I can’t say I’m completely buying into it. The spin isn’t just playing the freshmen, but playing “underclassmen.”

In Saturday’s loss at Louisville, Pitt started three freshmen – quarterback Pat Bostick, tailback LeSean McCoy and wideout Maurice Williams and three with sophomore eligibility – right guard John Bachman, tight end Nate Byham and wideout T.J. Porter. Three defensive players – cornerback Aaron Berry, tackle Mick Williams and outside linebacker Shane Murray – also have sophomore eligibility.

“I like the attitude of our team,” Wannstedt said. “I think we’re better conditioned, and we’re stronger mentally. When it’s 14-0 at Louisville at their homecoming game, it’s easy to fold your tent with a freshman quarterback and a lot of young kids. The seniors of this team, they just kept plowing, and I like where we’re at.”

Key phrase, “sophomore eligibility.” Bachman, Williams and Murray are all redshirt sophomores. Technically underclassmen, but not exactly.

Citing Porter and Byham is just silly. Byham was a top TE recruit in the country, so you hope he is starting at this point. The WR position last year had two redshirt freshmen in Turner and McGee seeing lots of action, and in Turner’s case starting. Exactly why is Porter starting as a true sophomore hold great meaning?

So reading how progress is slowly coming. Well… it just causes teeth grinding.

“[Progress] is slow, it’s not as fast as I would like,” he said at his weekly news conference. “It is not as fast as anyone would like, but we’re dealing with a great group of kids. The attitude is great. You wouldn’t know we are 3-5 if you watched these kids practice and study and get ready to try and win.”

If you watched them in the games however…

This article by Gorman actually implies Syracuse is also making progress. In rebuttal, this from a joint effort of Troy Nunes Is An Absolute Magician and Orange 44.

Maybe in retrospect we expected too much to improve. But it’s not wrong of us to assume SOMETHING would have improved. Never has a football game been such a sobering experience than that Washington game. I joked beforehand about what it would be like if we lost by 40…and then we almost did.

2. Orange::44: Who is to blame for the football team’s underperformances? Is it DOCTOR Gross with his mismanagement of the department, Greg Robinson for being a bad coach and recruiter, Nancy Cantor for being a terrible Chancellor, or is it a combination therein?

Nunes: In theory you could trace the blame all the way up. Robinson for being a bad coach, Gross for hiring Robinson, Cantor for hiring Gross, Cantor’s mother for giving birth to her, Cantor’s grandmother for giving birth to Cantor’s mother, and so on until, ultimately…the blame falls to God (however you describe him/her/it).

In practice, I think you have to look at Gross. If it’s true that he only interviewed two people for the head coaching position and then decided his search was over because by the grace of God, Greg Robinson appeared before him on a diamond-studded chariot, heralded by angels, claiming that rapture and/or national titles would befall Syracuse upon his hiring…well then its Gross who needs to answer to why that didn’t happen. (The national titles, I mean. The rapture didn’t happen cause we’re all sinning masturbators, obviously)

No matter what you think of Coach P, it was a bad move to fire Pasqualoni and have no clear successor in mind. It was a bad idea to hire a lifetime coordinator and not interview other applicants as well, including ones with a history in the program and at the university. It was a bad idea to invest so much money into the state of the current program as it continues to underachieve. And it will ultimately be a bad decision to continue letting Robinson coach the team as the program and the school lose money, fan support, money, national appeal and money.

I guess Gorman was stretching a bit to make a complete parallel between Robinson and Wannstedt. The differences are that Wannstedt is an alum and is recruiting extremely well. Robinson is neither and is toast. Coming Thursday, you can expect a transcript of a chat I’ll be having with Sean from Troy Nunes… in anticipation of Saturday’s game.