After you have watched that take a look at this slideshow Pitt put out – you get to see the details of the uniforms up close and personal.

We have been talking a lot on here lately about Pitt’s history when it comes to our football programs and our past teams.  We have certainly climbed to the top of the heap with our 1976 championship, but we also have walked in the Death Valleys of college football.  Nothing every seems to come easy for Pitt when it comes to our football program.

I believe we all know that Pitt claims eight National Championships won prior to the Second World War.  That generates a lot of pride – but what about the details and the ins and outs of Pitt football over the last hundred years or so.  But where can the younger fans, those whose parents may not have drummed Pitt football history into their little heads like the parents of my generation did.

After all, pointing to the 1960s and early ’70s isn’t such a great thing to brag about given we were losing games en masse.  How do these new fans get info – well, from us older guys actually, with some help from the University itself.

Here is a nice website posted two years ago by Pitt to serve just that purpose. Think of it as a portal so that you can start chasing links on a rainy day.

A few weeks ago Rival’s Chris Peak did a podcast where he tried to list his Top 5 Pitt players going into 2016 season.  I say tried because he seemed to falter after #s 1 or 2.  James Conner was one, Jordan Whitehead the other then Chris kind of forgot what he was talking about.

But Mike Wysocki of The City Paper took up the concept but instead moved it to current Pitt players in the NFL.  He starts off with this bit and again this shows why I say he’s my favorite read among PGH area sportswriters…

“Congratulations to the Cincinnati Bengals for drafting University of Pittsburgh wide receiver Tyler Boyd in this past month’s NFL Draft. It’s not often that the Bengals make a good move; the last one was in 1980, when they drafted the franchise’s only Hall of Famer, Anthony Munoz.

So every 36 years the Bengals don’t bungle. All Cincinnati has to look forward to now is the 2052 NFL Draft. (That’s also the year that Donald Trump’s son Barron runs against Hillary Clinton’s granddaughter Charlotte in the presidential election.) The Bengals are so hapless that the word “Bengal” is now a verb. To Bengal means to prematurely celebrate a victory, then make a series of stupid moves to ensure that you lose.“

I disagree strongly with his first six choices and you’ll see why when you read the piece but here are his Top 3 (in ascending order):

3) LeSean McCoy (2009): Shady’s been to four Pro Bowls, led the NFL in rushing and became the Philadelphia Eagles’ all-time leading rusher after just six seasons there. If he gets 1,000 yards this season, he will pass backs like Larry Czonka and Herschel Walker on the all-time rushing list. Then he can focus on breaking some records on his current team, the Buffalo Bills, held by O.J. Simpson — rushing records, not arrest records.

2) Darrelle Revis (2007): Only Darrelle and Gilligan have been special enough to have the word “Island” placed after their names. The Aliquippa Quip has seven Pro Bowls, 430 tackles, 28 interceptions and a Super Bowl on his Canton-bound resume. He has been one of the few things New York Jet fans have ever had a reason to be excited about.

1) Larry Fitzgerald (2004): The greatest Pitt player in the past 30 years. He has nine Pro Bowls, 98 touchdowns and 13,366 receiving yards. He’s so good that he helped the Arizona Cardinals get to the Super Bowl, a once-unthinkable task. They should just retire his number while he’s playing, because he’s the best player in that organization’s history. He is 11^th all-time in receptions, and if he catches 60 passes this year, he will tie Terrell Owens for sixth in NFL history. His 98 touchdowns are also 11^th all-time; 13 more and he will be sixth on that list as well.

Chip in with your “Top However” many in your comments below…

Here is another Wysocki article that isn’t Pitt-centric but is a fun read on PGH sports.

“Everybody loves a good nickname. Here in Pittsburgh we’ve had a wide array of nicknames for our beloved Steelers, Penguins and Pirates. They range from great names like Jerome “The Bus” Bettis to considerably less stellar monikers like Nyjer “Tony Plush” Morgan.

When you don’t know what you’re getting, it’s generally a bad nickname. “Dr. Strangeglove” Dick Stuart is great because it’s a then-current reference to a movie, and you can infer he’s not a good fielder — double win. Generic nicknames referring to the player’s name, like “J-Hay” Josh Harrison, or size (“Big” Ben Roethlisberger), or a rhyme (Sid “The Kid” Crosby) are OK in a pinch but not much on the creative side.”

 This is something I missed two weeks ago – our ex-RB Chris James has landed with Paul Chryst at Wisconsin.

He’ll be one of many there, as he was here, but interesting he went back to familiarity.  Cardiac Hill had this piece on that news:

“James is leaving a place where future carries would have been scarce, but ironically, he will have to compete quite a bit for playing time with younger backs, according to Bucky’s 5th Quarter, SB Nation’s Wisconsin site.

After he sits out 2016, James will be in line for starters reps from day one. That said, with impressive springs from both Bradrick Shaw and Taiwan Deal, the Badgers are set to have an intriguing competition for carries next season.

Sitting out this year will surely benefit him. Deal was the team’s second leading rusher this past season and the team returns their No. 1 and No. 3 backs, Dare Ogunbowale and Corey Clement as well. Ogunbowale and Clement will be seniors this season, so some space does open up a bit for 2017. However, Deal will still be there as a junior, as well as Shaw, a four-star recruit in the class of 2015 that had an Alabama offer and redshirted last year.”

I remember watching James in his first fall camp under Paul Chryst and everyone on the sidelines had a big smile on their face watching him run with the ball.  At 5’11” and 210 lbs he was quick and strong.  I think something happened between he and the new staff because of the abrupt departure.

I think fans don’t remember just how good his FR year was when he had 81 carries for 437 yards (5.0 ypc) and 4 TDs. That is a hell of a performance for someone who was overshadowed by James Conner as the starter.  As contrast Hall had 64 carries for 257  yards (4.0 ypc) and 2 TDs behind Ollison.

The only real competition for James in the future had he stayed at Pitt would have been Ollison and Darrin Hall…. Chawntez  Moss maybe also.  I’d rather he stayed instead of Hall but as I speculated above – maybe there were personal reasons for transferring.  I think he’ll do very well at Wisconsin.

Cardiac Hill also has an up close and personal look at the new uniforms. The sixth photo down will probably appeal to the readers on here who continually disagree with me.  Sorry folks – I can’t bring myself to even give the matte helmets a second chance – they look pretty weird to me.

They need to do this to the helmets so that the players understand that there actually is some history to the football program.

All kidding aside it would be pretty cool to do that again.

A Pitt wrestler at Pitt preceded James Conner in a battle against cancer and came out smiling – and sharing that smile with others.

“Dan Kornberg was sitting in class when his phone started vibrating repeatedly. He ignored the calls. But he did not ignore the text message:

THE DOCTOR NEEDS TO SEE YOU!

“I want you to look at this,” the doctor said shortly after, holding up an MRI of Kornberg’s right knee. “There’s an anomaly here. I don’t know what it is. And I don’t like it.”  A few days before, Dan Kornberg, who in 2013 was a wrestler at the University of Pittsburgh, felt a “weird feeling” in his knee halfway through practice.

He didn’t tell anyone at first. “I just kept pushing,” Kornberg recalled. “There’s nothing you can’t wrestle through.” After practice, though, he told a trainer. Medical staff examined him: Slightly torn meniscus, they decided. No big deal, maybe a month of rehab. But they ordered an MRI, just to be sure.

Then the doctor summoned him to his office.”

It wasn’t a meniscus but…:

“The bad news: The mass in his knee was Ewing’s sarcoma, a rare bone disease typically found in children. The good news: They caught it before it could enter the lungs, which is often when symptoms of Ewing’s sarcoma appear. By then, the doctor said, it’s usually too late.”

And this is why, dear readers, when we think something might be wrong with our bodies we go to the Doctor.  Gone are the days that we bragged about how tough we are and about never going to see the doctor as men have been known to do.  I know at least three HS friends who delayed and ended up dying at an early age because the illness had advanced too far. Just Do It!!  (Public Service message over).

I know a lot of Pitt fans don’t care about our targeted recruits who end up going elsewhere but we also have readers who live in the WPA area who closely follow HS football.  So here is a Kevin Gorman (Trib) article on Jurkovec’s decision to go the ND and what benefits doing that before his JR year will bring to him.  I bolded the scary parts…

“Pine-Richland coach Eric Kasperowicz said Friday on my TribLIVE Radio show that he wants to work on Jurkovec’s mechanics, primarily the windup in his throwing motion.

The 6-foot-5, 200-pound Jurkovec passed for more than 2,500 yards and rushed for 1,250 as a sophomore, which makes you wonder what areas he needs to address.

“We want to shorten his release a little bit,” Kasperowicz said. “We want to improve his footwork in the pocket a little bit. Then, ultimately, there’s the overall quarterback package, being a leader and all of the stuff that goes along with being a big-time, quality quarterback.”

It seems like every time I read that about a younger QB things tend to go south with the kid.  I mean this young man just passed for 2,500 yards, was offered by almost every major school in the US based on that and the first thing people want to do is screw around with him.

BTW – this kid apparently didn’t officially visit any school before committing to ND… not even ND.  This goes back to what I wrote yesterday about young kids growing up and wanting to play for their favorite team and attend their favorite college.  That is obvious with Jurkovec and happens many, many times every year.  Why do you ask?  Because ND and other ‘big’ schools have an impact on their early lives.

In my time as a adult Pitt fan I honestly can’t remember one star player for us who said that they grew up wanting to play for Pitt with the exception of Dan Marino back in the 1980s… and you know the championship (and yes, the uniforms) played into that.  Dorsett had wanted to play at ND, LeSean McCoy was set at Miami before injury.  Fitz was a regular recruit and was James Conner…

Maybe you readers can remember if any Pitt star in the past expressed those strong desires to play at Pitt.