…What about recruiting?

Another recruiting weekend came and went. They took in a basketball game.

Pitt football coach Paul Chryst took in the game along with 13 recruits and got a standing ovation from the crowd when he was shown on the video board.

Here’s a list of about half of the attending recruits. Ooohhhh. Some offensive linemen. Need. Depth. Need. Talent.

Coach Chryst also spoke with the announcing crew during the game. Reaching tens of people not fans of Pitt on ESPN3.com. The interview was fine, notable for managing to go entirely without a single mention of Wisconsin.

Among those attending, Clairton WR Tyler Boyd — who just happened to cancel his official visit to West Virginia on the same weekend. Several in attendance like Scott Orndoff have already committed.

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I’m only now home and with some time to sit down and post on what is old news: Pitt will have the same coach from the regular season coach the team in Birmingham. Something that is actually unique for the program.

The buzz last night and at the start of the morning was that it looked like Chryst wasn’t leaving Pitt. The message he and his assistants were getting out to the 2013 recruits was much more forceful than it would be if he was even torn on the idea. By comparison, Louisville Coach Charlie Strong told his players that he was deciding about what was best for his family before deciding to stay with the Cards.

Still, it was his alma mater. It was his home state. There are a lot of reasons he could change his mind. And, frankly, until there was something more tangible, the possibility he could decide to go back to Madison would be hanging over everything.

Enter Wisconsin AD and interim HC Barry Alvarez in a press conference today.

Question: Barry, you know how popular Paul Chryst is around here, and his name is going to be out there until proven otherwise. Is he a viable option to be the next head coach here?

Alvarez: I asked some very good friends of mine to help Paul get that job. I think Paul has already come out and said that he’s committed to Pitt. I think he should be committed to Pitt. I wouldn’t think it would be right for him to leave after one year. I wouldn’t feel right, and I don’t think it would be appropriate for me to hire him back after I asked someone to do me a favor and help him get that job.

So Paul’s going to stay at Pitt.

And there was much rejoicing.

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We know Pitt fans weren’t the only ones stunned and spooked by Fraud Graham’s run to Tempe last December. The Pitt administration also did not like it. So, one way to slow the chances of a quick exit: a sizable buyout.

Via Greg Giannotti of 93.7 The Fan:

If Wisconsin wants to buyout the contract I’m told it would cost them 6 million dollars – the same for every other school.

— Gregg Giannotti (@937Giannotti) December 5, 2012

That’s a sizable number if true. It also is totally believable that it would be that high in the wake of 2011, but we don’t know for sure. A buyout that shrinks each year is not uncommon. The question is whether it really starts at that number.

Wisconsin obviously has money. More than Pitt in terms of access to funds. Yet, that might be a bit too much to swallow. Plus it is unlikely that Wisconsin would be offering Chryst so much more money than Pitt that Chryst would be paying the buyout from his own pocket.

One more piece of the intrigue.

In times like this, people choose different ways to cope. Some fly into rage. Others anguish and self-pity. Others find refuge in sarcasm, cynicism and bitterness. There’s always drugs and alcohol. Still others find refuge in detaching themselves from the emotions and treating it like watching an ant farm. Some combination is always recommended.

I’m opting for the drunken robot.

It is unlikely anything will be resolved tonight or even tomorrow. It is likely this will take several days to play itself out.

As such, it is important to take a look at some of the key players in how this drama will play out, and the forces at work.

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Coach Paul Chryst via the Pitt website:

“I understand the speculation surrounding my name given today’s developments. I am committed to the Pitt football program and the University of Pittsburgh. I am focusing all my time and energy on our team’s bowl game preparation and recruiting a great group of young men to join our program and this outstanding university. We are working hard every day to re-establish this program and I am excited about the future of Pitt football.”

So that is positive. Good to see Chryst and the Pitt Athletic Department realize that they had to say something.

That said, plenty of wiggle room and I won’t be exhaling completely until Wisconsin hires someone else.

So,  my daughter wasn’t feeling well. Hanging out in the doctor’s waiting room after school. Checking the twitter feed. Amused at all the rumors of Mike Gundy possibly going to Arkansas rumors. Making jokes about Todd Graham and the SEC open coaching positions.

All was well until it turned out that Arkansas had managed to snag Bret Bielema from Wisconsin. Suddenly the bleep got real.

If there was one job every Pitt fan knew Paul Chryst would be likely to leave Pitt, it would be Wisconsin. His alma mater. He grew up there. His family really is from there and still lives there. He still has a great relationship with the Wisconsin athletic director. Honestly it would be the one job I could understand him leaving Pitt to take that would be mostly without much rancor from myself and most Pitt fans.

I– I just didn’t think the possibility would be after only one year.

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So much for my belief that the entire Pitt performance would hinge on the O-line. Instead, a defense that has played very well the last three games — at least after spotting a team the easy opening march down the field before figuring out what they were doing — never got it together.

Part of it was simply a hobbled K’Wuan Williams being abused because the Pitt defense never tried to give him any help. Why? Because dammit the scheme is fine. All is well. If he was well enough to play, he could cover in the man-to-man secondary.

Williams left the Syracuse game early with a knee injury and was questionable to play this past week as recently as Thursday. Chryst, though, said he wouldn’t have put Williams out there if he wasn’t ready to play.

“You can do a lot of things call-wise, but in the end there are going to be some times when they’re one-on-one and I’d take [K’Waun] again,” Chryst said. “They made some plays and I give them credit for that.”

Teddy Bridgewater was 7-10, 172 yards in the second half.

But it was more than a well-executed passing attack. The run offense of Louisville kept Pitt’s defense honest. It wasn’t amazing — nearly 45% of their rushing yardage game on just two runs — but it was effective and they got into the endzone on the ground.

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Over the many years of blogging, both sides of this Pitt-Syracuse game have noted the complete lack of vitriol and hatred. Despite Syracuse being Pitt’s (tied for) 3d most played opponent in football. And the fact that they will have the #3 spot all alone in a few years when ND starts rotating on and off the schedule, there isn’t much of a burning desire to burn their city and make them cry when it comes to football. Everyone wants the win, but no one circles this game on the calendar when the schedule is announced.

In about five years, Pitt will be Syracuse’s #1 most played opponent. Yet, they too can’t muster the hatred.

My longstanding theory is that, despite the closeness of the historical series — Pitt holds a 34-30-3 edge — the fact that neither team has been good at the same time has muted it. Pitt dominated them in the 70s. Syracuse ruled in the 80s and 90s. Now Pitt has been the force for the past 10 years, winning 9 of 10. How do you build up hate if only one side is ever playing for anything? If the other is stuck in their latest down-cycle or rebuilding?

So, instead, what has the team been up to with a bye week?

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In Syracuse, Doug Marrone has a favorite word. That word: tremendous. He will apply it anything. Opportunities, potential of players, a dinner menu, a good pair of khakis, his thighs. Coach Paul Chryst is a man of few words, so it hasn’t been easy to crack the code to this point.

Here at Blather Labs, we have been parsing statements diligently to locate the “Word of Chryst.” This week, our research has yielded a potential hit.

The word appears to be: neat.

The O-line is doing a horrid job blocking? Well, that’s neat.

Pitt quarterback Tino Sunseri was sacked six times against Cincinnati, but coach Paul Chryst did not place all the blame on one player. “Certainly, the offensive line, you have five guys, and their job is to protect,” Chryst said. “We gave up one (sack) where we had both backs in there, and they both could have taken a hit off the quarterback. The quarterback has to get the ball out of his hands, and that means the receivers have to be precise in their routes. That’s one of the neat things about football. It takes all 11 guys, and that is a great example of it.”

How about the fact that the D-line can’t get any pressure up front? It’s sort of neat.

“One way is adding numbers to create pressure. Right now, it’s kind of neat that each week each team presents a little bit different challenge and you want to make sure you’re being smart with how you approach it,” Chryst said. “Certainly we pressured more in the Cincinnati game than we did the week before. We’re certainly looking at all different options and figuring out what’s best for Virginia Tech.”

Neat may not be the way you or I would describe disasters, but for Coach Chryst it’s all just a puzzle to solve.

Keep your eyes out for more examples of “neat” from Coach Chryst. Along with nifty, swell and even: keen.

Pitt has a ton of problems. And, yes, I have posted for a couple straight days with attention to the coaching staff. There’s a reason for that.

The deficiencies and strengths on this team — regarding the players/talent/depth — were mostly known coming into the season. The unknown was how the coaching staff would use them. How they would coach and prepare them.

So far, it has not been pretty. There’s no way to pretend otherwise. Yes, the coaching chaos the last two years have taken a toll. Almost certainly it has had an effect on the team psyche. Yes it has impacted the overall talent on the squad. Yes, there are injuries — especially to the linebackers. Yes, there has been a bit of overestimating the overall talent on this squad.

None of that is sufficient to explain the performance of this team in the first two games. Losing by 14 — and never even leading — to YSU. Not being competitive in the Cinci game. Sorry. This team should not be this bad.

Coach Chryst will and should have the time to set up this program his way. He’s also a first-time head coach, learning and making mistakes. We wish otherwise, but the on-the-field performance and the way the team has started in the first two games demonstrate that right now he is finding 0ut how steep the learning curve can be in moving from coordinator to head coach.

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Ahhhh. The one silver lining to Pitt’s Thursday night game. Sitting back all day with some nice beer and watching college football until my eyes bleed. No stress over what Pitt will do. Able to take breaks as needed. Fall asleep on the couch for stretches. Appreciating the misery of other teams losing. I’m looking at you Miami, Iowa, Colorado… and yes, Penn State.

One of the games I took a particular interest in was the Wisconsin-Oregon State game. Probably as much as Pitt Coach Paul Chryst took in the game given his mentor and place where he got his start at the 1-A level versus his alma mater and place that made him a reasonably hot head coaching candidate.

A chance to see what the program looks like without Paul Chryst directing the offense. And perhaps to get a glimpse of what we hope to see Pitt become. Instead, it led to some other questions and a bit of speculation.

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So much for that August optimism. You know, when we thought the overall talent wasn’t too bad and that Coach Paul Chryst would coach this team up. Because that is what Chryst is. A coach. A football coach. A football coach’s coach.

It’s hard not to feel a wee bit of annoyance over the performance of the team in the first two games.

Tino Sunseri will come in for the bulk of the criticism as far as play. And there is no doubt he wasn’t good last night, along with the typical brain farts in the red zone that we all expect at this point. Two plus years and nothing appears to have changed with him.

Yet, he isn’t the biggest problem on this team.  Almost all of the problems start on the side of the ball that was expected — that was needed — to be a strength. The defense.

They were completely unprepared at the start of both games. Once more they couldn’t stop the run. They couldn’t get any pressure up front. They couldn’t get off the field. They struggled to cover. They continually looked a step slower. It’s not all because the linebacking corp is without Thomas and Price.

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Coach Paul Chryst has avoided any public pronouncements on goals or expectations. They exist, but he’s not saying much on them. That has been a consistent approach of his since taking the head coaching spot at Pitt.

“We have a lot of goals. To sum it up, you’ve got to work to improve and guys have got to get better. You’re a better team if each individual player gets better,” Chryst told the Panthers’ official website as summer practice got under way.

“I’ve never been able to tell what a guy’s ceiling is or how good he can be, but I think that it is enough if you keep working to be the best you can be.”

But try and get him to state what the actual goals are for the team. And you get nothing.

I asked him if he’d broached with his players the topic of a Big East title.

“No,” he said, politely.

Does he ever mention overriding goals such as winning a conference or national championship?

“No,” he said, politely.

This year, definitely a good thing. The last two years have seen high fan expectations dashed, followed by brash, bold talk that crashed and fled. Going forward, though, Chryst will not be able to avoid at least talking about team goals a little more specifically. It is also something he has to do.

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I know the drill. It’s one we probably all know. We’ve seen it at Pitt. We’ve seen it at other schools. New coach comes in. He’s not just a promising coach. He’s a special guy. He gets “it.”

This AP story by Will Graves is decent enough. Doesn’t go over the top about Chryst. Plays up the humble, doesn’t like to talk about himself aspect.

When asked what a “Paul Chryst Team” is going to look like, the man tasked with providing a meandering program with stability just lets out a small sigh.

“Number one, it’s not my team,” he said. “I’m not the only coach, but our staff believes and I really respect and enjoy the game and playing it the right way. To me that’s the thing you’re shooting for, you know, all the clichés.”

It’s not that Chryst is intentionally trying to sound boring. It’s just that he’s not a big talker or self-promoter. Maybe that’s why the 46-year-old had to wait so long to get his first head coaching gig despite being considered one of the top offensive minds in college football for a decade.

Chryst hardly cares. He’s here now, trying to provide a sense of calmness to a program that’s spent two seasons in transition, from coach to coach to coach and conference to conference.

The whole anti-Graham theme is strong in any story about Chryst. To be fair it is hard not to draw a very huge distinction between the two.

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When they post them I’ll put up links to the Big East interviews of players and coaches. After the interim and associate commissioners took their turns to start Big East Media Day, the Big East Coaches all got turns at the podium. Let’s just say that Chryst won the award for brevity. He got up there said a few words and was done. It really did seem to be a blink and you will miss this situation. The contrast between him and Fraud Graham is very obvious at times. None more so than when it comes to getting in front of a group and a camera. Right now it’s refreshing, charming, and looked at as a positive. “He’s a coach. He doesn’t care about the self-promotion and wasting time with the other BS. He gets “it.” It’s refreshing…”

It’s also real easy to see how that can be turned against him if things don’t go right. “He doesn’t get it. It’s not just the coaching, but selling the program and what he wants to do. It’s not helping recruiting. He’s alienating the fans with his unwillingness to engage…” He might want to give Walt Harris a call and see if he can get some pointers about what to avoid on that respect.

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