comparison, he said the foundation for a good league was set this summer.

“This is just the first year,” Cook said. “I see this getting better.”

I pointed out when the first article ran, that Coach Dixon did some great behind the scenes work for basketball in Pittsuburgh in encouraging this. John Giammarco, the organizer of the summer league agrees.

“Now you can come and watch Sam Clancy give tips to Division III kids. That’s good stuff. We’re starting to rebuild that basketball togetherness. Jamie deserves the credit for this. He sincerely cares about basketball in Western Pennsylvania. I don’t think you could have said that about other coaches who have been at Pitt in the past.”

With Coach Dixon’s off-season extension with Pitt, there is a real possibility of seeing something long-term built with him and the basketball program here. I find that tremendous considering that there hasn’t been anything like that for I don’t even know how long.

Not sure what to read into this.

Pope, who has Pitt on his short list of colleges, was involved in an on-court altercation at the Junior AAU Super Showcase boys’ basketball tournament in Orlando, Fla.

Pope, playing for the Pittsburgh JOTS, was sent home and will miss the 17-and-under Junior AAU National Championships, which began Thursday in Orlando.

“It was how the game was played,” Pope said. “I got hit. I never threw a punch.”

Said JOTS coach J.O. Stright, “He got into a fight, which is a no-no down here. He was suspended. He’s back in Pittsburgh.”

It was uncertain whether Pope’s suspension will affect the status of his scholarship offer to Pitt. Pitt assistant coach Orlando Antigua, who was in Orlando at the AAU national championships, would not discuss Pope’s status. Pitt coach Jamie Dixon was in Los Angeles on a recruiting trip and did not return a phone call seeking comment.

The 6-foot-8, 220-pound Pope, however, said Pitt has not pulled his scholarship offer.

“That’s not true,” he said. “I talked to Coach Dixon and Coach Antigua. That’s incorrect.”

This article strikes me (pardon the pun) as an incredibly bad piece in trying to report Pope being booted from the tournament. No actual details of the incident, and the plain fact is that under NCAA regs, Pitt coaches can’t really discuss unsigned recruits in any detail. Of course Pitt wouldn’t pull the scholarship based on this. The story doesn’t even give any version of what happened. Suggesting even the reporter doesn’t know.

Just seems like the story was looking to stir something up.

On the recruiting front, Big East Basketball Blog has a look at Pitt’s work on the recruiting class of 2007.