[Editor note: I started drafting this post earlier today. Kept getting interrupted by the apparent movement on Graham, and offline business. This post may be stale by the time it is posted.]

I don’t know about anyone else, but yesterday was a very good day. Not simply because Pitt won both football and basketball games. It was because for the first time in over a week, it was all about the games. It was watching the play. Commenting restricted to what was going on, on the field and court. The only discussion of coaches I was having were the decisions and play calling.

No heaviness. No attempting to parse non-denials. No reading into tidbits of information. Just the games themselves. It was almost like taking a day off.

Ah, well, it was nice while it lasted.

(more…)

Paul Zeise is in transit from Birmingham, but he offers a rather vague update.

There was quite a stir about an 8 p.m. (9 p.m. our time) team meeting tonight with Todd Graham and his players at Tulsa but I wouldn’t read too much into it as it is a meeting that has been scheduled for weeks and  Graham has this meeting every year on the eve of the first day of classes.

But I think the good news about the meeting is we’ll know something more about his future plans by that point in the night or shortly thereafter as I would assume he would not meet with his players without being able to answer questions about whether he is going or staying.

That assumes a coach tells his players the truth. Something I refuse to believe anymore. But yeah, after the meeting there will be leaks. There will be information. Unreliable and untrustworthy as it may be.

(more…)

We will call this the Bob Smizik edition.

I realize the guy is semi-sort of retired so doing things like paying attention for more than hour can be challenging.  Still, never let that get in the way of a good scolding.

There is a report going around, which appeared on this blog and other places, that states if Tom Bradley gets the Pitt head coaching job, Teryl Austin will be his defensive coordinator.

That is incorrect.

…

Not sure where this got started — and it wasn’t with Bradley — but it’s incorrect and makes little sense.

Where indeed what a good question? Let me offer a qualified “kudos” to Bob for admitting the claim showed up on his own blog post. That said if you are that eager to get to the bottom of it, Why don’t you ask your “good authority” from three days ago?

Already people are excited about the staff he’ll bring with him and I have on good authority his defensive coordinator will be Teryl Austin, a highly regarded coach who started at cornerback for Pitt in the 1980s. Austin was defensive coordinator at Florida last year. He has an excellent resume, both in college and the NFL, and is an outstanding recruiter. He has long wanted to get back to Pitt and was hoping for a job on Dave Wannstedt’s original staff.

[Emphasis added.]

That’s not claiming to have heard rumors or reports. That is claiming a rather direct source you trust. Don’t turn around and scold others for making the mistake of trusting you still had sources of some reliability.