Pitt vs. Iowa: Bad loss, big win in 1 day
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IOWA CITY, Iowa
Does Pitt have great timing or what?
It applies for membership in the Atlantic Coast Conference on the same weekend it has one of the worst collapses in its football history?
"Thanks, chancellor Nordenberg, for your interest in our great conference. We really appreciate it. But we don't want Pitt at this time."
OK, so I write that paragraph in complete jest. Pitt's potential move to the ACC is about so much more than one horrible game of football and an almost unbelievable 31-27 loss Saturday to Iowa at Kinnick Stadium. Pitt would be a great addition to any of the soon-to-be super conferences, both as an athletic program and, at the risk of sounding incredibly naïve, as a research institution. I know, you laugh. Everybody knows this conference realignment stuff surely isn't about academics and Rhodes Scholars, but rather television money and staying power.
If you can look past the loss at Kinnick Stadium, you will see that this likely will be remembered as one of the great weekends in Pitt history. It proves that chancellor Mark Nordenberg and athletic director Steve Pederson are being proactive at time when the rapidly changing world of college athletics calls for aggressive leadership.
It must just about kill Nordenberg to plot a move to abandon the Big East Conference. No one other than former commissioner Mike Tranghese fought harder to keep the Big East together after Miami, Virginia Tech and Boston College left for the ACC years ago. But Nordenberg is a brilliant administrator. He knows Pitt can't be left standing alone after the conference dominoes are done falling. It appears the Big East has very little chance of surviving as a football conference.
An even better day for Pitt will be when the ACC reaches out to it with welcoming arms, perhaps as soon as today. The ACC is not the Big Ten. That would be the best landing spot for Pitt by far. But moving to the ACC is light years better than staying in the Big East and trying to add leftovers after the Big Ten, Pacific-12, Southeastern Conference and ACC are done feasting.
In that sense, this loss to Iowa seems almost trivial.
Of course, we won't treat it as such today.
It was a terrible defeat, one that makes new coach Todd Graham's mission to build Pitt into a championship contender that much more difficult.
Quarterback Tino Sunseri's performance was fairly typical of Pitt's game. Graham praised him for doing "some great things," including throwing touchdown passes to wide receiver Devin Street and H-back Drew Carswell. "For the first time, I stood on the sideline and thought, 'This is how it's supposed to look,'" Graham said of his now infamous "high-octane" offense.
First Published September 18, 2011 12:00 am
