Which as a slogan is definitely not as played out as “This is our country.”

The players are excited for this season.

“If not this year, when?” tight end Nate Byham said when asked about the mood of the team. “There’s no more excuses, there is too much talent here, too much talent with experience — we’re hungry, this is our year to blow up. We’re expecting big things, even bigger things than people on the outside expect from us. We know we have a lot of work ahead of us, we also know that we’re hungrier than we’ve ever been, we’re more talented than we’ve ever been and we’re ready to get started on this thing.

“All of us came to Pitt because we knew that we’d be in this situation, that Pitt was ready to explode and we wanted to be a part of it. This is our year.” Offensive guard John Malecki added, “We don’t want to hear about youth, no more ‘we have too many young guys,’ no more of that stuff. This is it, we need to go out and get it done. We’re working so hard, we’re pushing each other, we want to be good and you look around here and look at all this talent, my goodness, I consider it an honor to line up with this much talent every week. It is our time to shine.”

Brief aside. According to the Pitt Media Guide, John Malecki is 6-3 and 280 pounds. Try and picture him saying “my goodness.” Now try not to giggle.

The theme “this is our time” was something that was repeated time and time again yesterday by players and even some coaches. The team is experienced, talented and healthy and, more importantly, it has enough depth to withstand injuries early in the season. As Malecki, Byham and many of their teammates said, there is no reason the Panthers shouldn’t be good this season. Even coach Dave Wannstedt, who is usually cautious when talking about expectations, said he’s as excited as he has ever been heading into a season, but he knows none of the hype will mean a thing when the team begins camp today.

The expectations internally are good. If the players aren’t hungry for success after the last few years, then there’s a real problem. They are right, no more excuses — which would also be a good theme for this season — the players and the coaches have to make things happen this year.

Right, Coach Cavanaugh?

Cavanaugh’s resume hardly suggests a fast-break kind of guy, but that might have been a function of the systems in which he worked. In Baltimore, a don’t-screw-it-up offense won a Super Bowl in 2000 (but only after almost screwing it up by going five consecutive games without a touchdown).

If the line plays reasonably well this season, Cavanaugh should have the opportunity to prove he can, in fact, deliver a prolific offense.

I asked him about the too-conservative rap. He said the talent on hand has always dictated his style of offense.

“Two years ago, when (quarterback) Tyler (Palko) was a senior, I don’t think anyone considered our play-calling conservative,” Cavanaugh said. “We scored the second-most points in Pitt history.”

True, but Pitt only ranked fourth in the Big East in scoring that year in conference games. It racked up its biggest numbers against cupcake non-conference competition.

I hope Cavanaugh is really that way. The issue, though, is even if he is will Coach Wannstedt let him.

…Wannstedt forcefully defended the play-calling, saying, “I said this in my opening press conference: You throw the ball to score points; you run the ball to win.”

Maybe that thinking needs to change to something like this: You score points by any means necessary until somebody tells you to stop.

If that means 35 carries for LeSean “Shady” McCoy, great. If it means staying with a successful passing game — even with a lead — until victory is secured, so be it.

This is the change in football. In both the pros and college. You can’t stop throwing the ball. Even if you have an incredible talent running the ball and an impressive O-line blocking up-front. It’s about making sure that the other team can’t come back. Not just running time off the clock to make it harder.

Pete Carroll got it in college. He was a defensive coach, but he recognized the offense has to go, go, go. He turned his offenses loose. By contrast, Chan Gailey the now ex-GT coach was an offensive coach but never seemed to get it. He never let the offense loose. It was always too tightly controlled, predictable and too often stoppable.

Okay, enough with the downer stuff. Back to the unbridled optimism.

“It’s weird. If I head out to the mall or something, people are coming up to me and asking me about Pitt,” said West Allegheny graduate Dorin Dickerson, who moved from linebacker to tight end during spring practice. “Everywhere we go, it’s been like that. People want to know about Pitt, Pitt, Pitt. That’s all we hear about and it’s a good thing. Now, we have to deliver.”

It’s a position most of Pitt’s players haven’t been in since high school.

“Look at what’s happened here since we beat West Virginia,” Stull said. “You saw the recruiting aspect of it with all the guys who came over here after the win and the guys who decommitted from other places to come here after that. It really sparked something special. But that’s over now and we can control what happens from here.”

The thing to look for come the season will be if the team brings the same effort and intensity in every game. Are they responding each time. Are they ready from the start of the game to the end? That’s going to be part of the challenge for the coaches. Show that they can reach the kids and have the players ready consistently.

The training camp will be about proving who should be starting at spots. Then comes the time to prove it.

”When I have a conversation with someone who’s excited for this upcoming season, my first reaction is, ‘We gotta prove it.”’

Indeed. The Panthers enter this season – Wannstedt’s fourth as Pitt head coach – with very high expectations. Pitt can be found in most college football preseason Top 25 poll. Shady McCoy and Derek Kinder are on the watch list for the Maxwell award (annually presented to the nation’s most-outstanding player) and Scott McKillop is on the preseason list for the Chuck Bednarik Award, which is given each year to the country’s top defensive player.

Those three players give Pitt some of its best big-game talent since Larry Fitzgerald was hauling in TD passes at Heinz Field in 2003. Add in a third-straight nationally ranked recruiting class and this is certainly the most-talented squad of Wannstedt’s tenure with the Panthers.

The more I think about it, the problem I have with “this is our time,” as a theme is that it can be suggestive of some sense of entitlement. That the team is owed a big season after everything the past few years.

I’d like more of a theme to be about “taking it” or “proving things,” or “no more excuses.”