Pitt Panther Prowl

Big Year or Big Letdown?

13-9. That seems to be the refrain coming out of last season for Pitt’s football team. 13-9 seems even bigger than LeSean McCoy, a legitimate Heisman contender if Pitt can win enough games to keep him relevant in the race.

I don’t want to beat a dead horse into a large jar of Elmer’s Glue so I won’t talk about the Backyard Brawl. The reason I bring it up is that that one game has had such an effect on the way Pitt fans and the media remember last season; and it has helped to shape the expectations for next season. After that win, most of us forgot just how poor the season really was for Pitt (and that is what winning a rivalry game will do, especially when it keeps your rival from the BCS title game). It also, apparently, helped us undecided recruits choose Pitt, believing that beating WVU showed that this team is headed in the right direction. And who can forget that this win led to the resignation of, and instant demonization of Rich Rodriguez?

It truly worked in Pitt’s favor that they beat WVU the weekend they did. It was the end of the season. It was after a season of unranked teams knocking of number two ranked teams. It was, without a doubt, what kept WVU from playing for, and quite possibly winning a national championship. Because of that, Pitt has gotten more press than any of the other unranked teams that scored such upsets.

This truly was the stepping stone from which Pitt’s national visibility has returned. Add to that the buzz surrounding McCoy, the strong recruiting classes of the last few seasons, and the return of injured starters Bill Stull, Derek Kinder, and Gus Mustakis, and there are some lofty expectations on this team.

I have seen Pitt projected anywhere from seven to eleven wins this season, depending more on how other teams like WVU and Louisville perform. The latest round of expectations comes from Lindy’s College Football Preview. (See story on Pitt’s Official Site) Lindy’s has Pitt ranked number 23 in their preseason poll, in addition to having Scott McKillop listed as a preseason all-American and McCoy a second team preseason all-American.

There is no doubt that both of these players deserve all of the attention they have been getting. McKillop led the nation in tackles last year. McCoy was the leading freshmen rusher and set the freshmen Big East rushing record- not bad since he wasn’t the starter at the beginning of the season.

The question is this: will Pitt live up to all the hype by having a huge year? Or will we all be letdown by another underachieving team? The most difficult part of answering this question is accurately assessing what a ‘huge year’ would look like. A few months ago, eight wins seemed to be the real expectation. Seven wins would pass if the team showed a real growth. The more praise and puff heaped on this team in the preseason, the more expectation we have for them. I suspect that, at this point, anything less than nine or ten wins will lead to calls for Dave Wannstedt’s head. Whether those would be fair calls or not is more likely to be determined by how they lose rather than if they lose. If Pitt loses games they legitimately should have won, such as the Navy game, it will be tough for DW to quiet the critics.

On the other hand, it is entirely possible that this team will live up to our expectations. If they can win eight or nine games, have a solid offensive season, and get themselves into a New Year’s Day bowl game, that would be, in my opinion, an enormous success and a tremendous building block for coming seasons.

Maybe the hesitancy to really expect a breakout year for Pitt solely based on the [tremendous] talent on the roster comes from the way they haven’t delivered on talent in the past. We did, after all, have Larry Fitzgerald, Gerald Hayes, Claude Harriot, and several other nationally recognized players under our previous coach and failed to break into any real national prominence. The closest we got under Walt Harris was being picked to win big games that we never seemed to win.

The buzz around this team is different from the Harris-era buzz in the sense that it is based on solid recruiting classes and glimmers of hope on the field, as opposed to simply a few stud recruits surrounded by a team of average players. I do see there being more reason to expect great things from Pitt. McCoy and McKillop are just two of those reasons. 13-9 surely helps. But 13-9 is over and done with. For all the good it has done us, it won’t win us any games in 2008. Neither will all the media hype in the world. The players on the field and the coaching staff will have to do that. There is a lot of excitement. Here’s hoping that our Panthers are up to the task.