(to follow on from this article’s Part 1.  If you haven’t read that please do so now and this piece will make more sense.)

I did grab James Conner after a while and had a nice talk with him.  I started out by asking him if he was going to let any of the other running backs get carries this season and he said “I hope so, they are real good”.  But what I really stopped him for was to let him know I just had a long conversation with his ‘step’ father Mike Gallagher and it was so obvious that Mike was proud of everything Conner has done since he was a kid.

There really was more to the conversation with Mike Gallagher, who has a strange back story himself, than just his pride in his surrogate son.  Mike is dealing with a serious case of diabetes and will need a kidney transplant sooner than later. I mentioned to him that I was all set for surgery last year for transplanting my kidney to my next door neighbor friend.  That conversation between Mike and I happened at around 9:30 am.

When I got home from Pittsburgh I found out that a kidney had become available for my friend and the hospital’s transplant team called him to tell him at 9:30 – the same time Mike and I were talking about it.  That surgery went well and my friend’s on his way to normal times.

Life is surely inexplicable sometimes, isn’t it?  I mention all that because I told Conner that his work with the kidney foundation is going to pay off big time soon.  I think Conner had expected another stock interview and was pretty happy to have an honest man to man conversation instead.  He’s lost weigh and looks fantastic.

Another point on Conner…the talk is that we will see less carries from him to keep him fresh for the latter stages of the game.  That is also the reason for slimming down also along with a gain in speed.  I mentioned to a staff member that I can remember only one time in two years where Conner was tackled from behind once past the LOS.

I’m wary of the new approach with him but think it makes some sense also. But why screw around with a wonderful thing if it works so well.  In addition I think our RBs James, Ollison and Hall are too good not to see the field more.  All the kids I spoke with were very polite of course, but Conner is the real deal and looks you straight in the eye when you’re talking which means a lot to me.

Some other observations:  It looks like Orndoff is the only player without visible tattoos; 14 guys on the OL started out the morning wearing knee braces and Jared Jones-Smith was there right after his surgery, hence all the braces I’m sure.  Scarpinato looks much smaller than I expected; Grigsby cramped up soon after the exercises and was worked on by a trainer; the whole team gets together and splits for drill competition and it gets rowdy and very loud.

Dewayne Hendrix is huge, bigger than his official listing, and if he’s as good as advertised he’ll be a real force next season; Allen Edwards is smaller than I thought and Shane Roy needs to gain weight; during the afternoon photo shoot you could walk around and eavesdrop on the kids talking trash to one another which was a lesson in insultsmanship.  Ribbing only though, nothing like I heard the spring  a few years ago when Shell was on a sit-down strike during the practices… that was some serious OL criticism.

One fun moment to watch was during the morning drills when Narduzzi walked out and called the team around him, some players sauntered over to the mass huddle and Narduzzi starter screaming “YOU WANT TO WALK AROUND? YOU WANT TO WALK AROUND? IF YOU WANT TO WALK AROUND THEN JUST WALK OFF THE FIELD!!!!”

You are not allowed to walk here!

No real anger behind it but a forceful reminded of what was expected.

When we had a big period of down time earlier in the day I struck up conversations with the staffers who are mostly behind the scenes at these things.  I had a nice talk with Emil Boures who is a Recruiting Assistant and Tim Dunlavey, an Athletic Trainer, who was getting the post-practice therapies ready.  We use two big freezers of bagged ice a day during camps.

Ice tub baths for post-game relief

David Blaker is the overall Director of video services and is very busy with the emphasis on using telestrators and copious amounts of video broken down for the units and the public.  He came over from Wisconsin and stayed onboard.

Media Coordinator Celeste Welch and I had some business to discuss and she mentioned that media interest is higher this preseason than in the past and then we got into a nice conversation about the changes she and the rest of the staff have seen over the last five years.  BTW I was also told that ticket sales are booming but I always take that with a grain of salt because it’s fans in the seats rather than tickets sold that matters on gameday.

Put it this way, as far as HCs tenures go, this is what almost everyone’s outlook on that time period. ‘Bad; Bad but not so bad; Good and now; Should be real good,’ so there is progress going on.

Everyone I talked with feels that the changes made by Narduzzi and AD Scott Barnes have been genuine and positive and I felt they were not just toeing the party line when discussing the issue.  We also talked about Steve Pederson and as you would expect his staff recognized some good qualities he had and used during his two tours at Pitt.  Overall though the inference was that they were pretty glad to see the back of him.

You all know that I tend to reserve judgment on people and issues until I start to see some tangible results. However, I also have thought that Narduzzi was a good hire and nothing I saw or heard yesterday did anything but bolster that opinion. We’ll see about how good the team is as the season’s weeks unfold but he’s an impressive guy for the most part.

He’ll be good for the players, the program and the university in more ways than just winning football games and for me that’s the thing… but hey, we’ll win some games also.

Here are some additional photos so that you can see what the facilities public rooms look like.

2nd Floor Exterior Lobby

Nine Nat’l Champ Trophies

1st Floor public Entry Lobby

Decades Hall & Long Walk to the Bathroom

Sugar Bowl Ball Display with fake football

Fake 1982 Sugar Bowl Ball