Well, here’s to hoping that other than recruiting news, the Pitt football side of things are going to settle down for a little bit. I’ve hated giving the short shrift to the basketball team.

They’ve been doing exactly what we want in winning and getting better, yet it seems hard to focus on them until gameday. Well, guess what? It’s gameday. Big spotlight game. ESPN at 7pm. Liveblog tonight.

Let’s run down some belated media love — and there has been plenty of that — before moving to the Georgetown game tonight.

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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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Thanks to Michael Franklin and Chelsey Rovesti

Big thanks to Michael Franklin for the idea,  Chelsey Rovesti for executing it, and both of them for the permission to use the image.

The press conference is scheduled for 3:30 pm on Tuesday. Presumably it will be streamed live on Pitt’s website.

I won’t lie. I am extremely curious to see how AD Pederson dances around the Haywood stuff. I’m guessing the focus on Graham will be on his on-the-field success. Not his integriy, discipline and intangibles.

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I’m kind of stealing that from Michael. It looks like it is all over but the official announcement.

Todd Graham appears to be the new head coach at Pitt. Reportedly a 5-year contract at about $2 million/year.  It may have taken the AD’s neck on the chopping block, and an unbelievable catastrophe for the first hire; but Pitt pried open the checkbook to pay market rates.

At this point, I think most are just relieved to have the search done. There is going to be a lot of work ahead for Pitt’s athletic department and the new coach and coaching staff.

Graham has to get his staff assembled quickly, while trying to meet and make peace with the players that have to be completely confused at this point. Not sure if there is anyone left to salvage off of the old staff, but if at all possible he should try. At the very least keep Buddy Morris around for this year.

Then it is to see what is left of the recruiting class. It’s a bit of a lost cause, but you have to try.

The athletic department, and I’m not exactly sure what the best way to do this at the moment, really needs to do some major, major ass-kissing and making up to fans, boosters and alum. There was some severe alienation.

Steve Pederson’s status remains in question. People are pissed at him for reasons that at points conflict with the reasons others are pissed at him.

There are people pissed about Dave Wannstedt’s dismissal. People pissed about the first coaching search. About how Pitt appeared to go cheap and conservative in hiring Mike Haywood. About the humiliation stemming from Haywood being arrested. About learning how any and all advice — no matter how important or influential the person — was completely ignored. About all the bad feelings from what Pederson did in his first run as AD. How Tom Bradley didn’t get the job. And you can bet that people will be pissed about how much Pitt paid to get Graham.

Suddenly, the hiring of the coach seems like the easy part.

The buzz on Twitter is growing that Todd Graham is going to leave Tulsa for Pitt. At least from Tulsa media people. Naturally the caveat is that he is reportedly giving Tulsa a chance to offer him  a new deal. Whether that means matching or coming close to Pitt’s offer, or something else is unknown.

For those of you looking to get back to your life, this means at least the Graham side of this could end by today.

Monitoring…

UPDATE (1:02): This article summarizes all that has been floating to this point.

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You can’t be serious. You cannot be serious.

Meanwhile, another coach’s name leaked over the weekend according to several Pitt sources, and it is a coach with Pitt ties who has yet to be mentioned in the search.

Alex Van Pelt was Pitt’s starting quarterback from 1989-92, and according to sources, he is also a candidate to be the Panthers’ next head coach as he talked with members of the search committee last week.

I like Alex Van Pelt. He had the unfortunate luck of having to do too much too soon in Pitt’s offense. Coupled with the loss and turning pro early of a couple quality backs. He sometime gets a bad rap as a pure stat guy in Pitt’s record books.

Having said that…

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Forget the coaching search for a moment. There’s one football game left to be played, and more importantly a contest with the outcome not decided.

After everything, the Pitt Blather Bowl Challenge has only two people capable of winning the whole thing.

Presently leading is N.Caffas with a score of 442. He has Oregon in the BCS Championship with a confidence pick of 8 points. If the Ducks win, he finishes with 450 points and the win.

Only one entry can catch him — in other words picked Auburn and with enough confidence to beat 442 points. Lee in Altoona sits with 430 points, but picked Auburn with a confidence level of 15. An Auburn win would put Lee at 445 points, the win and my tailgating crew would never hear the end of it if this happens.

Needless to say: Go Ducks.

[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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

No talk of football and coaching searches here. If you came for the Compass Bowl chat, go down a post.

Marquette has lost a ton of close games. They’ve also eked out a couple. The Golden Eagles have been a tough team for Pitt, and I don’t expect this one to be any different.

As usual, it’s a moderated chat. Let’s keep it sane.

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I’ve paid zilch attention to this in the last week. Barely skimmed some of the dispatches. Didn’t want it to be like this. Didn’t expect it to. I can only hope that somehow the kids care and put more effort forth than I have.

It’s a nooner (of course it is) on ESPN. Joining me in running the liveblog is longtime commenter and liveblog participant, Maz. I will be with you until 2pm, when I have to switch to the Marquette-Pitt basketball liveblog.

We will try to discuss the game, though, I’m sure there will be some talk of the coaching mess at the moment.

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In case you didn’t realize it — and given the distraction — that is understandable, there is Pitt’s bowl game at noon down in Birmingham against Kentucky, with an overlapping game at the Pete at 2pm with Marquette.

I’m not sure it is a good idea or practical to have just one liveblog with the two games overlapping. That would get real messy.

I would simply set up 2 different liveblogs with Luke running one and I would handle the other. Unfortunately, this is one of the few days Luke is unavailable for liveblog duties.

So this means I am looking to see if there are any volunteers to operate as a producer of the football or basketball liveblog.

I’m thinking that the best approach would be to have one person help on football and one on basketball. I would start on the football and then leave it in the new guy/gal’s hands to finish while I went over to help get the basketball side going.

Here’s a basic outline of what you need to do:

— Have a Cover It Live account.

— Be able to watch a game, comment, and moderate comments as they come in — all at once.

— Moderate means to control the flow. Not all comments need to go through and keep things relatively calm and not a shouting match.

So, if you are interested. Shoot me an e-mail at PittBlather-at-gmail-dot-com with an explanation as to why you would be the good fit.

Thanks. I’ll respond to all inquiries later this evening.