Well, this gets my curiosity up and running.

There is a myth going around in the Steel City that the Pittsburgh Panthers are getting commitments from 99 percent of the Western Pennsylvania high school football players that they go head-to-head with against West Virginia. According to one blogger, family ties to West Virginia University and other extenuating circumstances are the reasons the remaining one percent have chosen to jump over Dave Wannstedt’s wall.

To get another perspective, I recently asked a member of the WVU football staff just how many Western Pa players they have been able to lure away from Pitt since they took over in 2001. He counted at least seven players off the top of his head, and quickly added that there would be more to come.

Shall we take that apart for a moment? This is from what I know, a web only story. Yet hyperlinks to said blogger and the claims are non-exisitent.

As far as I’m aware there are only 2 bloggers who discuss Pitt recruiting. Yours truly and Chris Dokish. I don’t suppose Mr. Antonik would care to state which blogger is making that claim? Or would he prefer to keep it vague and not have to back it up?
Now last I checked, Dave Wannstedt started at Pitt in 2005. There has been only one complete recruiting class and it is part way through recruiting this year. So why would he ask an anonymous member of the WVU football staff about all the Western PA players they got to Morgantown since 2001? That is clearly an error, I mean, unless he’d like to distort the numbers or something.
Then there’s the less than subtle attempt to conflate going head-to-head with Pitt for a player with how many Western PA players they pull.

From what I see of the WVU 2005 recruiting class and who Pitt was recruiting, they got two. Wes Lyons and Eric Rodemoyer. So far this year, the only one they can claim is Gino Gradkowski
There is of course the most obvious reason for this sort of ignorance. He is a Hoopie.

Let me take another run at the ESPN-Big East deal. Frank the Tank, did a much better job than I did (and in less words) in partially explaining my displeasure at the deal. I have annoyance at how many of those “guaranteed” games will be weekday program fillers, while the news coverage has focused on the total number of games or the big jump for basketball. Let’s face it, though, the basketball side of the Big East is not a concern or really an issue as far as health, publicity and strength.

My main ire, though, is over the future distribution channel controls. The broadband and cellular offerings and content. Those will stay with ESPN. Understand, very clearly, the allure of having one’s own channel is not simply as some conference vanity project. By sticking with ESPN regional, Pitt has remained without control over the distribution and content of its own games. That means the Big East schools and the conference will not be able to offer streaming of the video of the games through their own sites. That will remain with ESPN and they will reap the money from it. Not to mention any other digital packaging that develops or evolves. Conferences with their own channels and control of their distribution will make more money.

For the Big 11, they can still offer games on the ESPN Gameplan or on a local station if they aren’t showing it on their channel or any of the Mouse stations. They have the control over it ultimately. They produced it. They own the production.

The Big Ten Channel will be available to satellite and cable distributors nationwide and will be available through the Internet, i-Pods, cell phones and other technologies, the league said.

That will be the same for all of the conferences that go to their own channel. They won’t be seen any less. They won’t get promoted by ESPN any less. They will however be bringing in more money in the long term as the technology keeps developing.

This is why all professional sports teams are now creating their own channel. They aren’t necessarily going to make any more money at first than if they had stayed contracted with the regional Fox Sports channel. After all, they have to now pay salaries and get ad revenue and all that fun stuff. It’s that they have full vertical control of the product — right down to distribution formats. It’s about long-term revenue creation.

The Big East loves to tout how it was the first to recognize the importance of cable and the dealings with ESPN. Unfortunately that is some 20+ years ago since the last time they were forward thinking about the media distribution. Now, they don’t look forward only react to the immediate situation.

A great little widget, that will be wildly overused in the next couple days in the blogosphere. Here’s some brief thoughts on who and what are “On Notice” for the Pitt game.

Send me your own submissions and I’ll post some of the best.

Hall of Fame Coach Don Nehlan spoke to WVU law students the other night. He was in total grumpy old man mode.

Coaches make too much money, too much pressure to win now and he discussed religion.

When the subject turned to the current state of college football, Nehlen did not hesitate to express his views. “The (current) drive to win at all costs scares me. Coaches making one or two million dollars a year scares me. That’s too much for a doggone coach.”

“It’s a game, and we’ve made it like a religion,” Nehlen continued. “If you look at the Southeastern Conference, I’m not sure it isn’t a religion.”

The role television has played in transforming the game into a business also worries Nehlen. “TV tells schools what to do and when to do it. We used to not play on Friday nights out of respect for high school football. Now we play on Fridays. It’s like biting the hand that feeds you. If you play on a Wednesday, the athletes miss class from traveling on Tuesday and on gameday, and we all know they’re not going on Thursday. But the NCAA says it’s all about academics. It’s not. It’s about money.”

Then he went on about the Big East — taking a rip at Louisville — and speaking near heresy.

“Say what you want, but it killed us to lose those teams,” Nehlen said in reference to Miami, Virginia Tech and Boston College, each of which defected to the Atlantic Coast Conference since 2004.

“We’ll be playing a lot more Wednesday games unless something changes. South Florida doesn’t have their own stadium, and at Cincinnati games, the fans would rather talk about the start of basketball season.

“Louisville made their program go by taking Prop 48 guys. Now they can’t do that, and it won’t be long until they’re average again. That’s why we need Pittsburgh and Syracuse to rebound. They’re the only two (Big East) schools with national name recognition. I never thought I’d root for Pitt to get better, but we need them to give our league some prestige.“

[Emphasis added.]

Kind of funny to read anyone associated with WVU complain about schools taking academically questionable students. When the Big East voted this past year to refuse to accept academic non-qualifiers any longer, the Hoopies were one of two schools to vote against the measure.

That’s the frustrating thing about the Big East these days. We find ourselves kind of hoping that our bitter rivals do at least well enough to help the overall quality of the conference, and thus our status.

As previously noted, Charlie Taafe, is filling in this year for Bob Junko with on-the-field coaching duties (Assistant Head Coach). Taafe did a brief stint as head coach in the Canadian Football League. Apparently the rumors are he will return after this season.

The name of Charlie Taaffe, on a one-year consulting contract at Pitt, keeps popping up. When Desjardins arrived to work in the Montreal front office in 1999, Taaffe was the first head coach he worked with.

“Charlie would be the obvious person that people would connect me to,” Desjardins concedes. “He brings a lot of the attributes that I would look for in a head coach in terms of: discipline, to a point, but not pushing it; open communications; and knowing what he wants to do.

“He’s an offensive coach and I think ball control is important in this league, whether people think it is or not. You have to have a running game.

“So he’s an obvious choice. Is he the choice? Well , at the end of this season, a lot of things could happen with coaches in this league, and there are a lot of good assistants who will be available.”

One short-term benefit of hiring Taaffe would be that he’s not under contract to a CFL competitor and could get a significant jump on next season. On off-days from his University of Pittsburgh job, Taaffe could spend some time studying the Ticats.

[Emphasis added.] That would be with the Hamilton Tiger-Cats.

That did provide a little insight into the style of offense he likes. I think it’s safe to say that this year with Pitt, he will not be a voice agitating in Coach Wannstedt or OC Cavanaugh’s ear to open the game up with the deep ball.

Just to remind everyone, I am posting at AOL as well. So far, I have taken another shot at Paul Rhoads.

Pitt recruit (?) Herb Pope has transferred to Arlington Country Day School in Jacksonville, FL. – again

No wait, he hasn’t.

I have no idea.

You may remember last spring when all the Herb-Pope-J.O.-Straight-Drunky-Bear-Huggins stuff started popping up in newspapers, trustworthy blogs and not-so-trustworthy blogs.

Well, here we go — again.

Former Aliquippa High School star forward HERB POPE is now enrolled at Arlington Country Day School in Jacksonville, FL. The powerful prep school welcomed Pope with open arms, though they may be the only place to do so for awhile.

End of story right? Not so fast.

While the author of the story, Chris Dokish, is a friend of Pitt Blather and seems to have an in with Straight that newspaper writers don’t, there seems to be some holes in the report.

He gives us the news of Pope leaving, but never gives us a source or a quote. He moves onto other things, such as Pope being a royal prick; i.e. never making up his mind and starting fights in tournaments.

All the rumors began with a harmless quote in a Kentucky newspaper story that ran on Sunday. On Tuesday Jim Equels Jr. of the Beaver County Times didn’t see it as that harmless.

According to a story in Sunday’s Lexington (Ky.) Herald-Leader, Pope has transferred to Arlington Country Day, a prep school in Jacksonville, Fla. The source of the information is Country Day coach Rex Morgan.

Morgan was discussing one of his players, A.J. Stewart, a potential Kentucky recruit, with Herald-Leader writer Jerry Tipton. Included in the story was the following:

Morgan’s team also has another, more highly regarded prospect in forward Herb Pope. Louisville, Pittsburgh, UConn and Kansas State are on his list.

Pope’s potential caused Morgan to make a telling slip of the tongue. “No question he has the tools to be on the next level,” the coach said before adding with a chuckle, “I mean the next next level.”

Pope was unable to be reached for comment Monday, nor was Morgan.

That’s it? How on earth does that imply Pope has transferred? All the coach is saying is that Pope has the ability to play in the NBA, which he does – the NBA tends to ignore personality.

Yesterday the BC Times ran a story with the following headline “Pope is officially out of Aliquippa.”

It appears likely that Herb Pope, one of the top basketball prospects in the nation, has left Aliquippa for Arlington Country Day, a prep school in Florida.

Pope, a 6-foot-9 forward, was not in school on Tuesday, the first day of classes at Aliquippa. Quips’ coach Marvin Emerson said it is his understanding that Pope would not be attending for his senior year.

“Supposedly, he’s gone,” Emerson said.

That’s a rather wishy-washy story to run after such a definitive headline.

Today we have another wrench thrown into the mix in the form of an Aunt.

On Wednesday, a woman called The Times, saying she was the biological aunt of Pope.

According to the woman, the basketball standout “will be in Aliquippa.”

“I have custody of him,” said the woman, who identified herself as Amy Smith. “He will be in Aliquippa. He is at a tournament in New York now. That’s all you need to know.”

Asked whether Pope was enrolled at Aliquippa, the caller said, “That’s all you need to know.”

Perhaps the angry aunt should have been a source in the earlier stories.

Of course, this whole mess has the larger more credible newspapers jumping on the bandwagon.

Classes started at Aliquippa yesterday, and Pope did not attend. Aliquippa basketball coach Marvin Emerson said he was told by one of Pope’s close friends that Pope is attending Arlington Country Day School in Jacksonville, Fla.

My conclusion: No one has a clue. Regardless, I don’t want Pope at Pitt and I doubt Pitt does either. I’ll trust Dokish for now and assume Pope is gone. Stright probably knows more than he is letting on and may have told Dokish some of it off the record.

That’s just my speculation — everyone else is going it, why can’t I?

I’m glad they believe in themselves.

Four of those five players return, so the continuity is much better heading into this season. Some linemen said that alone should translate into a group that is more capable of both protecting quarterback Tyler Palko and opening running lanes for tailbacks.

“Last year was tough on all of us because we just didn’t get much of an opportunity to play together until later in the season and, by that time, we were already on our way to a losing record,” said center Joe Villani. “This year, we have four guys together already and, really, we just needed to work one new guy into the mix, which is much easier to do.”

Simonitis added, “We started camp this year ahead of, and I mean by a lot, where we ended last season. It is not even close. I really expect us to not just have a good year, but to be the strength of our offense.”

Part of me thinks that would be tremendous if true. The other part fears that if so, the rest of the offense would be in the gutter if this O-line were the strength of the offense.

As I keep repeating like some football Fox Mulder, I want to believe. It’s just that I’ve seen this O-line the last few years so I have a hard time being optimistic sight unseen. Especially with this returning O-line. Right now, the best I can muster is that I doubt that they will be worse.

The named team captains for the opener aren’t really a surprise: Tyler Palko and Steve Buches on the offense (What? No one from the O-line?) and H.B. Blades and Clint Sessions from the defense. All are seniors.

I don’t know why I felt my rear iris close when I read this.

Defensive coordinator Paul Rhoads said the top two priorities against Virginia are to stop the run and eliminate the deep play.

“They’re going to take their shots early and probably take their shots often to try to get easy scores and big scores,” Rhoads said, “so we have to protect against it.”

Why do I have the sense that DC Rhoads is more concerned about a deep ball from a 5th year QB who has never started throwing to a full crew of inexperienced WRs — and the only experienced and skilled WR will be covered by Darrelle Revis — then the run? Oh, that’s right, history.