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.
Ok, I’m kidding.
In the past few years West Virginia has dominated Pitt, especially in the area of team speed. Is this due to West Virginia being able to win the region?Why is this happening?
Michael Buncher, New Hope, Pa.
Zeise: First, recruiting in the “region” — which I assume means Western Pennsylvania — is not even close. Pitt destroys West Virginia here at home. The fact is, if Pitt and West Virginia both make an offer to a kid from Western Pennsylvania and he chooses one of the two — Pitt gets the kid maybe 99 percent of the time. The WPIAL and City League kids on West Virginia’s roster for the most part have this in common: They weren’t offered a scholarship by Pitt. There are indeed two WPIAL kids in next year’s class that chose WVU over an offer for Pitt, but family ties had a lot to do with both cases and neither is exactly what one would call a program-maker. Secondly, since Walt Harris revived Pitt’s program in 1997, the Mountaineers and Panthers have played nine times. West Virginia has a 5-4 edge over Pitt in those games and Pitt beat WVU as recently as 2004. That’s not exactly domination. The fact is Pitt and West Virginia are far more similar than dissimilar and frankly, both schools need each other far more now than ever. Nice try though.