Since the homefront is in flux, I’m not making the trip to Pittsburgh today. I am, however, still watching the game. Going over to a friend who has the dish (and ESPN2 Alternative).
I will be live blogging it over at AOL today.

Okay guys, last minute thing. Ian Cohen of Sexy Results and a fellow AOL Fanhouse blogger answered 5 questions about UVa for me.

This will be the open thread to comment on the game tonight.

A great little widget, that will be wildly overused in the next couple days in the blogosphere. Here’s some brief thoughts on who and what are “On Notice” for the Pitt game.

Send me your own submissions and I’ll post some of the best.

I’ve sold out.

I’m blogging for the man. Or in this case the media conglomerate.

AOL has hired me to write about Pitt — along with a slew of other college football bloggers — this season. The “official” launch of the AOL CFB Fanhouse Sportsblog was supposed to be yesterday, but it has been delayed until this coming Monday. Write now it is a big mash-up with the focus on the NFL (seems to be a popular place for ex-college players to go, might catch-on).

When the AOL CFB blog is up and fully running there will be it’s own place and you can even narrow it by the particular team or even place — meaning you can follow just Pitt or all Pittsburgh teams that are blogged on AOL. You should also be able to pay attention by conference, so you can follow the other Big East sellouts bloggers and their teams.

The clincher for me to do this wasn’t the money or more exposure. It was also being asked to be the lead blogger for the Big East. Meaning, I help keep an eye on things for the conference and talk with the other BE bloggers. I can be a bit of a control freak, so that appealed to me. Besides, it’s important for a Pitt guy to be one of the CFB bloggers with a modicum of influence (not that I’d abuse power and authority, much).

I’ve already been doing some posting, and you can find just my posts here if you want to limit to just me. As you can see, I’ve already done some posting. I am sorry not to have broken the news earlier, but AOL wanted this to be a soft launch initially and build up some content.

So what does that mean for this shiny new blog? Not much is changing. I will obviously be putting some posts over there, but this blog is not going anywhere. The AOL Blog is just for the season, not all year. Additionally, they want the posts somewhere between 100-400 words. So, unlike many of the posts here, they should be a little shorter.

Plus with Keith W. helping during the season, I think the impact will be minimal.

The House Rock Built is hosting the first blogpoll roundtable of the season. I hate having to think this much. Especially coming out of the weekend.
1. What’s the biggest ripoff in this preseason poll? Either pick a team that’s offensively over or underrated, or you can rag on a particular voter’s bad pick (hey, we’re all adults here, we can handle it).

Florida State is definitely still coasting on its rep the way Nebraska did in the past. What is it about their team or their recent performance that justifies them being any higher than #20?

Honestly, I’m not going to bother ripping on a particular ballot because I just don’t have the energy to look through individual ballots to find egregious bias (other than to point out that 2 of the most self-servingly biased voters were PSU bloggers. Stunning, I know.

2. What shold a preseason poll measure? Specifically, should it be a predictor of end-of-season standing (meaning that a team’s schedule should be taken into account when determining a ranking), or should it merely be a barometer of talent/hype/expectations?

I don’t know. I suspect we kind of mix things to fit our perceptions and justify things when in doubt. I think expectations are the best way to put it since it is sufficiently vague to mix expectations with all the tangible measuring points (schedule strength, talent and such).
3. What is your biggest stretch in your preseason ballot? That is to say, which team has the best chance of making you look like an idiot for overrating them?

That’s easy, since everyone has told me the answer. Oregon at #10.

4. What do you see as the biggest flaw in the polling system (both wire service and blogpolling)? Is polling an integral part of the great game of college football, or is it an outdated system that needs to be replaced? If you say the latter, enlighten us with your new plan.

In the “real” polls it’s the pretending by coaches and writers that they are unbiased and fair. They aren’t there are biases based on the teams and conferences they cover or play within. That’s actually secondary to the lack of transparency. Some sports writers are willing to disclose their votes, but most don’t. Coaches hate even disclosing the final poll. Hell, this sort of stuff has been hashed and re-hashed plenty so I’m not going to go back into it. Ultimately the polls should just be a rough measuring tool. Not the determination for who plays for the national championship.

It depends on what you mean. I like polls. We all do to some extent as an estimation and kind of perception thing — to see which teams people think of as being top teams. Power polls of some form or another are popular and easy shorthand. Even in professional sports you see sports media organizations producing polls to judge which teams are believed to be the best by people.
5. You’re Scott Bakula, and you have the opportunity to “Quantum Leap” back in time and change any single moment in your team’s history. It can be a play on the field, a hiring decision, or your school’s founders deciding to build the campus in Northern Indiana, of all godforsaken places. What do you do?

Hmm. An intriguing wish. Hiring decisions seem the most obvious to me. There are a couple decisions I considered. There was the hiring of Paul Hackett full time as head coach. Something I’m sure USC bloggers might agree whole-heartedly for themselves. I also thought about the hiring of J. Dennis O’Connor as Chancellor in 1991. A man who had no interest in athletics and who’s apathy to that aspect nearly destroyed the football and basketball programs.

Actually, though, and this may surprise some who haven’t read me as long. It was Pitt’s decision to stay in the Big East over helping form an Eastern Athletic Conference with Penn State and Joe Paterno in the early ’80s followed by not advocating on behalf of Penn State to join the Big East after that plan failed. Whether we like it or not, the whole Big East-BCS fears and concerns and stability would not be issues if Penn State was a part of the conference.

Jamie Newberg at Scout.com looks at Pitt‘s recruiting so far (likes what he sees) and looks at some of the other targets by position.

Already Pitt has 11 commitments led by quarterback Pat Bostick and a very good offensive line group. The Panthers are looking to sign around 20 prospects and they have a chance to finish very high once again if they close strong.

Worth the read.

So is this.

Yesterday, August 14 Coach Roth had organized a press conference for me to declare my intentions to play football. In addition to my coaches and teammates, there were approximately 50 people there. I verbally committed to University of Pittsburgh. It was such a relief, to remove all the stress and tension of recruitment. Now I can concentrate on the upcoming season without any distractions.

And this.

Personally, I am pumped for this season. Our offense continues to get more complex and I am very comfortable with it. The reads and progressions I do now will be similar to what I will experience at Pitt. Coach Melnyk talks with Coach Cavenaugh at Pitt and some of our terminology this year will be similar to what I will experience next year. I look forward to coming out to a few Pitt games this year and spending time with the team and recruits. I also plan to see Southern Columbia play and check out this Hynoski kid!

Pitt commits Henry Hynoski and Pat Bostick are doing player diaries at Eastern PA Football A big hat tip to Tony DeFazio of PSR for the link.

Finally, a new blog to point you to. Panthers in the Pros from Adam Menzies will be tracking Pitt players in the NFL and NBA. It’s been added to the Pitt-Centric links on the right.

The preseason blogpoll is out. You can see the individual ballots here. My vote is here. During the season I will make an effort to get a draft version of my ballot posted earlier to get more feedback from everyone before submitting my ballot. I really do want some feedback and help this year. It gets to be a pain in the ass after a while to have to think about this.

Penn State bloggers did their best to push their team high in the polls. That was hardly the shocking thing.

What blew me away was seeing Pitt listed in the “Also Receiving Votes.” Let’s give a thank you to Matt of Statistically Speaking. Matt put Pitt at #15 and tabbed them as one of his sleeper teams. Whatever he’s drinking, I’ll take a double.