Irreverent blog highlights irrelevant Panthers

Get a load of this piece from the Home News Tribune, which says it covers Central Jersey, although I don't know why anyone would want to do that.

'South Florida can run the table'
http://www.thnt.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20071017/SPORTS02/710170324/1002/rss04

Here's the meat of it:

South Florida, which comes to Rutgers on Thursday night as the nation's No. 2 team, figured to have a good team this year, although they were voted to finish fourth in the Big East Conference preseason media poll.

Rutgers, which some believed would win the Big East, already has one conference loss and two overall.

West Virginia, an overwhelming favorite to win the conference, already has a loss. Louisville, picked right behind West Virginia, was just .500 a week ago before beating Cincinnati. The Bearcats, picked fifth in the conference, came
into that game undefeated.

Connecticut, picked seventh in the preseason, also lost for the first time last week — in a nonconference game at Virginia, leaving them tied with South Florida on top of the Big East.

Syracuse is the only team with two Big East losses, but it knocked off Louisville when the Cardinals were ranked in the Top 25.

Wait -- is a team missing? Oh, yeah, the Pitt Panthers. Now so not-worth-the-ink that they don't fit into a general discussion about seven-eighths of the Big East.

Time to Dispatch the 'Stache. Fire Dave Wannstedt.

Wannstedt tears Achilles' reading FireDaveWannstedt.blogspot.com

There's no proving that he was reading this blog when it happened. But there's no proving that he wasn't.

http://sports.espn.go.com/ncf/news/story?id=3067426

Dave Wannstedt for Nebraska AD

Hey -- remember back when everyone thought Dave Wannstedt could make a great athletic director at Pitt? We have an even better idea. There's now an opening in Lincoln, Nebraska.

• Lincoln, the state capital, is known as Star City. This would suit Dave Wannstedt well because he is a star.
• There's probably some blue and gold stuff lying around in the office.
• Dave Wannstedt is widely respected across the Midwest for his splendid tenure as head coach of the Chicago Bears.
• Nebraska gets to play Baylor.

Those are some of the reasons I can think of right now. Feel free to add yours.

Coming soon: Dave Wannstedt for AD slash head football coach at Nebraska.

Q&A with Frustrated Beat Reporter

One of the great things the Post-Gazette does -- remember, it is one of America's Great Newspapers, but seriously I'm being complimentary here -- is that it allows beat reporters enormous leeway in both real-time and mailbag Q&A sessions. The result is that, except for whomever is covering the Steelers at a given time, every single one of these Q&As turns into a highly entertaining variation on

DavefromNorthVersailles: Why are the (Pens) (Pirates) (RMU Colonials) (Panthers) so bad?

Beat Reporter: Modestly original joke, Dave. Additional generic pithiness. But seriously, let's all take a step back from the ledge.

StillLivingin1979: Beat Reporter, hey, it's me again. From a ledge.

Beat Reporter: At least (Philadelphia) (Manatee Community College) (Duquesne) (just Darnell Dickerson by himself, unprotected by pads, hands bound, with a missile trained on him) awaits on the schedule, so there is outside hope of a victory this week.

And so on, until the Stillers arrive in Latrobe and don the pads Darnell would so appreciate and hope springs and all the bad things go away.

Of course, with the heart of the Big East schedule ahead -- Cincinnati, at Louisville, Syracuse, at Rutgers, South Florida, at West Virginia -- there is no such optimism today from Paul Zeise.

itsonlyagame: In rebuilding a program you need to show some improvement. How will this consistent losing effect recruiting?

Paul Zeise: I think there are a lot of recruits who were on the fence about Pitt and waiting to see what was going to happen with this season. I'd say there is likely a lot less of them who will be considering matriculating in Oakland next August.

...

Douglas_John: Why is Paul Rhoades still Pitt's defensive coordinator?

Paul Zeise: next question

...

Blahovec: What was [Super Bowl quarterback] Rod Rutherford doing on the sidelines last night? Is he part of the staff now and does he have any eligibility?

Paul Zeise: He is some kind of an intern or graduate assistant. And no, he doesn't have any eligibility.

The present state of things

It's 8:20 p.m. EDT on the fifth full college football Saturday of the season. Pitt trails Virginia 30-7 -- with time left on a second quarter clock. And the Panthers are, at this moment, unarguably the worst team in the Big East.

Tonight's grease fire will drop the Panthers to 2-3.

Let's take a spin around the conference as it's currently constituted.

South Florida topped West Virginia Friday night. It was a sloppy game, to be sure, but no one is disputing that West Virginia is still a top 15 team, and with as much wreckage as has been seen around the country today, USF might yet crack the top 10.

Rutgers was, um, devoured by Ralph Friedgen's Maryland Terrapins this afternoon, and while it's true that the Terps were SUNJ's first true test, this is another team that won't exactly fall out of the top 25.

All Cincinnati does is kill teams. No major tests, but the win over Oregon State was convincing.

Connecticut is simply 5-0 and -- by the way -- they embarrassed the Panthers 34-14.

Louisville. Okay, the season hasn't gone as planned for the Cards, and no amount of garlic sauce can make the hurt go away. But they gently kissed N.C. State good night a couple of hours ago (29-10) and besides, apparently losing to Kentucky is nothing to get worked up about this year.

That brings us to Syracuse, which stands at 1-3 after a sheepish loss to the hated Miami Foreskins. (Miami sucks.) But remember, we're not nominating Syracuse for the Zweibel Prize. We're trying to argue that they're better than Dave Wannstedt here.

Syracuse and Pitt have both notched a single Flawed-Playoff Championship Subdivision win. The Orange took out the aforementioned bunch from Louisville -- in Louisville. Pitt's gauntlet took them through Eastern Michigan at Heinz Field.

Fire Dave Wannstedt. His vaunted recruiting classes are, assembled as a group, the actual worst team in the Big East.

Raison d'etre

Resolved, that Dave Wannstedt should be shown the royal blue and mustard yellow door.