part of the problem but way more to it than that. Michigan state has lots of fans and money and most years will never be better than #4 in the Big 10. Same with Arkansas and South Carolina.
Good season?
- Thread starter cpc247
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part of the problem but way more to it than that. Michigan state has lots of fans and money and most years will never be better than #4 in the Big 10. Same with Arkansas and South Carolina.
That's silly. The fan base didn't make Narduzzi hire Cignetti, who implemented terminology so complex that guys still don't know where to line up and a talented Barden can't even get on the field... all this on top of the fact that his system and our QB are oil and water. We have the horses this year; we just pissed it away.
Now, moving forward, yeah - the recruiting is really starting to hurt us, and we are headed for a very sobering period in Pitt football. That is somewhat on the fans. Not me, though. I bitch a lot, but I show up.
I would buy an argument that we should be 8-3 right now, but the lack of talent and injuries on offense isn’t Cignetti’s fault. Barden can’t even line up properly.
We should we 9-2 at the very worst. We DOMINATED Georgia Tech and Louisville and pissed all over ourselves. And if you say we should have lost to WVU, then I present to you Tennessee. We have enough talent to be undefeated with this schedule. The problem is we may never have this much talent (and I realize we're not exactly loaded, but the ACC is so... freaking... bad) in comparison to our opposition again.
There are no college teams that come out and play well in every game. Teams like Georgia just overcome it because of the talent gap. Tennessee and UNC are more talented. We were lucky to win a couple games and should not have lost to GT. It all balances itself out. I’d buy we should be 8-3, but that’s it. Too many holes on offense - QB, WR, OL
Duke and Syracuse are the games we played like shit in (at least on offense) and still won because of a talent gap. Even Virginia Tech to a degree.
If you go back and watch the first half. Count the number of starters injured by the end of week 2.
Watch how Slovis is playing. Making good quick decisions and delivering the ball on time. I'm fairly certain he still isn't 100% following that hit to end first half..
If you want to blame anyone for this season's results- the former AD who scheduled these OOC games. We will see the same issues next season as well.
I won't turn this thread into politics.
Not a dime. Not even a cent. I donate to the ASPCA and Humane Animal Rescue. I also give to people, in the form of various items throughout the year for the needy and various ad hoc GoFundMe campaigns, etc. Never - and I mean NEVER - will I give even a Tic Tac to some punk who is going to college for free (I'm still paying my loans off) and wants to wage bidding wars behind the scenes only to dishonor his commitment and leave coaching staffs/fans/other players high and dry the second another schools outbids the one he pledged to attend. F that. I buy season tickets; I attend the games; and I give to the athletic department. I wouldn't give a pair of used underwear to this ego-laden NIL fund. If you do contribute to it, I might encourage you to reassess your priorities.
I wouldn't read too much into Slovis's performance against Tennessee. Other than Young, Thomas, and Banks, Tennessee's defense is sorely lacking in talent. They are horrible.
And this attitude about the NIL is a large reason Pitt has a recruiting class ranked around 60. Lucky for Pitt, a lot of other ACC programs have fans with same attitude.
I'm not saying I disagree with you. Not at all. It's just where the college game is at today.
I don't. But I'm also not on here bitching about recruiting. Anyone complaining about recruiting but not helping the NIL fund has only themself to blame.
Agreed - The people that complain about attendance, but yet don’t attend the game are the ones that get me.
These aren't Everyday Joes who are buying recruits. The ones the fans are funding are going to like 100+ players evenly and aren't significant enough to be a tear drop in the effing ocean. Beyond that, though, is the fact that there are schools ahead of us in recruiting who have even less fan support.
I know your M.O. is to just be content with literally whatever happens, so why even be a fan? If we recruit 15th or 75th you'll be happy with that. If we finish 4-8, 6-6, 8-4, or 10-2 you'll be happy with that. I don't really see the point.
I'll repeat - if you don't help with NIL, then you have no right to complain about recruiting without pointing a finger at yourself.
As for me, You're partially right. I'm happier when Pitt recruits well. But I'm never unhappy when they don't recruit well - because A) I can't do anything about it and B) I fully understand where Pitt sits in the pecking order of college football.
I'm a fan because I am 2 times alumnus of Pitt and I enjoy college football. But, again, I recognize where football stands in the priorities at an institution of higher learning. It isn't priority #1 at Pitt and it most definitely is not priority #1 of its alumni.
Also, Pitt's fans not supporting NIL still doesn't explain the 10-20 teams with worse fan support that are ahead of us.
Beyond that, I'm not pointing any fingers at myself. I'll just quit watching if we start to blow. I can flip a switch just like that; I've done it with other sports/interests/hobbies. It'd probably be better for my sanity anyway, as I'm not a huge fan for how the head coach is running this program at the moment. And I'm certainly not a fan of NIL culture. It actually upsets me that anyone would contribute to that and makes me lean toward not wanting to watch this stuff anyway. At least now I can trick myself into believing some of these guys are playing for each other, the city, etc. I don't really feel like watching a bunch of mercenaries play a game. At the end of the day, it's just a stupid game after all. It's all the other stuff (the pride, the pageantry, the fans, etc.) that make it something bigger. But when it's reduced to being about NIL and selfishness, it becomes its lowest form. That doesn't appeal to me at all.
Beyond that, I'm not pointing any fingers at myself. I'll just quit watching if we start to blow. I can flip a switch just like that; I've done it with other sports/interests/hobbies. It'd probably be better for my sanity anyway, as I'm not a huge fan for how the head coach is running this program at the moment. And I'm certainly not a fan of NIL culture. It actually upsets me that anyone would contribute to that and makes me lean toward not wanting to watch this stuff anyway. At least now I can trick myself into believing some of these guys are playing for each other, the city, etc. I don't really feel like watching a bunch of mercenaries play a game. At the end of the day, it's just a stupid game after all. It's all the other stuff (the pride, the pageantry, the fans, etc.) that make it something bigger. But when it's reduced to being about NIL and selfishness, it becomes its lowest form. That doesn't appeal to me at all.
Bottom line, perennial mediocre performance, in a market “someone else” supposedly dominates (which I don’t believe is true, but it seems everyone believes) … almost certainly dooms Pitt when the inevitable happens. If most here enjoy our 6-6, 7-5 type seasons because you accept the ‘pecking order’ that is fine, it is actually admirable in some ways… but it can’t continue.
Much like donations to the AD, contributions to NIL by everyday gibrones like those who waste time on message boards, are very nice and make people feel good. But those 3 and occasionally 4 figures aren’t changing things.
NIL was nothing, and I mean nothing, more than signaling College Football programs that large donor mega-money to acquire players and better coaches, was now ‘legal’. The charade was over. Schools setting up these Gibrone NIL are little more than PR. They’ll collect a few thousand bucks, great. Buy some fancy hotel restaurant meals for the OL. Good for the humorous news clips showing them out and carousing.
But what the AD’s NEED to be doing is hit the pavement to appeal the huge donors to set up mega NIL entities. Guys with high 7 but more likely 8 or 9 or more figures of net worth, with the type A personalities that everything they are involved in must be WINNERS. Also, big money Former players like Donald, Fitz, Revis, Shady etc. These need to be the true backbone for NIL to actually do anything.
Problem is that Pitt chased most of these types away for the last 40 years because (gasp) giving money to players was (double gasp) ILLEGAL. This is EXACTLY why we sucked for nearly those 40 years while the programs that welcomed the cheating (as it was then) became big winners and prospered. Pitt administration’s BS selective ‘morality’ (we’re so moral that we just welcomed back a player who struck and threw bleach at his child’s mother) and general spineless attitude caused this. I’ll repeat, you and i giving 500 or a thousand bucks is nice, but it won’t buy even the chin straps for championship players. The mega donors need to be ferociously solicited. The AD has to forget the volleyball nonsense for now, her first and only priority is to tirelessly hit the phones, get on airplanes, pound the pavement to get the mega donors involved.
NIL was nothing, and I mean nothing, more than signaling College Football programs that large donor mega-money to acquire players and better coaches, was now ‘legal’. The charade was over. Schools setting up these Gibrone NIL are little more than PR. They’ll collect a few thousand bucks, great. Buy some fancy hotel restaurant meals for the OL. Good for the humorous news clips showing them out and carousing.
But what the AD’s NEED to be doing is hit the pavement to appeal the huge donors to set up mega NIL entities. Guys with high 7 but more likely 8 or 9 or more figures of net worth, with the type A personalities that everything they are involved in must be WINNERS. Also, big money Former players like Donald, Fitz, Revis, Shady etc. These need to be the true backbone for NIL to actually do anything.
Problem is that Pitt chased most of these types away for the last 40 years because (gasp) giving money to players was (double gasp) ILLEGAL. This is EXACTLY why we sucked for nearly those 40 years while the programs that welcomed the cheating (as it was then) became big winners and prospered. Pitt administration’s BS selective ‘morality’ (we’re so moral that we just welcomed back a player who struck and threw bleach at his child’s mother) and general spineless attitude caused this. I’ll repeat, you and i giving 500 or a thousand bucks is nice, but it won’t buy even the chin straps for championship players. The mega donors need to be ferociously solicited. The AD has to forget the volleyball nonsense for now, her first and only priority is to tirelessly hit the phones, get on airplanes, pound the pavement to get the mega donors involved.
Nothing feels good about it as I really have not witnesses one satisfying win all year. Talent-wise this team should never have had more than 2 loses at most based on the competition they played. The WVU win was nice but I needlessly sat that on pins and needles thinking that Pitt should have won by 17 +.
Decent analogy. Coincidentally my family and I are in the Caribbean on vacation this week and met a family whose kid was plucked out of 8th grade to go to IMG academy as a soccer goalie. He was on an elite Baltimore area club and was identified early on by the IMG people as a prodigy and has boarded there on schollie ever since. He was 6’1 in 8th grade and expected to get to 6’4. Well he’s a senior now, he’s still 6’1 and the D1 coaches stopped calling after his soph year, the D2s stopped after his junior year. He’s now hoping for an offer to a good D3 program which has not come yet.
the former AD who scheduled these OOC games... ya mean games against other middle of the road US Universities Alice?
There is talent on offense…cignetti is just massively boggling how it’s used
