In case anyone thought I was just making stuff up regarding Pitt getting sent to the BBVA Bowl in Birmingham, solely for TV. There is this bit of information.
…the BBVA Compass Bowl pitting 6-6 Pitt against 6-6 SMU. That last one’s particularly interesting because, according to multiple sources, the Birmingham game didn’t want the Panthers back for a second straight year, and Pitt was so opposed to the idea it threatened to boycott. Seriously.
So how did that matchup still end up happening? One word: ESPN. Its subsidiary, ESPN Regional, owns six of those low-rung bowls, including the Beef ‘O’ Brady’s and BBVA Compass games. And lest anyone tell you otherwise, head honcho Pete Derzis ultimately decides who plays where. He’s the reason Marshall is playing in St. Pete instead of Pittsburgh and why SMU is in Birmingham instead of … somewhere else.
The bowls are purportedly for the “student-athletes,” and arguably they still are in places like Pasadena and Orlando. In Birmingham or St. Petersburg, however, they’re for three hours of television programming, and the teams are ancillary figures.
And as Zeise noted, it is not like the Big East was going to do anything to help Pitt.
The bottom line is Pitt was trying to work something out with the Beef O Brady’s Bowl but the Big East made it pretty clear that they weren’t going to help Pitt’s cause and they basically told Pitt it was headed to the BBVA Compass Bowl because that bowl needed someone who might actually attract a television audience. (Believe it or not, Pitt might not be good at selling tickets, but people will watch the Panthers on TV which makes them attractice to a bowl like this, which exists almost exclusively as cheap programming for ESPN.
That’s part of why Pitt kept ending up on weeknight ESPN showings. We like sitting in our couches — not burning them.
That’s 8-4.
Pitt plays better down the stretch and takes out Cincy (remember, the Panthers were only a missed FG away from tying it up). Tino went int he tank in the 4th again this game after the team fought back in the first 3 quarters to have a 10 pt lead.
That’s 9-3.
The Iowa game. The defense is partially to blame. They were just getting used to Graham’s style and weren’t conditioned for it yet, but if Tino could’ve put just one more score of any type on the board in the 4th guess what?
… 10-2.
The defense held Notre Dame in check all game, but Pitt’s offense couldn’t do anything against the Irish defense. If Pitt has a competent QB who can put up just an average amount of points (17-21)… 11-1.
And let’s stretch it even further. For most of the game against Buttgers it was a tight one. Pitt’s inability to do ANYTHING on offense repeatedly gave Buttgers the ball with prime field position and eventually they were able to start cashing in on it. But let’s say that the QB is merely above average (we still had a healthy Ray Graham btw)…
That’s 12-0. That’s an undefeated season. That’s us bitching about Alabama getting into the BCS title game instead of the Panthers!
I know, I know, some of that was a little delusional. EVERY team can point to close games and turning points.
But realistically, with better quarterback play, Pitt could have easily won 9 games, if not 10, even 11 with a little luck!
Ok, I’m making myself mad here…
Side note: HbgFrank, the unis in that video that you linked to were all that in a bag of Chips Ahoy my friend! I liked them all except the black and gold ones (those belong on the Steelers). But the other 3 looked great!! I actually dug the all whites as a third jersey a lot.
Wannstedt, who was fired last year after six seasons at Pitt, said he doesn’t know what Tino Sunseri will do.
“It doesn’t sound like the school or the football program is giving him many options, to be quite honest with you,” he said.
What in hell is he talking about? How in the world is “the school”, meaning the University, not give Sunseri options? They aren’t going to pull his scholarship… if anyone would do that it would be the HC as Sunseri is a rsJR and has had his four years at PITT.
And where was all this righteous indignation when Bill Stull was taking the heat from everyone, including DW, for that poor junior year of his. There was more venom pointed at Stull after the 2008 season and the Sun Bowl than Sunseri is getting now and I don’t remember anyone calling for him to transfer.
And what is painfully obvious is that the same fans who want to tar and feather Graham for not playing anyone but Sunseri (which isn’t true in fact) can’t seem to remember that Wannstedt did the same things in spades when he was the HC here. Oh, and Wannstedt forgot to mention that when he was having phone sex with the Trib reporter during this interview.
The bottom line here is that DW, mistakenly, thought that denigrating Graham’s work this season would somehow make his tenure look better.
Well, DW went 7-5 during the regular season last year, one single game better than Graham, and he did it with eight guys who are now on NFL rosters, with a healthy stable of RBs in Lewis & Graham and a healthy and experienced OL.
That 2010 season was the poorest coaching job I have seen in college football in years yet DW seems to want to compare Graham’s first year to that.
God, Wannstedt is a piece of work. Graham’s propensity to tell the truth pales in comparison to DW’s self centered attitude and actions after his “resignation”.
Damn, DW is puffing his chest out about the ‘co-championship’ last Season? OK, Quick – someone ask him why ‘his’ players quit during the WVU game last season. A game, in fact, that had we won we would have landed in a BCS bowl. His players turned thier back on his for all intents and purposes in that game. That was a national embarrassment and was commented on not just during the game broadcast nationally on sports center afterward.
Yet, he has the gall to sit back, point fingers and say that this season was a disappointment…
Someone send Reed’s post to the Trib and DW.
If Coach Dave is so high on Tino, convince your Buffalo staff to contact him and draft him. He is NFL Draft eligible. He could sign with an agent and end all this speculation about next yr.
I refuse to go look up the numbers again, but, in short, here is my same spiel……….
He sucked in Chicago.
He sucked in Miami. (including quitting in the middle of the season when his team was 0-8)
He was mediocre, at best, at Pitt.
6 years. Winning percentage 57%.
6 years. No BCS bowls.
6 years One top 25 ranking.
6 years One signature win. 13-9
6 years Many signature losses.
Someone above said patience. I have to laugh.
You’re gonna jump on Todd Graham before his first season is even completed, yet, Wannstedt should have been shown more patience after 6 years??? That is an assinine comment.
It’s embarrassing, to Pitt fans, the university and should be embarrassing to the peron that is saying it.
You tied with two other teams, one who beat you, and one that pulverized you on your home field.
Stop with that non-sense, it makes everyone cringe!!!
My only problem is with people saying (he needs canned), that’s all.
As for day to day, and game to game stuff, absolutely, he’s open to some criticism.
Along with your overall point, I had a wtf moment with him, when you made 9 yards on two plays with Gonzo, and on 3rd down you bring Tino in????
I think a lot of us did!!
It’s actually kind of odd when you think about it. He’s bashed him several times, it’s obvious he doesn’t think he can run his offense, yet he didn’t put anyone else in?? That is perplexing.
Even if you “don’t have anyone else”, you have two back ups, two players who were qb’s in high school.
Your point is well taken.
I don’t think TG was happy with Sunseri’s performance as the season progressed simply because he never really got any better in his execution, TG then started to show his impatience with Sunseri late into the season. I disagree with DW’s statement however that TG “threw him under the bus”.
Come to think of it TG might have wanted to do that but was reluctant to do so, because of course we’re talking about Tino here!!! and the attempt to “THROW” Tino under the bus would probably have fallen “INCOMPLETE”. Sometimes I even make myself giggle.
You have a hot shot qb coming in, you have time to look around for any qb transferring, any JUCO qb’s………
You have extra bowl time practice and spring ball if you want to experiment with Gonzales or even Jones.
I don’t want to hear any of this “Tino gives us the best chance to win” coming out of spring ball.
If I hear that, I may no longer have the coaches back.
I don’t think that will happen, doesn’t seem likely anyhow.
I will not go through another year with Tino at QB, and I will not be a happy Pitt fan, if the coach comes out in April and tells me (us) that Tino is “certainly in the mix”.
No one can convince me we wouldn’t have won at least two more games going that route…and been in the battle for the BCS bid or at least a much more prestigious bowl…and more importantly, a more fitting reward for the seniors who’ve busted a gut all four years despite some shaky-#ss coaching.
I feel real sorry for guys like Caragein, Nix, Holley, Gruder, etc. All damn good players and they deserved so much better than they got.
So Coach Graham gets criticized for being too “hard” on Tino for saying Tino was average which he was. And he also gets criticized for playing Tino too much. And he also gets involved in some Tino-Sal conspiracy theory.
Seriously, if Coach Graham believed that anyone else on the offense could have been QB then he would have played him. Coach Graham is clearly not a fan of Tino. I was at the Cuse game and saw Coach Graham just yell at Tino after that horrible play in which Tino took a 10 yard loss instead of throwing the ball away. Coach Graham is trying desperately to play anyone but Tino next year at QB, which is why you see him now open to transfers and JuCos.
In regards to Meyers, anyone who has watched Pitt practice and has covered the team has said that Meyers has not been ready to run the offense. Plus, Meyers parents have been telling people for weeks that he is planning on transferring. Not sure what you gain by playing someone who is transferring anyways.
In regards to running a wildcat offense, I don’t think it would have worked with Brown as the main RB in the offense. Here are examples in which I can think of the wildcat actually working: Shady at Pitt, Ronnie Brown with the Dophins and Darren McFadden at Arkansas. Neither Gonzalez or Jones has a good enough arm to be QB for an entire game.
And let’s not forget the monumental choke job against cinci in 2009. A game that was being played at home in front of a sold out stadium and partisan Pitt crowd, against Cincifuckingnati for the Big East championship and BCS bowl berth. A game that saw the great defensive geru’s defense shredded like cheese in food processor. I don’t think cincinnati’s offense even broke a sweat in the second half of that game.
That game and last years WVU debacle are what turned me against Wannstedt. Choking at home against Cincinnati is bad, but quitting at home against WVU is simply unacceptable.
This didn’t happen. Don’t blame Tino for the starter. Blame Graham and Wanny.
I feel bad for Tino because unless Dayne Chirst or a Juco is brought in, he will be the man again. Chad Voytik is small and I have a feeling he could be the second coming of Trey Anderson.
Ex: Graham said Greg Williams was a smartass at first and he worked his way into the lineup consistently.
San Diego St wants to join Big East, lose to the third place team of the Sun Belt conference, you’ll fit in nicely. LOL
Illinois-UCLA, two teams with interim coaches, meeting at a baseball field, on New Years Eve, with one team losing it’s last 6 in a row, and another having just been beaten 50-0 by it’s arch-rival!!! LOL
Hey, ya gotta laugh and roll with it!!!! LOL
Of course, and not even worth discussing, we all want somebody like Luck or Griffith, but you do the best you can with what you have…and many feel Tino isn’t that…but if you dug 6 horrific losses and still didn’t want to make adjustments, hope you enjoyed the season alot.
And Jones’ arm looked plenty fine to me.
But the facts are that Myers checked himself out of the bulk of spring practices and never has, even to now, learned the offense well enough for him to be put in to try to execute it on the field. In addition to his not understanding where the offensive personnel are to be on each play Myers also throws a lot of INTs in practice because of this and Graham abhors turnovers.
Gonzalez’s case is two-fold. That arrest and subsequent suspension took him out of the QB race for the first two games. Myers was practicing in the #2 spot at the beginning of camp then the staff went out and got Anderson, moved Gonzalez to 3-back, and he stayed there. Both Sunseri and Anderson played well in the summer camp and they had Myers at 3rd string so moved Gonzalez to h-back.
Graham won’t run Gonzalez as anything but a running threat out of the Wildcat, with the exception of a surprise pass or two like we saw Jones do, because Gonzalez just can’t pass at this level of play. He has the worse arm of all the QBs on the roster.
The bottom line with running more of the Wildcat at PITT this season is that you limit yourself to one action with the ball and that is rushing it. If you spent a whole season giving Gonzalez Wildcat snaps every opposing defense would stack the box even worse than they do with Sunseri.
Sad enough to say but Sunseri actually was the ‘best option to win’ this year. Now, with hindsight Graham and Magee could have and probably should have run more of the Wildcat.
But again, Graham was intent on getting as much of his base offense instituted as possible this season in readiness for 2012 and that’s why I think he stuck with the more conventional offensive sets this season.
But if you remember I said in the beginning of the year that should Sunseri get injured or falter then Anderson would play first and then Graham would bring Gonzalez back from another position to play QB before Myers saw the field for any length of time… and that happened. That’s because I knew Myers wasn’t at all ready to play QB out there and that’s why the staff only developed singular ‘packages’ for Myers where he had only one target on the play with no decision making whatsoever, like we saw with that endzone pass he attempted.
He came in and said this team is capable of winning a championship and based on exponentially more knowledge than anyone on this board he chose Tino as the QB that gave him the best chance to accomplish that goal. Well guess what… he came within 3-4 plays and/or one injury (Graham) from winning the Big East. He didn’t get completely embarassed on national TV TWICE and lose to a not so good UConn team with 5 years worth of his recruits.
I just don’t see how this is a complete failure or a lost season. It’s not like he inherited a roster full of top 10 talent. He took over a team that proved to be not very good at what they were recruited to do (play pro style offense), which lost their best RB, WR, O Lineman and D Linemen and which was nearly completely void of any game breaking/changing talent at what are three key positions in his systems (QB, WR, LB). Oh yeah, and the roster was pretty much a complete mismatch for what he wanted to do. All things considered I’m really not sure how much people were expecting.
Tino was the best at running his offense, plain and simple. No conspiracy theory, no being afraid of looking bad, etc. Would it surprise any of you that Tino’s stats are nearly identical to his 2010 stats?? He did try to change and adapt his offense. At his other coaching stops teams seemed to pick up his offense after 5 or 6 games. I think he believed this would be the case at Pitt and they would be ready for BE play. When he saw they weren’t getting it and O-Linemen started dropping like flies, he dumbed down and slowed down the offense.
Some of you would argue he should have changed it more. I would argue that there was clearly no compelling talent at the QB position to warrant scrapping his system in lieu of something else. Maybe winning one more game this season simply is not worth the lost time in learning and installing what would ultimately be the offensive system at Pitt under TG.
I understand it’s a national embarassment to some to run Trey Anderson out there, but if it supports your arguement, it makes perfect sense to run true freshman 5’8″ 165 pound Ronald Jones (with no other BCS offers) from the Wildcat 30 snaps a game. OK…
Tino > Wanny > Graham > Sal Sunseri > Peterson/Nordenberg