Judging by the Tweets and comments, new Pitt Head Coach Todd Graham made a lot of people feel more than really good about the hire. Excited, thrilled, juiced. His energy was palpable. Apparently it also extended to some of the players as there are reports that Cameron Saddler and Ray Graham both phoned into The Fan to express their own excitement over Todd Graham.

There is no way to avoid the comparisons to the Mike Haywood presser last month. Where Haywood was really brief — the whole press conference clocked in at 25 minutes with AD Steve Pederson speaking for more than five minutes, this one went a bit over 35 minutes with a very short intro by Pederson.

Where Haywood was stoic (stone-faced?) and spoke only of discipline and molding young men; Graham was animated and spoke openly of wanting to win championships.

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Sorry. After the last several days of keeping near/glued to a computer “just in case…” I have been in and out trying to catch up on things in the outside world.

The introductory press conference is scheduled for 3:30 pm. You can watch it for free via Pitt’s All-Access streaming video, here.

Dion Lewis, Jon Baldwin and Henry Hynoski are leaving Pitt for the NFL draft.

Each have good reasons for leaving now. No one should begrudge them for going.

Hynoski has the most to lose by staying at Pitt with a change in offensive philosophy. A fullback, he likely faced a very diminished role. As a junior his transfer prospects would have been limited and likely done nothing to help his draft stock. As it stands, most fullbacks don’t go until late in the draft. If he transferred to a 1-AA school to play right away, it would be even harder to get any notice. On the plus side, he will earn his degree by April.

Baldwin would gain nothing by staying another year. He probably had his draft stock dinged a little between the problems with his relationship with QB Tino Sunseri, stuck mainly running decoy deep routes, and worse by not being the most aggressive receiver.

Still he has the physical tools that make him look like a #1 receiver. He won’t be the first WR taken in the draft, but he will be the first Pitt player taken in the 2011 NFL Draft.

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