It’s just been a week. It isn’t how I anticipated this week going.
Not with this week being the 9-year anniversary of the blog actually marking the 9 year anniversary of this blog (apparently that is supposed to be pottery, so I guess it’s time for a new Pitt mug for the morning coffee). Not with the Big East Media Day and all the hullabaloo that surrounds it. Not with yet another transfer to Pitt football in Tom Ricketts. Not with erstwhile Pitt basketball commit Jaylen Bond rediscovering his desire to go to college this year and committing to Texas. Now Fear the Stache is joining the Pitt Script Blog — which is a very good thing for Bryan and Brian. So much that is going on, and next week starts Pitt training camp. And I’ve been MIA.
It’s just been a confluence of things. I’ve been covering for some people on vacation at work. My parents came out to stay with us for the week. I’ve been spending all the spare time working on home projects with my dad during this week, because he isn’t content just playing with his grandkids. He has to keep busy with other things, and I have to help so he doesn’t fall over from a stroke. Plus, getting all other things out of the way so I can enjoy a trip to the ‘Burgh this weekend for a buddy’s bachelor party.
I appreciate the e-mails that were concerned for my well being. Worried that something bad had happened to me. I’m sorry to not have posted something about it sooner. I honestly thought I was going to get some time to post. Instead it has been a very, very crazy week.
Normalcy will return shortly — as soon as we can figure out what is normal.
more OL reshuffling
RE: Jacobson at center. He did pretty well in the spring and the coaches were happy, but if they have a chance to move him to his natural position they will (obviously) jump at it.
Porchia, 6-foot-2, 203 pounds, considers himself more than a pass-rushing specialist.
“I’m good at that,” he said of rushing the passer. “But I’m also good at pass dropping.”
Note: Former Gateway star Brendon Felder, a receiver who transferred from North Carolina to Pitt, was denied eligibility for the 2011 season by the NCAA.
Just what were the things I write that you – obviously – disagreed with.
If you are Mr. Shady then disregard that last question.
When I see your byline I expect and likely read a positive spin. It actually appears to me that you’re on the AD payroll. (Are you?)
Don’t get me wrong, I appreciate your effort, you provide great info and you write about it lucidly, but I think some people are looking for more balance.
If anything, the one thing I dislike is when this blog becomes a total lovefest for someone who has yet to earn all of the adolation, or a hatefest where the faults of someone become so exagerated that the culprit is deemed as the anitchrist.
I started on here in April and I was mostly doing articles on the Spring Camp and as it turned out it was pretty positive stuff to write about. I wrote one article early on that recapped last season and my take on the factors that made it a bad year… it generated about 70 comments covering all ranges from agreement to ridicule. That’s OK and that is what is great about this blog. But after that and in the main I stuck with re-capping, and commenting on, all the media info into one post where readers could link to more detailed info… and a lot of that came directly out of the AD’s office. They control the flow folks and like it or not that is where the source is for the most part.
Was it because I praised the Sports Info Department for doing a good job in getting mass info out to the fans in the form of websites, articles and videos. Well, I did and that’s because that is being done better now than ever before.
Maybe it was because I stated Bostick was a ‘rising star’ in the media department as shown by the volume of work he did in the spring. Turns out others thought so also as he got a pretty decent radio gig out of it.
If you are bitching about my fairness with pure football issues – again, what since the beginning of April is there to be critical of? I’ve said that Sunseri was the #1 QB during camp and acquitted himself well… that was true. I’ve also said that he wasn’t as productive as it appeared last season. I’ve been pretty critical of the back up QBs also, but not I think, to a fault. I stated that the LB corps needed help and that the DBs were shaky. Matter of fact here’s a quote.
“Well, coach, there actually is and that is learning how to do something differently. Reed seems to have been a penalty flag magnet whenever he was in the games last season.
And in what might be labeled “The Most Optimistic Thought of 2011” Bostick writes this: “The Pitt secondary has enough skill and experience to provide great coverage behind a blitz-happy front seven.” We do have some talent back there with Holley, Hendricks, K’Wuan Williams, Tags, etc… Let’s see if they can really produce to expectations this season.”
Critical when necessary I think.
“PITT fans like to compare our team and football program to other BCS schools, but that only goes so far. We are not a football-factory university situated in the middle of a state and which dominates a small town by its presence. We are a huge part of the fabric of the city of Pittsburgh as one of its largest employers and land owners. As such PITT has a real responsibility to maintain both good local relations and a positive reputation. We didn’t do that on many fronts last year.
Everyone agrees 2010 was basically horrendous, from the Elijah Fields Twitter “Play for Pay” incident in February to the hiring and firing of Mike Haywood in January 2011. It was a hell of a year and left everyone who follows the program closely pretty drained. If we fans think it was tough, just imagine what the players and the administration must have gone through.”
I’m not sure how that is positive spin on the AD’s office and if anyone can dispute the veracity of that writing.
You may confuse some of the things I write on the message boards with the posts I do on here. On the boards I state pretty strong opinions on certain things – more so in the past few years than this year. But, this isn’t a message board and Chas asked me to write about the team and thier practices. Of course, I still offer opinions on here but I try to do it in a more subtle and sometimes humorous way. Once we get into a comments discussion I’ll be a little more personal in my opinions than I am in the articles.
As far as the AD and his office goes I think E.J. Borghetti is one of the best in the business but other than that I have no contact with anyone else. I do think PITT athletics are in better shape now than they have been in many years even with the botched coaching search. So, if the measure of the AD’s office is good facilities and having athletic program’s success than I’d say they are doing OK.
Being a hardened Pitt fan has been tough on us, so when you write with such jubilation without the “expected” sarcasm it may be a bitter pill for some to swallow.
On the other hand, I too agee with that you are a bit overly-enthusiastic about the new coach and all of his ‘mechanisms’ and seemed to buy into everything that AD Petsersen has to say. (and being that you are friends with the Bosticks, it is understandable that you are biased towards Pat … althoug I agree that Pat’s articles this past spring were quite informative and expect him to become a good color analyst.)
For example, in one of you articles in the spring, you wrote that the coach says there were working on different gametime scenarios such as ‘1st OT down by 7’ amd ‘3rd OT down by 8′ … and you seem to totally enjoy this rhetoric while I consider it be a total fucking insult to my intelligence.
I started listening to Graham’s interview yesterday on The Fan and once again became totally turnd off to his “Popeil TV Advertising’ approach. But I do must admit to be interested to see what a ‘college’ coach can do with this program .. because all that matters is what happens on Saturdays in the fall.
As a Pitt fan, I certinly hope the new coach succeeds … I will just have to ignore the pre- and post- game press conferences.
When I see some things that aren’t going well with the team or the program I’ll write about it. The fact that the reader disagrees with what I write doesn’t make it more or less ‘balanced’, just that they disagree more.
I don’t buy into Graham or Pedersen 100%. But as far as Graham goes I want to see a body of work before I criticize him. So far it seems to me he’s doing everything right – including his recruiting which he was being pilloried for not too long ago. But I rode him pretty hard for all the propaganda coming out of the staff during spring training. That was about the only thing I can even begin to criticize him about so far.
Pedersen – he screwed up the Haywood hire, that’s the extent of my problems with him. But my beliefs of what transpired prior to that are firm. Now, of course, Graham is his hire and his future so we’ll see what happens with that. But if Pedersen were fired tomorrow for some reason I wouldn’t be crying about… as long at the administration didn’t pull another Haywood out of its hat.
But here’s some actual football criticism for us – if Sunseri goes down we are screwed.
I agree Reed’s articles aren’t for everyone but it is a different perspective. Plus, this is a blog – objectivity can be tossed out the window once in a while.
And refresh my memory on how I “bought into everything Pedersen had to say” about PITT football during the spring practices… I don’t remember him saying anything noteworthy.
But I’ll agree with you and as I said above, I’m also getting tired of the hard sell from Graham and I addressed it with humor in almost everyone of my posts, but if that is the worse criticism I have then I think things are going pretty well. But here’s something, if he starts losing games he should win I’ll rake him over the coals.
As to the overtime scenarios… even you have to admit anything is better than three straight fade passes. The fact that you were insulted is your deal – perhaps other reads liked the insight.
I clip and paste 75 percent of what I post on here. Sometimes when there is little to discuss I’ll reach. It will get worse for the summer training camp also – the last two weeks will be closed to the media apparently.
Again, it may help to separate what I have posted on message boards and even on here in the past from my doing what Chas has asked me to do in writing articles for this blog. He seemed pretty pleased with it when we talked at the spring game so I’ll continue on .
Graham is doing what Lou Holtz used to do when he took over a program. Sell tickets while you build the program, then once you win the tickets will sell themselves.
SP is a lightning rod with a personality of a chapped ass. He, himself, couldn’t sell hot chocolate in Siberia. But, just as his bonehead decisions are doozies, his wins are huge (Howland). Let’s all hope he hit the motherlode with TG.
Thanks for all you do Chas and Reed!
SP is a lightning
In other words, (1) he fired a fairly sucessful coach here (just like Solich), and (2) then he found that his primary choice for replacement was not available (Houston Nutt there and either Hologerson or Golden here – whatever you want to believe), and (3) finally had to settle for his 4th or 5th alternative (Callham and Heywood) which in most people’s mind was not an improvement over the coach that was fired … and there was absolutely no excuse for cmmitting the same sin twice.
Again, I hold no real opinion regarding the AD because I think he has little to do with the actual success of the football team. DW lost the big games, not the AD.
And if Graham loses here this season, which I don’t think will happen, how can we point to the AD when almost every fan has liked the Graham hire?
I get that there are things to criticize about PITT and its administration including the AD. But Chas asked me to write about the football team – which I did and will do.
Thanks.
Reed, are you saying there is little to recommend about Gonzalez and Myers?
Just ignore the “nabobs of negativity”. In general, they never try to do what you do. Instead, they just tear down the work of others.
He isn’t going to discard this offense all of a sudden if Sunseri is out; he’ll have to modify it for whoever goes in. He’ll cut back on the passing if it’s Gonzalez and he’ll minimize the QB run option if it’s Myers. Either way I think it cripples what Graham wants to do on offense this year.
I could be wrong but if Sunseri goes down I think we’ll see Myers before Gonzalez on the strength of his passing. He can still execute the modified read-option, or just hand off, and our passing game wouldn’t suffer as much. If I were the coach I’d try to get Myers in the first two games to see what shakes out… assuming we are far enough ahead to have that luxury. Gonzalez won’t be suited up for those games unfortunately.
But Graham was pretty high on Gonzalez coming out of the spring practices.
IMO if Myers was playing this season with DW and DW’s offense he’d be a great fit and I’d be pulling for him to get an equal shot at starting in the camp. He’d certainly be a clear QB2 under Wannstedt.
I assume you are referencing the “Who is the author?” bit I sometimes stick in at the end. I’ll be honest, that’s fun for me and why else would I do this if not to have fun? From the number of responses it received a lot of readers thought it was pleasant also.
By the way – I thought there was a hell of a lot of ‘football’ in those spring articles, which leads to your complaint about the length. Can’t win them all I guess.
We have no credentials. That’s why this is a Blog and not a newspaper or a news reporting organization, and it’s why I continually state the thoughts are my opinions interspersed with some facts or feelings to base those opinions on.
First of all, don’t ignore the internet flamers. Your writing is good, but I do agree with some of the comments made above. As someone who writes about a team I love (the Phillies–don’t hate), I know it can be really hard to separate who you are as a fan and what you want as a fan, from who you are as a writer and what you see as a writer. That takes a lot of time and practice–it’s one thing to get excited at every word the coaches say, but you have to remember these people are in PR–the opposite of journalism. They’re not gonna tell you bad things, they’re not going to ever say anything is bad. That’s OUR job, to find and nitpick and give people an honest view of the team. Now obviously we don’t want you to point out only the bad things, but it’s okay to give even your favorite team a fair assessment. We understand that you’re not bashing Pitt, but just think about the things that you say. If you find yourself unable to separate those two sides of yourself, then maybe sports journalism just isn’t your thing. But really if you work at it, just think about it WHILE you’re writing, you’ll see much better work pouring out.
1. Judging by my reading of the posts, you have the overwhelming support of the board (including yours truly) irrespective of whether we take issue with your comments, views or topics for discussion.
2. No matter how hard you try, you aint’t never going to get a 100% favorable rating. (Just ask Chas to comment on this observation.)
3. I certainly understand the desire to defend oneself against perceived attacks (personal or otherwise). Just be careful not to be perceived as being thin-skinned.
I hope I’m not too thin skinned and I have to be honest and say the criticisms don’t actually bother me too much. I do what I do because, as noted, it is fun to do.
I figured that the readers would take everything (in every blog ever written) with a grain of salt and not think it is actual reporting on a subject. If that were the case on The Blather I’d ask for payment and really try to dig into issues. Since I don’t do either of those thing – take it for what it’s worth.
Off topic but did I hear correctly that Jamie is taking the team to Maui in 2014?
I’m a big lurker, so you wont see me commenting very often, because I have nothing to add after your wonderful posts. They are always well researched and knowledgeable. That’s all I care about.
As a related issue…I wish the athletes couldn’t read any blogs. This is one of the most civil, and sometimes I cringe at what is said about some of them on here. Even if they don’t read them, some ‘helpful friend’ always passes on the bad press. With the downright hate on various other blogs, I can’t understand how some of them go on.
Is it any wonder, that after months of “why do Cruz and Reed continue to play” was the banner on the PG blog that one of them decided not to play any more?
Shame on us for forgetting that this is really just kids playing a game, and allowing it to become an industry and an identity.
That said, when a player does something off the field that results in discipline or dismissal we’ll comment on that and pretty strongly sometimes. For example, I very much disagreed with, and was verbal about, how the Sheard incident was handled last season but I never thought Sheard himself was a young man of bad character. Quite the opposite in fact. Chas disagreed with me about Sheard’s ‘suspension’ but not once has he attempted to censor or change anything the other writers post.
I’ll state pretty firmly that Sunseri has a very poor deep pass but that doesn’t make him any less of a guy out there trying to succeed.
Elijah Fields didn’t get the same treatment from me though… his repeated stupidity almost demanded to be written about in negative terms.
And every single player on the roster is going to do some boneheaded thing on the field at some point and they all will have flaws in their game. The key is to separate those flaws from the whole of the young men themselves. The venom that is directed toward players who aren’t ‘stars’ is hard to read in other media outlets, especially message boards, sometimes. But it has been head scratching that some players were never sat down in the past. Let’s hope that isn’t the case going forward.
This blog is pretty gentle with opposing schools also and that is another aspect that has made it so attractive for me to read every morning for the last six years. We’ll take shots at WVU because it is almost impossible not to, but again, it is done mostly with a humorous edge.
Chas has built quite a good thing here and so have his friends who chip in from time to time. What readers and posters don’t realize is the volume of time and energy it takes for him to produce what he does when this isn’t his full time job by any means, and with a young family to boot. He takes the high road on here and that’s good.
But one piece of advise, please … quit being so damned defensive about any bit of criticism you receive (or more appropriatel) any criticam you perceive!
Not everyone is going to agree on your perspective on things just like I certainly don’t expect everyone here to share my view of being completely turned-off to Coach Graham’s ‘Propeil’ style.
Again, all that matters is what occurs on the field.
Your commentary has completely ruined this site for me, and I doubt I will ever come back and comment here again without a written apology from Chaz assuring me that your blogging privileges here have been revoked!
More importantly, if SP hits the lottery with Graham, no one will remember that debacle (Haywood) five years down the road. I take that back, you and the other SP haters will no matter what happens.
Finally, blogs are not the same independent/unbiased sports reporting. We’re all fans and blogs are our voice. It’s going to have some bias and personal input. If Reed wants to be positive about the current regime, fine, not all Pitt fans are super negative and pessimistic…just most.
Today we hosted a picnic for 30 NJ kids and their families headed to Pitt as freshmen this fall.
The kids are bright and motivated both academically and athleticlly. A bonus: they and their parents are a lot of fun!
Today I was VERY proud to be a Pitt alumnus.
My site:
regrouper credit http://www.rachatdecredit.net
Excellent work, much appreciated.
To any critics, start your own blog and start writing, see how far you get????
Go ahead, drop some links on here, let me get a look at what you can write, and see how much time it takes, and see how much information you can get out.
We’ll all be waiting……….
Pitt’s a…..
