I think overhaul is overstating it. When I saw the headline, i got a bit excited. I was thinking that the NHL was going big. But of course they are not. All they are looking to do is have local rivals play more often and hopefully generate more interest that way. When Sid and Geno retire, 8 games vs the Blue Jackets instead of 3 aren’t gonna cut it.

If I’m the NHL, I’m going outside the box like the NBA has thought about doing and going with a Euro soccer style competition. Problem is, I don’t know how they could do it. I’d like to see an abbreviated league schedule so that every game matters and every goal matters. Think about the excitement for a Tuesday night game in November if the stakes were double what they are now. That’s part of the lure with American gridiron football and world football. Every game matters, whereas other sports that have an 80 or 162 game season have half their schedule where most fans don’t care.

An abbreviated NHL league schedule and a cup competition running concurrently at the same time and giving each team roughly 80 games of gate revenue would be ideal. You’d have the Stanley Cup as the big prize and then a second cup, call it the NHL Cup as a secondary competition. I just don’t know how you’d get there with 32 teams.

Come on Bettman. You can do better. You have a great sport. Be forward thinking. Time to change your Mickey Mouse garage run league into a good one.

Anyone have an SMF type deep thought?

The announcers of this WC game today said something that I think most of us knew already. That is with the exception of SMF when he stated that soccer players run constantly for 90 minutes a game . In fact if I remember correctly, he said they run for over 7 miles in a game (in 90 minutes) and most of them could run a marathon.
Today during the Argentina-Croatia game, they were talking about Lionel Messi (a man who is viewed around the world as one of the top soccer players in the world) and they stated it is going to be hard to tell if Messi hurt his leg or not because he walks around on the field 75% of the time he is out there.
Thank you to the announcers of this soccer game for helping to show that SMF was wrong.

Anyone need/want a ticket for game today. I am going and can meet anyone at gate. Text me if interested.

Why is he leaving?

On Wednesday, I ran down the various travels of Pat Narduzzi over the last two weeks of the contact period. We tracked the Pitt head coach through pretty much every stop he made; or, at the very least, we confirmed a minimum of one stop for every day Narduzzi was on the road since Dec. 2.

But there was one day we hadn’t confirmed yet. We had our suspicions and educated guesses, but we weren’t sure about where Narduzzi was planning to be on Thursday.

Well, we confirmed it, and as we suspected, Narduzzi spent Thursday in California.

Along with tight ends coach Tim Salem, Narduzzi was mostly in the Los Angeles area for the day. That included the expected visit with quarterback commit Ty Dieffenbach, but he had a few other visits that were pretty significant.

- One visit was with Kyle Williams, a transfer receiver from UNLV who graduated from Hawthorne High School - near LAX - in the recruiting class of 2020.

Williams had a good career at UNLV. He was the Mountain West Freshman of the Year in 2020 and was named to The Athletic’s Freshman All-America Second Team after he caught 35 passes for 426 yards and two touchdowns in six games.

In 2021 he pushed his totals to 42 catches, 601 yards and two more touchdowns, and this past season, he played nine games and caught 40 passes for 541 yards and five scores. That gave him three-year totals of 117 catches, 1.568 yards and nine touchdowns in 25 games.

After he entered the portal on Dec. 5, Williams picked up offers from Pitt, Cal, Washington State, Arizona, Oregon State, Colorado State, Hawaii, San Jose State and Fresno State.

I’ve also been told that Notre Dame and Michigan State are pushing for Williams, and he has heard interest from Penn State, West Virginia, Syracuse, Georgia, Rutgers, Cincinnati, Virginia and Boise State.

The big question is where Williams will visit this weekend. From what I can gather, it sounds like it will come down to a decision among Pitt, Cal and either Notre Dame or Michigan State; one of them will get an official visit this weekend and likely be in the driver’s seat to land his commitment.

Williams is getting on a plane today; it’s just a matter of figuring out where he’s flying to. Pitt is very much in the mix, but we’ll see if he comes in for a visit.

- The other visit Narduzzi made in the Los Angeles area was to see St. John Bosco receiver Israel Polk.

Polk got his offer on Thursday after showing up on Pitt’s radar about two days earlier. He had been committed to Colorado State but he reopened his recruitment late Wednesday night. About 13 hours later, the Panthers offered and immediately got him locked up for an official visit this weekend.

Polk plays for a loaded St. John Bosco team that went 13-1 this season and won a state championship. They are led by Pierce Clarkson, the four-star Louisville quarterback commit who was a target for Pitt earlier in the recruiting cycle, and 2024 running back Cameron Jones was the team’s most prolific scorer with 20 touchdowns.

But Polk was the Braves’ leading receiver, catching 26 passes for 458 yards and eight touchdowns. Those numbers may not jump off the page, but he did outpace fellow 2023 receiver DeAndre Moore, a four-star prospect who is committed to Louisville, and Polk finished as the third-leading scorer on a championship team that is No. 1 in the USA Today Sports Super 25 national high school football rankings.

That’s impressive.

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Now Polk is coming to Pitt for an official visit, and as is the case with the other two high school prospects visiting this weekend, I think the Panthers are in the driver’s seat.

- A quick note of interest: while looking up St. John Bosco’s national ranking, I noticed some other familiar teams in the Super 25:

4. Miami Central - with Pitt commit Lamar Seymore
11. St. Frances Academy - with Pitt commit Isaiah Neal
14. Lakeland (Fla.) - with Pitt commit Shadarian Harrison

If Polk ends up committing to Pitt, it seems pretty impressive to have commits on four of the top 25 high school teams in the country.

- Narduzzi also made a trip to Inglewood High School during his day in California (he and Salem were busy). Four-star tight end Jamari Johnson, who took an official visit to Pitt last weekend, attends Inglewood, but Narduzzi and Salem just met with Inglewood’s head coach during Thursday’s visit, though, since Johnson had already left town for his official visit to Oregon.

So the efforts are still being made, but my sense that Pitt probably would’t get Johnson unless they landed him on his official visit feels pretty accurate.

- Speaking of tight ends, the AJ Barner saga took a few interesting turns on Thursday. Word emerged that the Indiana transfer was set to visit Michigan this weekend - a surprising twist after Barner looked like a probable get for Pitt last week. The Wolverines are one of the newer entrants in his recruitment, but they took a strong position, and with him locking in a visit to Ann Arbor, it seemed like this was all but sewn up.

Except that wasn’t the whole story. Because while Barner does plan to visit Michigan this weekend, he was actually in Pittsburgh Thursday morning to meet with offensive coordinator Frank Cignetti. The morning visit gave Barner a quick look at the Panthers and certainly seemed more positive than the earlier news of his planned Michigan visit, but it still seemed like the end result was inevitable.

There were more developments coming, though. It turns out that Barner’s visit to Michigan is only one of three planned visits this weekend. Before he gets to Ann Arbor, Barner is going to take an unofficial visit to N.C. State and make a return trip to Pitt.

This time, he’s hoping to meet with Narduzzi and Salem, who - as we mentioned - were in California on Thursday.

I still think Pitt is going to have to play from behind here, just because Michigan is Michigan and the Wolverines have the added punch of being in the playoffs this year. But Barner’s early strong interest in the Panthers plus his two visits in three days make me think Pitt has a shot. They’ll have to impress him enough to survive the subsequent visit to Michigan, but there’s at least enough of a chance that we’re going to monitor this throughout the weekend.

Continued...

Thank God we have a game tomorrow.

I haven’t seen UNF play at all, but they are pretty terrible on paper. Their wins are against possibly 3 of the worst teams anyone will play all year, although they really should’ve beat Duquesne but choked it away at the end.

They play really fast and shoot a ton of 3s, but don’t make very many. They’re poor defensively in transition and seem to give up a lot of easy baskets.

Should be an easy win and I would expect to see very little of Hugley. There’s going to be too any possessions and he’s just too slow getting up and down the floor. If JB is able to play he should have 20+ against this team. It may be a good opportunity to experiment some with Jorge at the 5 as well assuming we have our full compliment of guards available.

H2P

Is going to the NFL will not use the last year,accepted invite to SR bowel

I just got off the phone with new Pitt transfer Donovan McMillon. I'll have an article shortly, but I asked what he wanted to say to Pitt fans:

“I’m just excited for the opportunity to go play for the city and go win a championship. That’s all that matters.”

What a cool custom make.
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This happened. Bad Times

This could be huge, as we currently only deal with Nuclear Fission

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Need a little help. Have not been to Oakland in a long time. Meeting my daughter Saturday night for dinner and a couple beers. She lives in Shadyside. Any suggestions for casual spot with good beer selection. Don't want to make her drive too far and it needs to be safe area. Maybe East liberty area as well. Any suggestions greatly appreciated.

Good stuff as always from @StephenGertz

Sun Bowl so far:
Pitt:
Slovis
Kancey

UCLA:
None

Really shocking when looking at other bowls where most have 8-10 per team opting out or injured

https://www.fantasypros.com/2022/12...r-opt-out-tracker-head-coaching-changes-2022/

Since some enjoy giving them a hard time for their perceived lack of coverage and/or bias against Pitt sports, I think they deserve praise for today’s coverage of the NCAA Volleyball tournament: A headline (in blue no less) and photo on the Front page and then the top story on the Sports pages, with more pictures.

I’m mildly surprised, assumed he wouldn’t get anything major but this sounds almost like total absolution.

Bishop Sycamore might be in this "kid's" future. Can easily pass for 35.