Anyone remember this?

“I don’t understand it,” Jack Swarbrick said as a new round of conference hopping in college athletics moved into high gear Sunday. “How do you vote as a collegiate president on something that has the potential to provide some benefit for your institution and the conference you’re affiliated with but has a very negative consequence for a host of other members of the academy, as presidents like to call it?

“I’d like to know how much of these discussions are: What’s right? What is the best thing for the larger enterprise, and how many other schools would be adversely impacted?

“I just don’t know that that’s happening.”

Yes, the ND AD complaining about the selfish behavior of Pitt and Syracuse moving to the ACC. He and his institution are so far above such crass things. They would never make a move out of no where without giving their present partners a fair notice. Notre Dame’s president put his money-where-Swarbrick’s-mouth was. Why, Rev. Jenkins even headed up the Big East expansion committee. So you know they wouldn’t act against the best interests of the Big East while helping to make big decisions.

Oh, what’s that?

The University of Notre Dame accepted an invitation today (Sept. 12) to become a member of the Atlantic Coast Conference (ACC) in all sports except football.

That exception for football was even in the sub-headline of the press release, “Football to stay independent but will bring five games annually to ACC.”

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In Syracuse, Doug Marrone has a favorite word. That word: tremendous. He will apply it anything. Opportunities, potential of players, a dinner menu, a good pair of khakis, his thighs. Coach Paul Chryst is a man of few words, so it hasn’t been easy to crack the code to this point.

Here at Blather Labs, we have been parsing statements diligently to locate the “Word of Chryst.” This week, our research has yielded a potential hit.

The word appears to be: neat.

The O-line is doing a horrid job blocking? Well, that’s neat.

Pitt quarterback Tino Sunseri was sacked six times against Cincinnati, but coach Paul Chryst did not place all the blame on one player. “Certainly, the offensive line, you have five guys, and their job is to protect,” Chryst said. “We gave up one (sack) where we had both backs in there, and they both could have taken a hit off the quarterback. The quarterback has to get the ball out of his hands, and that means the receivers have to be precise in their routes. That’s one of the neat things about football. It takes all 11 guys, and that is a great example of it.”

How about the fact that the D-line can’t get any pressure up front? It’s sort of neat.

“One way is adding numbers to create pressure. Right now, it’s kind of neat that each week each team presents a little bit different challenge and you want to make sure you’re being smart with how you approach it,” Chryst said. “Certainly we pressured more in the Cincinnati game than we did the week before. We’re certainly looking at all different options and figuring out what’s best for Virginia Tech.”

Neat may not be the way you or I would describe disasters, but for Coach Chryst it’s all just a puzzle to solve.

Keep your eyes out for more examples of “neat” from Coach Chryst. Along with nifty, swell and even: keen.

Well, it could be worse. At least Pitt isn’t involved in an ongoing academic scandal that could impact its basketball and football program. Oh, and now losing a top fundraiser because he started taking trips with the mother of a former basketball star of the school on said school’s dime. Yeesh.

The new depth chart for the VT game is out, and there are a few changes (PDF, page 3). No, not to the QB. Going to have to let that one go for another week, people.

Bryan Murphy will start at DE on the other side of T.J. Clemmings. Jack Lippert will now back-up Clemmings and redshirt freshman Devin Cook will be behind Murphy. Shayne Hale has dropped off the two-deep. Jarred Holley is back as the only starter but at strong safety. Ostensibly he shared the starting free safety spot with Andrew Taglianetti in the first two games, but he was out on the field for the entire Cinci game. Jason Hendricks has moved in front of Ray Vinopal (who simply hasn’t looked good in the games) to be the starter at the free safety. (Honestly, I don’t know if that was some sort of typo in the 2-deep with regards to free and strong safety listings.)

Ronald Jones dropped off the two-deep at WR, with Josh Brinson in his place. And that is the extent of any changes to the 2-deep.

Don’t think the defense hasn’t been really bad so far? In two games this is what the defense has done:

• 65 points allowed
• 8-8 on scoring opportunities in the red zone
• 845 yards in total offense
• 382 passing yards
• 463 rushing yards
• 1 sack
• 0 interceptions
• 0 fumbles

Pathetic only begins to describe the defense’s performance to date. No pressure up front. No contain in the middle. No coverage behind. Waiting for the blame to fall on Sunseri for this as well in 3… 2… 1…

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Stress does funny things to people. This Pitt season has already added plenty of it to what has built up over the last couple of years. I’m seeing it showing up in the comments in various ways.

So, I think some reminders about how things work are in order.

There is no formal registration to comment on this blog at this point. I don’t do it, mainly because I don’t like to bother when I go to other sites. Also, because I don’t want the added responsibility of safeguarding other people’s personal information. The reality is that the site is getting bigger and more popular so eventually I probably will have to.

In the meantime, there is still something of a controlled honor system.

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Pitt has a ton of problems. And, yes, I have posted for a couple straight days with attention to the coaching staff. There’s a reason for that.

The deficiencies and strengths on this team — regarding the players/talent/depth — were mostly known coming into the season. The unknown was how the coaching staff would use them. How they would coach and prepare them.

So far, it has not been pretty. There’s no way to pretend otherwise. Yes, the coaching chaos the last two years have taken a toll. Almost certainly it has had an effect on the team psyche. Yes it has impacted the overall talent on the squad. Yes, there are injuries — especially to the linebackers. Yes, there has been a bit of overestimating the overall talent on this squad.

None of that is sufficient to explain the performance of this team in the first two games. Losing by 14 — and never even leading — to YSU. Not being competitive in the Cinci game. Sorry. This team should not be this bad.

Coach Chryst will and should have the time to set up this program his way. He’s also a first-time head coach, learning and making mistakes. We wish otherwise, but the on-the-field performance and the way the team has started in the first two games demonstrate that right now he is finding 0ut how steep the learning curve can be in moving from coordinator to head coach.

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Ahhhh. The one silver lining to Pitt’s Thursday night game. Sitting back all day with some nice beer and watching college football until my eyes bleed. No stress over what Pitt will do. Able to take breaks as needed. Fall asleep on the couch for stretches. Appreciating the misery of other teams losing. I’m looking at you Miami, Iowa, Colorado… and yes, Penn State.

One of the games I took a particular interest in was the Wisconsin-Oregon State game. Probably as much as Pitt Coach Paul Chryst took in the game given his mentor and place where he got his start at the 1-A level versus his alma mater and place that made him a reasonably hot head coaching candidate.

A chance to see what the program looks like without Paul Chryst directing the offense. And perhaps to get a glimpse of what we hope to see Pitt become. Instead, it led to some other questions and a bit of speculation.

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So much for that August optimism. You know, when we thought the overall talent wasn’t too bad and that Coach Paul Chryst would coach this team up. Because that is what Chryst is. A coach. A football coach. A football coach’s coach.

It’s hard not to feel a wee bit of annoyance over the performance of the team in the first two games.

Tino Sunseri will come in for the bulk of the criticism as far as play. And there is no doubt he wasn’t good last night, along with the typical brain farts in the red zone that we all expect at this point. Two plus years and nothing appears to have changed with him.

Yet, he isn’t the biggest problem on this team.  Almost all of the problems start on the side of the ball that was expected — that was needed — to be a strength. The defense.

They were completely unprepared at the start of both games. Once more they couldn’t stop the run. They couldn’t get any pressure up front. They couldn’t get off the field. They struggled to cover. They continually looked a step slower. It’s not all because the linebacking corp is without Thomas and Price.

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Well, let’s give this a try.

It’s an 8pm Thursday night game on ESPN. I am going with the Stone 16th Anniversary for tonight. Please. Please. Please let the association with this game be a positive one.

It it even comes close to this kind of happy memory of the last game Pitt played at Nippert, I’ll be thrilled.

It’s a new liveblog system. A new trial. Hopefully this works. It seems fairly straight forward.

Time to go over the rules.

It’s a moderated chat. Not every comment gets through. The abusive, the stupid and the repetitive tend not to be posted — unless I just feel like using it to mock you. Given the time from the last liveblog, and a new system it will take a bit of time before I start unmoderating trusted people. Bare with me.

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Big East Play gets an early start this season as Pitt takes on Cincinnati for final ownership of the River City Rivalry Trophy.  Here’s a half-assed preview of Thursday’s game:

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Plus one injury.

To the surprise of, really no one, Coach Paul Chryst has lifted the suspensions of Tyrone Ezell, Shayne Hale, Rushel Shell, Ronald Jones, Chris Davis and Anthony Gonzalez. All six were already permitted to practice with the team this week. Not to mention being listed on the two-deep for the Cinci game.  So it mostly felt like a formality to make it official. That or Coach Chryst feels like this is some sort of tactical advantage to keep opposing teams unsure who will play — like his non-injury reports.

Anthony Gonzalez and Chris Davis did not make the travel team roster, however. If you are scoring at home, along with yet another position change, this is two straight seasons Gonzalez has put himself in a coach’s doghouse despite his athletic ability and potential. At this rate the only question with Gonzalez will be whether years later only Gonzalez looks back at his time with Pitt and think, “if only…” or will Pitt fans as well.

T.J. Clemmings who missed the YSU game with an undisclosed injury will also be back.

The D-line will have less of an excuse for this game with one starter and two more more back-ups available. Whether they can handle Cinci’s O-line and a mobile QB is still a big unknown.

Okay, just to get this out of the way, there will be an attempt at a liveblog tomorrow evening. I say attempt, because the system has changed. For the past several years, I have used Cover-it-Live for liveblogs. This spring, CiL moved to a pay system. And boy do they want you to pay. If I have the numbers roughed out, it would cost somewhere north of $750 a year to run it with the present readership.

So, I’m going to give a new service a go, called Cbox. I’ll have it posted tomorrow afternoon.

I keep telling myself there is no time to dwell on the YSU game, then I start thinking about how slow the team looked on Saturday. I hope the slowness is because the players were hesitating. Still getting acclimated to the new system, the verbiage, their assignments, etc. Coach Chryst is all about the hesitancy view.

On the major issues he saw with the defensive performance Saturday night:

“I thought tackling. We tackled quite a bit in fall camp and I thought guys played a little bit hesitant. Also I really do think Youngstown State executed their offense pretty well. Their running back, I loved how he runs and knew that on film. I think the tackling…we had some opportunities that could have changed the sticks. Not hitting clean and one pressure, we don’t impact that, so there are certain areas. That’s the great thing, it really was, that at the end of that game we all could take ownership in it (the loss) and that there are areas we all can get better at. That’s good, that’s tangible, it’s on film. This is something we can do better at here. You hope to make the most improvement from game one to two and we certainly need to. There are things that we can focus on.”

Yes, and the tackling. I kept muttering, “Tackle, don’t hit,” during the game that I started having Paul Rhoads flashbacks. Apparently that is now part of the “back to basics” of practice this week.

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Finally. Finally. Finally.

As expected, the press release wants to emphasize the Big East portion of the schedule. Especially to sell season tickets. The Pre-Season NIT Kickoff thing, is going to be where Pitt will sink or swim with RPI.

As we all knew, the home non-con slate is horrid. The best Pitt could land to replace what it had assumed was a SEC team was Detroit on December 1. The season opener is November 9 with Mount St. Mary’s. Then Pitt jumps right into the Pre-Season NIT with Lehigh, Robert Morris and/or Fordham in the next two games.

The Big East schedule is going to be heavily nationally televised. Fourteen of the first fifteen Big East games are going to be televised on ESPN channels (real ones, not ESPN3) and CBS. Only a home game with DePaul gets excluded from TV for the first 15 Big East games. The remaining 3 Big East games will be on ESPN3 or the syndicated Big East Network.

But that non-con. Ugh. Howard, North Florida, Kennesaw St., Delaware St., Bethune-Cookman, Oakland are on the home slate. It’s not pretty for November and December.

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Is the negative experience of Saturday night starting to dissipate yet?  No? Well tomorrow’s another day as they say in show business and they also say the show must go on.  So even if we’d prefer the 2012 season to end right now as some PITT fans might, there will be more games.  Its not me threatening you with this – blame Steve Pederson.

Tomorrow night PITT goes into Cincinnati coming off what can easily be termed the worst pure loss in its history because of the conference level of the YSU team being D-II quality.  I say ‘pure loss’ because the 48-14 loss to Penn State when we had a shot at the NC game and the more recent come from behind loss to Cincy with a Big East championship BCS game on the line affected PITT’s season’s standings more than this YSU loss can.  In reality the YSU loss means nothing in relation to the BE conference play.  Psychologically though it was devastating.

So, the first and foremost thing PITT fans will want to see is how we’ll bounce back from something like that.  I’m not calling for a win, you may have to be insane to do that, but I believe we’ll acquit ourselves better than we did last week.  Put it this way, as disappointed as I was in the last game’s result I wasn’t shocked as I talked about it before the kickoff.  Just as with that, I won’t be shocked if PITT wins tomorrow night either.  I’d just never bet on it or publicly predict it.

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Oh, come on. First it was the Pre-season NIT. But that finally seems resolved.

According to a source with direct knowledge, the four pods will look like this for the 16-team even that will end with semifinals and finals in New York over Thanksgiving: Host – Kansas State (North Texas, Lamar, D-2 TBD); Host — Pitt (Fordham, Robert Morris, Lehigh); Host — Michigan (Bowling Green, Cleveland State, IUPUI); Host — Virginia (Penn, Fairfield, Delaware). Michigan and Virginia should be the two locks to get to New York based on the pods. Pitt will have a legitimately tall task getting past Lehigh, but should prevail at home…

[Emphasis added].

That should mean Pitt could finally release the schedule for the basketball team. Wait. Now it’s the Big East?

The Big East has sent its conference schedule twice to the conference teams. The league office has run into one issue that has slowed up the full release of the schedule. The 15 Big East schools have seen the schedule, but can’t put it out until this “issue” — likely with a game or site — is cleared up.

There’s going to be a lot of rush orders sent to printers in the Big East this month.

UPDATE (9:18): And just like that, the Big East tweets that the conference schedule will be posted at noon.

It’s very late on this, so I’ll just link and dash off a little on each. There isn’t much in the national media on this game, other than “holy crap the ticker wasn’t in error, Pitt lost to YSU!” Since no one really paid attention to the game as it was spiraling out of control.

Gene Collier sort-of looks on the bright side since it is likely it can only get better for Pitt after starting the season in a dumpster.

Dejan Kovacevic is all about how Chryst has a lot of work to do in a short week. Terrifying how many things appear to be wrong with the team.

Failing to get a sack, never leading in the game, a team that looked slower than a 1-AA team, an O-line that couldn’t open holes inside. Yeah, a lot of problems.

Andrew Taglianetti is going with the “wake-up call” cliche. Funny, you would have thought the call would have been received by halftime. But maybe its like the names on the back of jerseys situation, it’s not that the “wake-up call” was not received earlier. Rather that the call was never actually made.

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