In response to Chas’s prompting, I’m too busy at work to do a decent write-up of the Pitt-Furman debacle right now. But I can give you my quick impressions: it wasn’t good. On the bright side, it was a great game and I definitely got my entertainment dollar’s worth. But it was humiliating. Our offensive line was completely dominated by a I-AA team. Palko spent much of Saturday running for his life. Harris’s playcalling was, yet again, laughably predictable. And our secondary got repeatedly torched. I left with the feeling that we just wore down Furman’s defensive line over the course of the game or we wouldn’t have been able to come back in the fourth quarter. And I definitely got the feeling that Harris has “lost” this team, perhaps by insulting its players in public once too often.
At times, our crowd was so quiet that the 200 or so Furman fans over in the corner of Heinz Field dominated the sound of the place. However, our crowd did, to its great credit, get loud enough to completely disrupt Furman’s offense at the end of the 4th quarter and in overtime. The 15,000 or so gentiles who showed up were still louder than anything a little I-AA team had ever heard.
Speaking of gentiles, why does a university with as many Jewish students and alumni as Pitt seem to always insist on having a home game on Yom Kippur? I mean, it does hurt attendance. Only 5 of the dozen or so members of our group could even show up… although, laughably, one did have to attend a pig roast afterwards.
So anyways, the tailgating was quiet, the Field was mostly empty, and chants of “FIRE HARRIS” started earlier than usual (end of the 1st quarter). Unlike Shawn, I didn’t bother to listen to the marching band (I was too busy daydreaming up ways to kick both Walt Harris and Paul Rhoads out into the snow). But it was still worth the ticket price and the gas to and from Altoona.
Incidentally, which version of College Gameday were you watching, Chas? On College Gameday Final late Saturday night on ESPN (or 7:30 AM Sunday morning), Rece Davis, Trev Alberts, Mark May went out of their way to highlight the Pitt-Furman debacle. While Davis and Alberts openly snickered at poor Mark May, Mark merely looked down and said “talk about a coach on the hot seat… they need to make some major changes at Pittsburgh now… I mean, you shouldn’t have even been playing Furman.” Amen, Mark.
The line for Thursday night opened up this morning at UConn -6 and quickly grew to UConn -6.5. I could have never imagined one year ago that we would be nearly a touchdown underdog to the Huskies in FOOTBALL. Then again, heck, I’d take UConn and give up ten based on what I saw Saturday.
Finally, not to bring up an old tread, but despite crushing James Madison 45-10 last Saturday, West Virginia fell one spot yet again in this week’s ESPN’s mock BCS rankings. More disturbing, they fell BEHIND Florida State, which has already lost once. The inherent lack of respect for the Big East is frightening (remember that our champion has to finish in the top 12 over the next four years for us to retain our seat at the BCS table). And, as I’ve said before, I couldn’t agree more with this lack of respect. We need to slut our way into the Big Ten now.
Hail to Walt Harris just getting the hell out of town already.
