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Why Your CFB Team Sucks – Pitt Panthers

Sep 132014

Inspired by Drew Magary’s NFL preview series, Why Your Team Sucks on Deadspin, I decided to do a little of the same on the college side. This is the second in the series. Click here to learn why WVU sucks.

Some people are fans of the Pitt Panthers. But many, many more people are NOT fans of the Pitt Panthers or don’t really give a shit about them. This preview is for those in the latter group.

Your Team: University of Pittsburgh Panthers

Your 2013-2014 record: 7-6 with a bowl win over Bowling Green. The Pitt-est of Pitt records.

Paul Chryst's Pitt showed some growth this season

Pitt’s Paul Chryst

Your Coach: Paul “Neat” Chryst, an affable young gentleman who was initially passed over for Todd Graham and then Mike Haywood, the Ray Rice of college coaches. At least Pitt had the sense to can Haywood the minute he gave them an opportunity. Talk about a case of buyer’s remorse.

Chryst is a “neat” guy, as in he says “neat” a lot. A grown man who says, “neat”. Can’t you just hear the awww’s coming. This is a guy who’s so nice and affable that you’re alternately rooting for him to win because you believe he’d do it the ‘right way’ and fearing some news story will drop showing him kicking a 5-year old birthday boy’s new puppy while drinking too much Scotch “neat”.

Your Quarterback: Redshirt sophomore Chad Voytik, who provides the greatest proof ever of both the vulnerability and stupidity of 17 year old boys, as well as their immediate ability to redeem themselves. Voytik was a Todd Graham recruit. He bought that fucking used-car sleazebag salesman’s pitch. He committed 4-5 years of his life to studying under the tutelage of a man who makes Lane Kiffin look like a priest. BUT! He stuck with Pitt after Graham absconded. Three years later, he’s ready to man the helm at Pitt. Teenagers, sheesh.

What’s New that Sucks: Pitt returns a defensive line minus Aaron Donald who only managed to be named ACC Defensive Player of the Year, a unanimous All-American and win Lombardi Award, Bronko Nagurski Trophy, Chuck Bednarik Award and the Outland Trophy. Donald even blocked a kick! Minus Aaron Donald, Pitt’s defensive line had 4.5 sacks and no forced fumbles. All season.

Penn State are still Penn State

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Sep 102014

In an article for SI regarding the NCAA’s decision to lift Penn State’s bowl ban and scholarship restrictions, Zac Ellis writes:

The problem was that the bowl ban and scholarship reductions didn’t affect anyone responsible for Sandusky’s actions. Those sanctions didn’t punish the likes of former Penn State president Graham Spanier, late football coach Joe Paterno, former athletic director Tim Curley and former vice president Gary Schultz, whose actions — or lack thereof — were at the heart of the scandal. What the NCAA’s decision did was take opportunities away from prospective scholarship athletes at Penn State. These are players who had nothing to do with Sandusky or the school’s administration. The NCAA forced the next Penn State regime — in this case, Bill O’Brien and his new coaching staff — into an extremely difficult situation of recruiting fewer kids into a program that couldn’t go bowling for four seasons.

Ellis is correct that the penalties levied against Penn State didn’t punish Spanier, Paterno, Curley or Schultz and did punish Penn State’s football program and future players. But punishing rule breakers (in this case the institution of Penn State football) often does have collateral and deleterious downstream effects.

Those who would point out that the NCAA had no juris-my-dicktion in this case have a point. But they’re also, in effect, saying that the football program should not have been punished at all. I have said it before and I’ll say it again, the football culture at Penn State became so big and so important that it led to the actions which caused the scandal, which led otherwise good men to look the other way while heinous acts were committed. Penn State is a fine academic institution but football should never be as big as it is there; that’s called lack of institutional control. It had to be taken down a peg.

And the folks who have bought into the myth of “Success with Honor”, who worship(ped) at the altar of Joe Paterno and all he wrought have stood screaming into the wind while the rest of us watched, disappointed and horrified. They still think of Penn State as Shangri-La. This level of fidelity, emulated at other prominent football-centric schools around the country, is sad but not unique. If the folks at Michigan or Texas or Alabama think that it couldn’t happen at their institutions, they’re wrong, so wrong. Not because they’re inferior people (we’re all Fallen) but because they are simply people.

Perhaps I’m just screaming into the wind. While it’s possible (hopeful) that the core workings of the Penn State administration have changed, I have seen nothing in the intervening years to dissuade me from believing that Penn State football isn’t still the biggest, baddest cat in town. Folks who were once just a bit chastened are now dancing in the streets, believing that their institution is fully redeemed or that the NCAA’s jealous vendetta against poor, innocent State has ended. I guess a few more years of sanctions wouldn’t have changed the culture at Penn State, any more so than sanctions have changed Ohio State, Alabama or USC in preceding years. So let the kids go bowling. #Dominate.

Why Your CFB Team Sucks – West Virginia

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Sep 082014

Inspired by Drew Magary’s NFL preview series, Why Your Team Sucks on Deadspin, I decided to do a little of the same on the college side. This is the first in the series. Some people are fans of the West Virginia Mountaineers. But many, many more people are NOT fans of WVU or don’t really give a shit about them. This preview is for those in the latter group.

Your Team: West Virginia University Mountaineers

Your 2013-2014 Record: 4-8. They became the first Big XII team to lose to both Kansas & Iowa State in the same season.

Your Coach: Dana Holgorsen. Raving drunken lunatic. Offensive mastermind. Who got shut out by Maryland last year. Maryland! Three seasons ago, WVU hung 70 points on Clemson in the Orange Bowl. Two seasons ago, WVU got thumped by Syracuse in their bowl game. Last year, they didn’t make one.

Your QB: Senior Clint Trickett. If ever there was a guy born to be a West Virginia Mountaineer, it’s Clint Trickett. The name just evokes images of beards and missing teeth and ‘coon skin caps, don’t it. Perhaps he can double as the Mountaineer’s musket-wielding mascot as well. Trickett won a whirlwind of a QB battle against three other combatants despite having offseason shoulder surgery and not taking snaps during fall drills. Now that’s talent.

What’s New That Sucks: Rushel Shell is now active. The former all-world recruit from who ignominiously left Pitt because he couldn’t take a little bit of criticism from the world’s ‘neatest’ coach, Paul Chryst, then was rejected by the lads at UCLA, and landed at, of all places, West by gawd Virginia. Look, I try really hard not to root against college kids because they’re still kids and especially not against local kids but seriously.

Pitt, PSU & WVU College Football Predictions

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Aug 222014

… Or I’m Actually Going to to Predict the Results of Kids Playing College Sports?!

Aye, ’tis folly of the highest order to deign to predict the outcomes of college sports, especially the footballs. But that’s what makes it so fun. I did my best not to let my prejudices for (Pitt) or against (EVERYONE ELSE!!) affect my predictions too much. You be the judge but please remember that you suck. And I will block you on Twitter if I haven’t eaten yet and you’re annoying me. Just let me get something to eat first before you word-vomit all over me after a tough loss.

First up, let’s do Pitt…

I tried. I honestly tried to be realistic in the third column below. But historically realistic would also include at least one “HOLY SHIT WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU DOING?!” loss and one “SERIOUSLY, WHERE DID THAT COME FROM, WE RULE!!” win. But I want to believe that Paul Chryst is building something so I excluded the stupid loss. And no, I don’t think that beating Virginia Tech is a huge, off-the-wall win. They’re a fine program but one with which Pitt has traditionally been competitive (including last year in Blacksburg).

Date	Opponent	Location	Optimistic	Pessimistic	Middle
8/30/14	vs Delaware	Pittsburgh, PA	W	W	W
9/5/14	at BC *	Chestnut Hill, MA	W	L	W
9/13/14	at FIU	Miami, FL	W	W	W
9/20/14	vs Iowa	Pittsburgh, PA	W	L	L
9/27/14	vs Akron	Pittsburgh, PA	W	W	W
10/4/14	at UVA *	Charlottesville, VA	W	W	W
10/16/14	vs VT *	Pittsburgh, PA	W	L	W
10/25/14	vs GT *	Pittsburgh, PA	W	L	L
11/1/14	vs Duke *	Pittsburgh, PA	W	L	W
11/15/14	at UNC *	Chapel Hill, NC	L	L	L
11/22/14	vs Syr *	Pittsburgh, PA	W	W	W
11/29/14	at Miami *	Miami, FL	L	L	L
			10-2 (6-2 ACC)	5-7 (2-6 ACC)	8-4 (5-3 ACC)

Next up, the State Penn:

Lies, Damn Lies and My School’s Recruits Rule!

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Feb 072014

Or… Happy NLI Day!

College football fans are undoubtedly still basking in the glow of National Letter of Intent Day. Wherein they celebrate recruiting classes sure to lift them to the promised land.

People get bent out of shape over recruits, recruiting wars, verbal commitments, recruiting rankings; both pro and con. My belief is that they matter only insofar as there must be a great developmental and game-day coach behind them. It doesn’t matter that Charlie Weis pulled in Top-10 classes at Notre Dame; he just isn’t a good head coach. But put those same classes in the hands of Nick Saban or Urban Meyer and the team will excel to a much greater degree with those same kids.

On the flip side, statistics mean nothing to the individual. That’s why it’s not hard at all to point to players who weren’t highly-ranked who went on to great college success. Antonio Bryant was a 1-star recruit out of high school. Pitt offered him at the last minute and his only other offer was from Louisville. He won the Biletnikoff Award at Pitt and might have won two if not for an injury in his last season.

Antonio Bryant, Biletnikoff Award Winner & 1-star recruit

Coke and Chrysler not Coke vs Chrysler

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Feb 032014

When I was going to Pitt, I would occasionally walk by a group of older gentlemen who would gather in the bowels of Posvar Hall near the old Forbes Field home plate on weekends. They would chatter away in some foreign language, maybe Italian or Czech. I thought it was a quaint tradition, these old salts gathering to wile away the hours together. Doubtless they knew Englige but were probably more comfortable in their mother tongue.

Last night, during the Superbowl, Coke aired an advertisement of America the Beautiful being sung in different languages. It was a cute, sugary attempt to celebrate America’s diversity – the melting pot that has contributed to this country’s rise. No big deal, right?

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Coke Superbowl Ad

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A8iM73E6JP8

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Predictably, the Ignoranti of Twitter went ballistic! Here are a couple of my favorites of the ones as compiled by Deadspin:

America the beautiful shouldn’t be sung in any language other than English. #fuckcoke #gtfo #pos

— Josh Scarborough (@Jscarborough96) February 3, 2014

It’s God Bless America not Mexico so sing in English. #FuckCoke

— Allison Cruts (@allison_cruts31) February 3, 2014

Considering out constitution is in English I would appreciate out patriotic songs be the same. #fuckcoke

— Train (@col_train48) February 3, 2014

(Please excuse the expletives not deleted).

We don’t have an official national language. Never have. Maybe never will. This country has never been a bastion of English fluency. Consider places like Germantown, Little Italy and Polish Hill (an enclave in Pgh). European immigrants, for generations, clustered in these groups so as to make the transition from their homelands all the easier. Sounds of people chattering in their native language rang forth in these neighborhoods.

It’s unlikely that any immigrant would deny that learning/mastering English is key to getting ahead in this country. But mastering English is tough! It wasn’t uncommon for the parents’ generation to be much less fluent than their children who grew up in the USA. Watch the movie My Big Fat Greek Wedding – some version of that is being repeated within every ethnicity that comes to this country.

Today we have added in places like Chinatown, Koreatown or Little Havana, Little India or Little Bangladesh. And it’s easy to see the same story being repeated.

By the way, the CEO of PepsiCo, the alternative to Coca-Cola whom these nitwits will now turn, is an Indian woman.

Later in the evening, Chrysler aired a commercial featuring Bob Dylan. It was definitively, almost defiantly American – “So let Germany brew your beer, let Switzerland make your watch, let Asia assemble your phone. WE will build your car.”

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Bob Dylan – Chrysler Ad

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I think it’s likely that the same self-styled ENGLISH patriots who hated the multi-culti Coke ad probably loved the Chrysler ad. Because ‘murrica. Let’s just gloss over the fact that Chrysler is owned by Fiat, an Italian company. And before that it was owned by Daimler, a German company.

I liked both commercials and there is, in my opinion, no contradiction between the two ads. We can celebrate the contributions of immigrants in one breath.because this is a nation of immigrants (except for that part about massacring our aborigines with Guns, Germs, and Steel). And also recognize that some of the things we do here become uniquely ours… ours as Americans, encompassing our immigrants and ‘natives’. It’s a pretty big country. There’s room for a whole lotta people.

The Folly of Playoffs

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Jan 242014

I’m not a huge fan of playoffs (unless my team does well in them). They’re a vastly imperfect method of determining a champion. They usually only determine the team that is playing the best, that is the hottest at that end point of the season. A balanced, season-long race should be the only way that a Champion is determined.

This is the way it’s done in world Soccer (ie, Association Football). Each team plays every other team twice throughout the season. Winner gets 3 points. Loser gets 0 points. Tie gets 1 point for each team. Add up each team’s points and you have a winner. Home-and-home. No such thing as Strength of Schedule. A true league champion.

There are separate Cup Championships (elimination tournaments or playoffs, if you will) that run concurrently through the season. When an FC Barcelona fan talks about the club’s 22 titles, that number doesn’t include Cup Championships.

This is my definition of a true champion. I realize it will always be impossible to determine a true champion in the NFL, College Football and College Basketball. (As well as the other college sports). There are too many teams within each league to play a round robin schedule or even one-to-one.

But the NBA, NHL and MLB could have true champions. Eliminate conferences and divisions, which are remnants of the days when travel costs weighed more heavily on teams. Have each team play the same number of games against their brethren. Everyone’s travel costs will be the same if you play each other the same number of times. 3 points for an win (or shootout win in the NHL), 0 points for a loss.

The NHL, NBA and MLB each have 30 teams. Hockey and Basketball would play a home-and-home (2 games/opponent), which gets them to 58 games. MLB would play double home-and-home (4 games/opponent), which gets them to 116 games. That’s a not-insignificant decrease in inventory so add in simultaneous elimination tournaments (Cup Championships) and you should be able to replenish the inventory sufficiently.

I know, I know. I’m tilting at windmills. Americans can’t stomach regular season champions. We crave the supposed-certainty of a playoff. We would rather be provided with certainty, with absolute rules rather than any teeny-weeny sign of ambiguity. Bollocks to that.

Penn State Football Goes Outside of the Family, Hires James Franklin

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Jan 132014

Penn State football head coach James Franklin

So yeah, Penn State may just have knocked it out of the park. They went out and got a phenomenal recruiter with ties to PA and the northeast and an excellent game coach. Who will eventually leave them for the NFL. (Don’t think it’ll happen? He called it his Dream Job. Yeah, he’ll leave someday soon for his next dream job).

From what I read, Penn State wanted Miami Hurricanes head coach Al Golden. They may or may not have gone after (former) Tennessee Titans head coach Mike Munchak. Both alums. Then they turned to a non-alum, James Franklin, once-upon-a-time the head-coach-in-waiting at Maryland (wow, don’t they fell dumb right now) and author of back-to-back 9-win seasons at Vanderbilt. Seriously, Vanderbilt. The only ones doing a better job than Franklin did at Vanderbilt at similar academic institutions are David Shaw at Stanford and David Cutcliffe at Duke.

The drawback to the Franklin hiring is the specter of the sexual assault cases pending against a number of his former players. Most accounts say that he didn’t know and then booted those players pretty quickly from the Vanderbilt football team. It’s doubtful to me that this will have much of an effect on Franklin’s tenure at Penn State unless he’s somehow called to testify in their criminal cases.

Still, let the kool-aid drinking begin for Penn Staters. Enjoy it while you have him. Just don’t think he’ll stay for 20 years. Or even 10 years. No one does.

Bill O’Brien To Usher Penn State into the Club of Ordinary Programs

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Dec 302013

So it looks increasingly likely that Penn State head coach Bill O’Brien will be flying the coup. I’m honestly surprised it’s happening so soon. Not necessarily because I thought he’d see out the sanctions period. But because I didn’t think he’d become a serious candidate after only two years. Don’t get me wrong, he’s done yeoman’s work for PSU. I just didn’t think NFL teams would come calling so soon.

Even if O’Brien doesn’t jump ship this offseason, it’s a strong bet that he’ll leave very soon thereafter.

If I was PSU looking for his successor, I would stay clear of 49ers Offensive Coordinator Greg Roman and (former) Tampa Buccaneers Head Coach Greg Schiano, two names which garnered interest in their last coaching search. I’d even stay away former Pennstater and current (for now) Tennessee Titans Head Coach Mike Munchak. These are NFL guys. That’s where they want to be; at the supposed pinnacle of football coaching. (Personally, I don’t think that coaching, as opposed to playing, in the NFL is the peak of the profession though let’s leave that for another day).

Penn State Head Coach Bill O’Brien

Pitt Pulls an Anti-Pitt vs Bowling Green

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Dec 272013

By Paul_Chryst,_Pittsburgh_Panthers_Head_Football_Coach.JPG: Singregardless derivative work: Crazypaco [CC-BY-SA-3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

“Pitt” – it’s a noun, an adjective and a verb. It describes the football or basketball teams’ propensity for finding a way to mess up in a truly heart-breaking fashion. It’s not exactly choking, though that’s part of it. It’s finding a way to give fans hope and then failing to finish off an opponent in such a way as to engender crying while having a heart attack.

For instance, last year’s game versus Notre Dame. Pitt nearly upset Notre Dame a year ago, blowing a 14-point fourth-quarter lead in South Bend then allowing the Fighting Irish to escape in triple overtime, a victory that kept Notre Dame’s perfect regular season alive. Not only did Pitt lose that game in truly Pitt fashion, but it led to a chain of events that forced the country to watch Notre Dame ‘compete’ for the national title. Seriously, America, we still apologize for not beating ND last year.

This year, Pitt has had a number of close losses. Some have been straight choking dogs, like the losses to Virginia Tech and Georgia Tech, where Pitt couldn’t do a thing all game and just got beat. That’s not pulling a Pitt, strictly speaking. That’s just incompetence. The losses to FSU and Miami were just straight up beats. To pull a Pitt, the team has to show life, give hope and then find a craptacular way to crap it all away. (And yes, using crap consecutively was necessary).

Paul Chryst’s Pitt showed growth this season.

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