Ugh. One of those days where there was too much to do and not enough time. Add in the Coaching Carousel craziness and keeping an eye out for the next disaster and it has been a day.

So the City Game tonight should be a welcome distraction. Even if I’ve done zilch to talk about it.

Gametime is 7pm at the Con. Being shown on ESPN3.com.

We’ll see how the front court does tonight. We all know a zone is coming. Will it take them nearly a half to adjust or will they bust it right away?

We know Pitt fans weren’t the only ones stunned and spooked by Fraud Graham’s run to Tempe last December. The Pitt administration also did not like it. So, one way to slow the chances of a quick exit: a sizable buyout.

Via Greg Giannotti of 93.7 The Fan:

If Wisconsin wants to buyout the contract I’m told it would cost them 6 million dollars – the same for every other school.

— Gregg Giannotti (@937Giannotti) December 5, 2012

That’s a sizable number if true. It also is totally believable that it would be that high in the wake of 2011, but we don’t know for sure. A buyout that shrinks each year is not uncommon. The question is whether it really starts at that number.

Wisconsin obviously has money. More than Pitt in terms of access to funds. Yet, that might be a bit too much to swallow. Plus it is unlikely that Wisconsin would be offering Chryst so much more money than Pitt that Chryst would be paying the buyout from his own pocket.

One more piece of the intrigue.

In times like this, people choose different ways to cope. Some fly into rage. Others anguish and self-pity. Others find refuge in sarcasm, cynicism and bitterness. There’s always drugs and alcohol. Still others find refuge in detaching themselves from the emotions and treating it like watching an ant farm. Some combination is always recommended.

I’m opting for the drunken robot.

It is unlikely anything will be resolved tonight or even tomorrow. It is likely this will take several days to play itself out.

As such, it is important to take a look at some of the key players in how this drama will play out, and the forces at work.

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Coach Paul Chryst via the Pitt website:

“I understand the speculation surrounding my name given today’s developments. I am committed to the Pitt football program and the University of Pittsburgh. I am focusing all my time and energy on our team’s bowl game preparation and recruiting a great group of young men to join our program and this outstanding university. We are working hard every day to re-establish this program and I am excited about the future of Pitt football.”

So that is positive. Good to see Chryst and the Pitt Athletic Department realize that they had to say something.

That said, plenty of wiggle room and I won’t be exhaling completely until Wisconsin hires someone else.

So,  my daughter wasn’t feeling well. Hanging out in the doctor’s waiting room after school. Checking the twitter feed. Amused at all the rumors of Mike Gundy possibly going to Arkansas rumors. Making jokes about Todd Graham and the SEC open coaching positions.

All was well until it turned out that Arkansas had managed to snag Bret Bielema from Wisconsin. Suddenly the bleep got real.

If there was one job every Pitt fan knew Paul Chryst would be likely to leave Pitt, it would be Wisconsin. His alma mater. He grew up there. His family really is from there and still lives there. He still has a great relationship with the Wisconsin athletic director. Honestly it would be the one job I could understand him leaving Pitt to take that would be mostly without much rancor from myself and most Pitt fans.

I– I just didn’t think the possibility would be after only one year.

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Let me state how much I don’t believe this. That by even posting this, I am probably just trolling for hits on the site.

But what the hell.

Former Pitt Middle Linebacker Scott McKillop just put this out on Twitter. Take it for what it’s worth.

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“It will feel good to run out of that tunnel one more time before I take my talents to the next level,” [Ray] Graham said.

“Any bowl, except Birmingham (Compass Bowl),” he added with a laugh. “Three times in a row. I think they may not even allow us in there. Wherever we go, we are going to make the best of that bowl game and have fun. Another win will help solidify the season.”

We all hoped, any place but Birmingham.

So, in the end it comes back to Birmingham. All those hopes for a New York Brawl. Or even a trip to a bowl named for a chain that is a poor-man’s Applebees. Gone. Dashed against the forces of a 6-6 record, and the fervent desire of everyone else to avoid the BBVA Compass Bowl as well.

I get it. All who point out the obvious. That if Pitt didn’t want to go to a third straight trip to Birmingham, then they should have showed up for the first three quarters of the UConn game. Or the first quarter of the Syracuse game. Or finished the job against Notre Dame. There is no question that this team had opportunities. Couple that with the Big East bowl tie-ins, and it is really easy to say Pitt got what they deserved.

Except that it is three bleeping times to the same crappy bowl. And lest anyone forget, Pitt got bumped way down to the BBVA in 2010. They finished 7-5 and 5-2 in conference. Not great, given the expectations, but consider that USF and Louisville finished worse. Cuse had the same record overall, but lost to Pitt. Last year, attempts to evade the BBVA were thwarted by a pissed off Big East because Pitt was heading to the ACC (not an issue as much this year since only Cinci will still be in the Big East by 2014). So, at some point there has to be a balancing out of things. Right?

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Curse the fates that have two games at the same time. No way to avoid the basketball score, even if I stayed off the net. Our TV is a projector so the painter tape over the portion of the screen that is the ticker on ESPN trick, just won’t work.

Big game for Pitt as it is the difference between bowl eligibility and the ignominy of not even managing a 6-6 record. To say nothing of only managing 2 conference wins in the final go-round.

The options are either the Pinstripe or Beef bowl if Pitt wins. The Beef O’Brady Bowl just announced that incoming Big East team — but presently a C-USA refugee — Central Florida will be the C-USA rep. Pitt, as you may remember, had to cancel their home game with UCF for this year when the Big East thought TCU was joining. That led to the need to schedule Gardner-Webb at the last minute. So there could be a whole logic to it all.

There’s just no way to avoid one game or the other. Well, I could watch the basketball game and not check e-mail, twitter, texts and everything else for the roughly two hours. But that just isn’t realistic.

Detroit is the third team from Michigan that Pitt will play in the first 8 games. The Titans are only 2-3, but it looks like a good 2-3. They lost by only 3 to St. John’s. Miami beat them soundly, but Miami is actually a pretty good team this year. I expect them to give Pitt a game. Especially since Pitt  will be trying to work on getting the ball inside.

Here it comes.  At approximately 10:30 pm EST we PITT fans will experience the long awaited end of  PITT’s  membership in the Big East Conference.  Has it been good for us and vice versa?  Will we miss it? That depends on how you look at things in a historical perspective.

Undoubtedly PITT’s greatest successes on the football field have happened when the program had no conference affiliation at all.  Eight of our nine national championships took place prior to 1939 when there were no formal football conferences as we know them today.  Those championship years, from 1915 (Pop Warner as head coach) to 1939 (Jock Sutherland), are the bedrock of PITT’s football tradition.  Hard enough to believe now but PITT was the standard of football excellence in the first third of the 20^th century.

My father and mother, who were born in 1917 and 1919 respectively, were students at PITT at the end of that championship era.  While I was growing up and attending PITT games I heard countless stories about Sutherland, All-Americans wide receiver Bill Daddio and the great Marshall Goldberg running the ball for scores.  Great for them – they had a reason to brag about PITT football and they did.

It was a golden age for PITT but, as does tend to happen with us, it was also a precursor of hard times for the program.  From 1939 until 1976 PITT had exactly one season with over eight wins.  The hard truth is that most of those years were sub-.500 seasons and from 1966 until 1968 we racked up three 1-9 seasons in a row, and yes, we attended every home game regardless.

Then all of a sudden PITT was thrust back into winning seasons and a national championship year.  Certainly the 1970s and early 1980s built up on that traditional bedrock to return the program back to national rankings.  We all know about how Johnny Majors, Matt Cavanaugh and Tony Dorsett gave us a championship in 1976.  It was a fantastic year and we looked to have a bright football future ahead of us.

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