Friday, December 7th, 2007 by Michael Sklar
Pitt is awesome - A season’s recap
I was running on the treadmill at the gym last Friday when I saw it on the ESPN
bottom-line: Pitt extends Coach Dave Wannstedt. My first, oh, 10 or so thoughts afterward were four-letter words. My knee-jerk reaction was, well, not a knee-jerk reaction at all. In 2005, Wannstedt inherited a team that (albeit not fully deservedly) went to a BCS Bowl the year before and returned most everybody, including fiery quarterback Tyler Palko, then subsequently went 15-19 against a relatively easy schedule, made confounding personnel moves, and seemed to be overseeing a program in serious decline. I thought the inevitable trouncing West Virginia would put on Pitt would only confirm my fears. I was wrong.
In one game, a 13-9 win over the West Virginia Mountaineers, Wannstedt and the Panthers completely erased the previous 34. They actually managed to “shock the world,” or the sports world, at any rate. To use another cliché, that this win “breathed life” into the program wouldn’t be accurate- “breathing life” seems to indicate “borrowing time” to me, and that’s simply not true here: This win did more than that, it took the program to places it was not when Wannstedt took over.
The buzz surrounding the program is now immutable. Pitt football is the new water cooler hot topic around Pittsburgh, at least until the Steelers-Patriots game. National analysts marveled over true freshman LeSean McCoy and scratched their heads over the shoddy officiating crew, which seemed intent on getting West Virginia to the BCS Championship Game.
Local recruits have taken notice. Gateway’s Cameron Saddler was the first to commit to Pitt after the game, and he promises to take others with him, namely his teammate Shayne Hale. This win will be sure to secure a third consecutive strong recruiting class for Wannstedt, who is extremely adept at selling the tradition of the program even when it looks more like current day Temple than Pitt circa 1976.
Even after a 5-7 season, the hype has begun to build for 2008. The 2007 season is now
rightly characterized as an adversity-filled “rebuilding” year, for obvious reasons. First, Pitt was littered with injuries and suspensions at key positions. With even average quarterback play, which disappeared when junior Bill Stull went down in the season opener, the Panthers may have won 2-4 more games. Stars Derek Kinder, Jason Pinkston, and Gus Mustakas also went down early, and sophomore safety Elijah Fields, who often evokes comparisons to the late Sean Taylor, was suspended for the year for drug problems. Furthermore (and to a lesser extent), junior linebacker Tommie Campbell, a state champion sprinter, was suspended for cutting class and has subsequently transferred.
As a result of these complications and Walt Harris’ legacy as an awful recruiter, this Pitt team was very young, and gained invaluable experience through the course of the season. Aside from McCoy, Greg Romeus is also garnering freshman accolades. TJ Porter and Maurice Williams look like stellar receivers, and Aaron Berry may develop into Pitt’s next shutdown corner, continuing a legacy that includes Torrie Cox, Josh Lay, and Darrelle Revis.
Pitt also lost many close games, sometimes due to laziness (McCoy fumbled against Louisville), poor execution (An attempted fade to Darrell Strong against Navy), or bad officiating (Oderick Turner’s offensive pass interference against Rutgers). A more mature, tested team next season should not make the same mistakes.
However, Pitt simply can not be considered a big-time program with over half of Heinz Field empty. The program needs more support both when playing less than mediocre teams and when playing below expectations.
That naturally brings me to the second reason for the guarded nature of my optimism towards Pitt football- in this decade, they have consistently underachieved with high expectations. In 2001, the team started 1-5, only to win the final five games and the Tangerine Bowl. In 2003, with Larry Fitzgerald at its disposal, the team again underachieved and lost in the Continental Tire Bowl. And of course, Pitt fans saw Wannstedt’s nightmare of a first season in 2005.
But with consistent fan support and if next years’ team lives up to its expectations, the Pitt program stands to make a leap forward, to the upper echelon of the Big East, maybe even to the top.
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