It’s a cute story. And really the Con had nothing to lose by submitting a bid.

Consol Energy Center has put in a bid to play host to the Atlantic Coast Conference men’s basketball tournament, a Penguins official confirmed tonight.

…

The ACC accepts bids for a six-year period and decides which cities will play host to the event in each of those years. The ACC rotates the tournament to different cities. Atlanta played host to the event last year. Washington, D.C., Tampa and Charlotte have played host to the event as well.

Consol Energy Center and Visit Pittsburgh worked together on the bid. Pitt athletic director Steve Pederson said the university was not directly involved in the process, but the Panthers encouraged the Penguins to put in the bid.

To clarify, the Con submitted a bid to host at some point between 2016 and 2021. The bid was not just submitted yesterday, but last month.

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Anyone watch the Rutgers-USF game last night? The chance to watch the USF version of Sunseri in B.J. Daniels? It gave me the chance to feel like others from outside the Pitt fanbase when they watch Sunseri. The befuddlement that he is the starter. The moments where you think you see why he starts, then the sheer boneheadedness of the decisionmaking. The demoralization of the offense. USF, I feel your pain.

On that note, add Bob Smizik to the list wondering aloud if Sunseri might be done after the VT game (added bonus, misspelling Voytik’s name).

Not much to it. It’s one of Smizik’s “…” columns so he devotes very little thought to it. It’s the same chatter we’ve had on this site, and on message boards and the radio. Essentially anywhere there are Pitt fans. That if Chryst wants to make a change for the future — not to mention to try and spark the team — waiting until Gardner-Webb would make more sense. Not throwing out a true freshman in his first start against a top-25 team with a Bud Foster defense.

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At one point I had some measure of respect for Mike Tranghese. No, not as Big East Commissioner. As a shrewd political manipulator. He held the Big East together in 2003 because he terrified the football schools that if they broke away, he wouldn’t be their commissioner and they would lose his personal relationship with all the other BCS commissioners and thus get frozen out of the BCS. For the basketball side, he kept them in line when they were convinced they could survive without the football side.

Then he retired and as the Big East has been raided and re-tooled and jury-rigged to stay together, Tranghese has to keep talking about how he knew all of this was going to happen. That he could see it all coming a mile away. Now he’s saying the same thing about Notre Dame’s departure.

Tranghese said he wasn’t surprised, saying that he told the rest of the league for quite a while that if the Irish could find a conference home, they would leave. The only schools that might be bothered by Notre Dame’s departure are the Big East’s non-football schools, “who enjoyed that rivalry.”

The man has amazing vision, right? Of course, he did nothing about it. Just like he did nothing about Pitt, Syracuse and WVU. At best it means he set his friend John Marinatto up for complete failure.

The likely reality. Tranghese is completely full of crap. He just keeps trying to keep his own image in shape so he can land that next “consulting” gig. I’m sure ECU is trying to reach him right now.