Pitt should win this afternoon, and I think we all know what that means.

No need to say it out loud.

A little subtlety never hurts.

Let's just couch it this way: When Pitt is not expected to win, as was the case last weekend when it took a backup quarterback to Notre Dame and survived four overtimes, and as was the case when it went on the road to encounter 10th-ranked South Florida, Pitt wins, but the diametric opposite is true to the same extent.

Yeah, that ought to do it.

Most of us are told to expect the unexpected and, as linguistically if not psychologically impossible as that is (if I can expect it, how can it be unexpected?), Pitt fans don't need to be told.

This is not a phenomenon localized within the football season in progress, but rather has plenty of topical spillover. Pitt was expected to beat Navy at home last year, but gave up 48 points and lost in overtime. Pitt was expected to deliver an approximate 48-point loss at West Virginia last December, instead it allowed only nine points (two of them purposely self-inflicted), boxed the 'Eers from the national championship game, and blasted clear to Michigan one Rich Rodriguez, last seen tumbling down the steps toward the Big Eleven cellar.

Beano Cook has a word for all this.

"Onbelievable!"

So here comes Louisville, desperate for the noon kickoff at Heinz Field just for the chance to wipe the stink off its uniforms from the "performance" against Syracuse last week. Syracuse not only beat Louisville, 28-21, but it also padded its stats against the Cardinals, specifically the one that now gives the Orange three wins in its past 25 Big East games.

Pitt and Louisville engender expectations of a high-scoring production (virtually guaranteeing that Louisville will win, 3-2) because the teams' defenses have something in common: They're terrible. Pitt and Louisville have each held exactly one opponent to fewer than 20 points this year, although, true, Pitt managed to hold Rutgers to fewer than 60. Louisville limited to 10 the footballers of Tennessee Tech, a team that went on to lose by four touchdowns to Tennessee Martin.

Tennessee Martin, wasn't he the bass player for Earl Scruggs?

Pitt's defense has allowed just 87 points in its past two games, but no matter what happens to the Panthers when they don't have the ball, middle linebacker Scott McKillop continues to average two significant awards per week from someone. By December, he'll have nothing left to win but the Nobel.

McKillop started the season on the Walter Camp Player of the Year Watch List, the Chuck Bednarik Watch List, the Bronko Nagurski Watch List, and the Rotary Lombardi Watch List, but part of Pitt's unpredictability is that McKillop isn't often enough on the Go To The Sideline For A While And Just Watch List.

The splendid senior linebacker's defensive teammates are allowing a 40 percent third-down conversion rate, and his friends on offense tend to deliver pass-heavy three-and-outs that put him right back on the field.

Though starting quarterback Bill Stull will return to the Panthers' lineup today, Pitt is still better served when it insists on letting tailback Shady McCoy power the offense. That will be especially true today, which, according to the National Football Foundation and College Hall of Fame, is the approximate anniversary of that day in 1879 when Princeton beat Harvard, 1-0, by unveiling the concept of using blockers to help advance the ball.

Blockers huh? They ain't Ivy Leaguers for nothin' up 'ere. I noticed they also unveiled the concept of kicking the extra point before a touchdown. Or something.

There's one more thing that's at work in the volatile Pitt-Louisville chemistry, and it's not that the Cardinals have won seven consecutive meetings dating to 1983 or that Dave Wannstedt teams have never beaten Louisville. Rather, it's the fairly severe allergies both programs have to being ranked.

Louisville only had to receive a few votes from pollsters -- not actually get ranked -- to fall on its face at Syracuse. But nobody goes from ranked to rank like Pitt. Ranked 25th for the home opener against Bowling Green, Pitt played as if it had just added football as an intercollegiate activity. Ranked 17th when it hosted Rutgers two weeks ago, Pitt played as if it were considering dropping football.

To be perfectly accurate, Pitt went to Navy last month ranked 23rd and spanked the Middies, 42-21.

So yeah, Pitt should win today.

What a relief for Louisville.