I haven’t posted much on the Sun Bowl stuff. Simply a matter of prioritizing. All the stuff in the offline world, other responsibilities and the more immediacy of basketball games actually being played. So, to breathlessly post on things relating to football and the Sun Bowl when it only now reaches a week away was difficult.

In that respect Pitt fans are lucky. We have basketball, and it is worth discussing.

But moving back to football. If you are lucky enough to be heading to El Paso, my colleague at FanHouse, Will Brinson, has a short travel guide for your visit. Plus, the Village People are the halftime entertainment.

Going back more than a week, there was the team banquet. Players getting team awards. As the team gets ready for the Sun Bowl they can get advice from Norv Turner’s son.

First-year Pitt graduate assistant Scott Turner worked at Oregon State under Riley during the 2005 season, which was his first year as a coach.

Turner had graduated from UNLV, where he was a three-year varsity letterman in football, earlier that season and Riley offered him his first opportunity to get into coaching in June of that year and Turner worked at Oregon State until the following May.

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Turner said he doesn’t know how much scouting intelligence or insider information he can give the Panthers’ coaching staff because many of the players have changed since he worked at Oregon State. The Beavers have different stars they scheme for and rely on to make plays.

Again, more importantly was in the notes that redshirting freshman Shayne Hale was being moved from linebacker to defensive end. On its face, that is a little surprising since he was a HS All-American as a linebacker, but tempered with Coach Wannstedt’s love to create speed and mismatches and it was even cited as a good possibility in this ESPN.com/Scouts, Inc. evaluation (insider subs). The one concern is that linebacker is an area where Pitt will have a lot of question marks — and need — next year.

Regarding the Beavers, Jacquizz Rodgers is still “very doubtful” so it looks like we have to get to know Ryan McCants.

After going almost the entire regular season without a starter going down, the Beavers are going bowling with a big part of their lineup in street clothes.

Freshman sensation Jacquizz Rodgers has not officially been ruled out of the Dec. 31 game, but Riley hasn’t changed his “very doubtful” prognosis. And really, all of that is just for the Sun Bowl folks to hang onto this Quizz vs. LeSean McCoy angle for a few more days.

Sophomore wide receiver James Rodgers, meanwhile, is out with a broken collarbone sustained in the Civil War game against Oregon.

Of course, Oregon State has had a lot of time to prepare for the Sun Bowl without the Rodgers boys, so there is that.

Scott McKillop gets puffed in an Oregon paper.

“This is real big for the team,” McKillop said. “I was fortunate enough to be here when we played Utah in the Fiesta Bowl (in 2004), and the next three years, we were unsuccessful in getting back to a bowl game. That left a sour taste in our mouths, and in my senior year, I want to go out with a bang.”

He’s already made a splash on the postseason awards circuit.

The one-time wrestler from Kiski Area High School east of Pittsburgh, who accepted the only football scholarship he was offered, is the 2008 Big East defensive player of the year after leading the conference in tackles for the second straight season.

McKillop also earned All-America recognition from The Associated Press and the Football Writers Association of America.

But it hasn’t been a meteoric rise for McKillop.