Joe Starkey’s ESPN.com Big East Notebook (Insider subs.) doesn’t offer much but he notes the home attendance average for each team with 1-3 home games left.
- West Virginia — 60,535 (+1762 from 2006), 3 games remaining
- USF — 51,075 (+20,853), 2 remaining
- Rutgers — 43,682 (+2569), 1 remaining
- Louisville — 39,935 (-1547), 1 remaining
- UConn — 37,487 (-1452), 2 remaining
- Syracuse — 35,397 (-1865), 2 remaining
- Pitt — 34,141 (-9164), 2 remaining
- Cinci — 28,859 (+8486), 2 remaining
Wow. Who knew Pitt’s attendance ranking would appear to have a good shot of matching the likely spot Pitt finishes in the Big East?
This is bad news for the athletic department. Point to 2008 all you want as the season, but attendance usually doesn’t get the bounce (or drop) until the year after — Louisville seems to be the lone exception to this. The Pitt Athletic Department has a lot of heavy lifting to do if it wants people to show up next season.
The school can keep honoring the past great teams all it wants. And seemingly over, and over this week it’s the 1982 team — and I would swear some variation on this was done just a couple years ago? After a point though, it would be nice to see something worth remembering in the present.
It isn’t the lousy home schedule this year. It may not have helped, but fans had little hope if the team that was beaten horribly to end last year was going to be worse this year. Next year the schedule may be improved — but it still looks to have two MAC teams in the non-con (which is a marginal improvement since it means no officially 1-AA teams).
Q: Do you have any idea what the non-conference schedule will be for next year? I’ve heard that Central Florida is pulling out of the game scheduled for next year . Do you know the replacement?
ZEISE: It isn’t finished yet but it is getting close. Apparently they are working on a deal to play Bowling Green — the game that was supposed to be played this year — as well as closing in on a deal to play Buffalo. And yes, Central Florida has opted out of the game which means the home schedule next year — assuming both of the aforementioned deals get done — would be Buffalo, Bowling Green, Iowa, Rutgers, West Virginia and Louisville and the away schedule would be Notre Dame, Navy, Syracuse, Cincinnati, South Florida and Connecticut.
Great. Pitt has been punked by UCF. That feels good.
Starkey can point to an attitude change by the players. That’s great. I don’t want to put it down, but that only goes so far and can only be sustained so long. The players and the fans need the wins soon.
The poor attendance won’t directly affect any coaching shake-up at this point. It will be a subtle underlying thing. If the fans aren’t showing up and they don’t believe in the progress to put the money forth, that will have an affect. Because, you just know that Wannstedt is going to point to the progress and “improvement” on the defense. And that the O-line is “improving.” That staying the course with the present coaches is best. If the changes, though, aren’t made with DC Rhoads and O-Line Coach Dunn, that isn’t going to help.
Keep dreaming!
You must admit Wanny did not walk into a dire situation, he walked into an established football program that went to bowl games. I can buy a slight setback with the new head coach but come on they just suck (coaches)!
Progress?
Wake up, they are 3-5, they will be lucky to finish 5-7!
I do not want to hear the excuses, their game plans and game management totally suck!!
Wait until saturday, Syracuse is not going to be a gimme game. They will be lucky to win, also whatever head coach losses this game will be terminated first!
Look at Rhoads defensive units accomplishments over his tenure, none!
It’s just not fun to go to a game and watch them lose!
The first word was “if.” That is a conditional. As in “If A, then B.” “If” does not imply a likelihood of something happening. Do you understand or do i need to speak slower?
So, to recap, i said “IF we finish strong…people will come.”
Considering that we’ve improved from the UVA and Navy debacles, there is always a chance that we are turning the corner right now. Of course, it could all be a fluke and we haven’t really improved. I have no idea. We’ll know by the end of the year. But IF we have turned this ship around, we COULD have a good year next year.
Do you people need examples? Like PSU with 3 or 4 wins, every declaring the program dead, and then the next year with 11 wins?
Learn to read and understand the english language before you all go off on tangents.
Let’s wait to see what happens this year to predict if our attendance increases next year.
or
Can we define a successful season as 8-8 wins including stuff like losing to UConn & Syracuse, beating Temple in a 4th quarter comeback and beating Furman in OT?
– winning more games than the last Harris season, OR
– winning the conference outright, OR
– winning a share of the conference again, getting its BCS bowl berth AND actually winning that bowl game.
I hear what you’re saying, I myself told anyone who would listen about how Pitt weaseled their way into a good bowl, but hey that’s where Walt set the bar when he left.
Beating UConn would be nice. But my personal hatred of the East Hartford Huskies stems from living in CT for five years, a curse few other Pitt fans share.
From what Zeise was saying in one his relatively-recent Q&A’s or chats (can’t remember which), UCF has been a pain in the ass with the way this series has been handled since they agreed to it. I believe Zeise said the original plan was for Pitt to host UCF in 2006, go to UCF in 2008 and then host UCF in 2009. UCF bitched about something or other and Pitt basically agreed to go there last year to placate them. Now it looks like the two remaining home games that they owe us are off the books, and from what Zeise said, this is a series that will never be renewed. I don’t see how Pitt can be blamed if the other program is acting like a bunch of douches over this…again, as it was mentioned above, hopefully we got a financial payoff in the form of a penalty for it.
And I can’t blame them for having to go back to the MAC to fill these spots. This is what happens when these arrangements get broken with higher-quality programs. Schedules are set so far in advance that when a date becomes open with relative short notice like this, options are limited. Deals are hard enough to make with higher-profile programs because there are more considerations at stake. Filling these holes in the schedule with quality programs would be difficult to do on such short notice, and that’s compounded further because we don’t have a fulltime AD.
I know Pitt’s going to catch crap over this schedule again, but I’m not sure how much blame they really should deserve with this happening on short notice.
If by some miracle we finish out strong, and give some hope for next year, that will help the attendance more than anything. If we somehow win against USF and WVU, i bet our attendance goes up by at least 15k. Those two wins will give us real hope for next year being “the year.”