The 3-2-1 Column: Realignment, recruiting and more

MORE HEADLINES - A special announcement from Panther-Lair.com | Pitt commit Mintz was one of the summer's standouts | Champagnie goes undrafted | Pitt among the suitors for 2022 guard | PODCAST: Conference realignment and Pitt | 2023 Miami DB checks out Pitt | Beagle keeps close contact with the Panthers

In this week’s 3-2-1 Column, we’re thinking about conference realignment, what it means for Pitt and a lot more.

THREE THINGS WE KNOW

The answer to every question
As the 2021 season quickly approaches - look at the calendar: five weeks from Saturday, Pitt will be kicking off against UMass - there are plenty of topics to talk about. And yet the biggest topic of the week had nothing to do with the football that will be played on the field over the next four months.

You know what happened: Texas and Oklahoma are going to the SEC. Or, at least, they’re applying to go. But you don’t apply to join a new conference without knowing ahead of time that your application will be accepted.

We all know how these things work. We all saw it play out 10 years ago and we’re seeing it again. I don’t know if this move will have the wide-reaching reverberations that Nebraska’s move to the Big Ten had; only time will tell on that.

But I know, as you certainly do, that conference realignment serves to remind us of one very important, omnipresent truth:

Cash rules everything around us.

I know I’m stating the obvious, but every now and then we get a stark reminder of how true that is. There is no greater driving force than money; that’s true of just about every walk of life, but especially college athletics.

That’s why I don’t want to hear anybody from Texas or Oklahoma talk about tradition anymore. Don’t tell me the “horns up” gesture is meaningful when I know that you would turn it upside down in a heartbeat if you could make more money off it.

It’s all a cash grab. Maybe it always has been, but now the cash is so insane that there’s more of it to grab - and ever greater depths to sink for it.

In some ways, I actually admire Notre Dame. We all make fun of the Irish and their fans - especially their fans - for their condescension and their piety and their pomp and circumstance, but you know what: Notre Dame is probably the only school you can look at and say, “They aren’t entirely motivated by financial gain.”

I mean, yes, Notre Dame wants to make money. But it’s not everything for them. That NBC deal, as has often been cited, isn’t some huge money-maker; NBC pays Notre Dame roughly half of what ACC schools get, and the ACC is widely considered to have the worst TV deal of the Power Five conferences. Sure, the ACC also pays Notre Dame a few million every year, but even that leaves the Irish short of what Pitt and the rest get.

It’s because the NBC deal isn’t about getting Notre Dame the most possible cash; it’s about establishing Notre Dame as a singular entity, something Different and Special that exists slightly outside the realm of Everyone Else.

Vanity isn’t exactly a quality character trait, but at least it’s something other than money.

Again, none of this is new. And I can’t blame anyone because, hey, I like money, too. It’s just a reminder that almost every decision made everywhere by everyone had straight cash as a primary motivating factor.

One way it could go
I think at this point everybody has the same fear:

The SEC will keep growing until it has pulled all of the top teams into its tent, leaving the other leagues as shells of their former selves. Without the top teams, the other conferences will fail to get high-revenue TV deals and ultimately submit to the designation of “lesser leagues” while the SEC emerges as a singular super-conference.

That’s the fear. And the ACC, without a doubt, has to be concerned about the SEC making a play for Clemson and Florida State (which has probably already happened in some back-room deny-it-if-anyone-asks fashion). And I’m sure that if SEC commissioner Greg Sankey could get those two schools, he wouldn’t stop there: he would aim for the top and go after Ohio State and Michigan to fully create a separate and supreme entity in college football.

But maybe it doesn’t have to play out that way. Here’s one thing I think could - and maybe should - happen.

I think the leadership of the ACC, Big Ten and Pac-12 should get on a Zoom with the presidents and chancellors at West Virginia, Kansas, Kansas State, Iowa State, Oklahoma State, Texas Tech, TCU and Baylor and lay it out as follows:

“Listen guys, you know the Big 12 is done. You can run around and try to add Cincinnati and UCF and whoever else, but let’s be real - that’s not going to fix your problem. But maybe we can help you fix it.”

The proposal from there would be for the ACC, Big Ten and Pac-12 to carve up what's left of the Big 12 in such a way that gets each of those three leagues to 16 teams. The ACC and Big Ten would need two teams each; the Pac-12 would need four.

There are some logical ways to do that, like putting WVU in the ACC and Iowa State in the Big Ten (even if those two schools don’t necessarily bring new TV markets to those leagues). Send the three Texas teams to the Pac-12 along with Oklahoma State and then flip a coin on who gets Kansas and who gets Kansas State (I’m really not sure which would be the preferred option of those two).

Do that to get everybody to 16 teams and then call the SEC with a simple message: “We’ve we’ve got 48 teams together in three leagues and we represent 23 states where you have no presence, including some of the biggest television markets in the country. We’re a part of this, so let’s all go make boatloads of cash.”

Maybe the SEC says, “No thanks, we’ll take Clemson and Florida State and offer Ohio State like a billion dollars and we’ll be good.” Or maybe, just maybe, reorganizing into four 16-team super-conferences is just enough of a move to keep college football together for a little while longer.

Unless, of course, ESPN gets a few of those Big 12 teams to leave for the AAC.

Back on the market
Recruiting never stops, right? Amidst all of the big-picture moves in college football, coaches are still constantly recruiting and recruits are still constantly being recruited, and there was a pretty big move this week on the local recruiting scene.

That would be Tyreese Fearbry, the four-star defensive end from Perry who committed to Penn State on the Fourth of July and decommitted on Thursday, giving him roughly 25 days as a PSU commit.

Fearbry’s commitment and decommitment had a few things in common. Both were a bit unexpected: Fearbry spent most of June at Pitt and then committed to PSU after one official visit; turning around and decommitting less than a month later was something of a surprise, too.

At the same time, both decisions - the commitment and the decommitment - didn’t totally come from out of nowhere. While Fearbry has visited Pitt a lot in June, his post-visit comments on Penn State made it clear that James Franklin and company had greatly impressed him.

Similarly, nobody thought Fearbry would decommit so soon, but some cracks were apparent. He committed on July 4; that same day, PSU landed four-star defensive end Zane Durant, and 18 days later, five-star end Dani Dennis-Sutton committed. The Lions also have four-star end Ken Talley on board, and he had a reaction to Fearbry’s announcement on Thursday.

Plus, Penn state got Keon Wylie, who could move from linebacker to end, the day before Fearbry committed.

What I’m saying is, this is a fairly crowded - and loaded - defensive end class. It’s not like Fearbry was the least among those ends, but it’s also not too surprising that somebody from that group decided to bail.

And through it all, whether we expected Fearbry to decommit or not, whether we expected it to happen now or later, there was never any question that Pitt would keep recruiting him. Cory Sanders and Charlie Partridge have put in a lot of time in with him, and they weren’t going to stop just because he committed to Penn State. Now he’s back on the market, and Pitt is going to go all-out for him again. My guess is, this recruitment isn’t over by a long shot. Even if Fearbry commits to another school in relatively short order, I imagine there’s still going to be activity all the way through Signing Day.

TWO QUESTIONS WE HAVE

Is that what they think of Pitt?
The ACC media, in all of its infinite wisdom and nonpartisan analysis, released its annual preseason poll this week. The poll itself is like every other preseason poll: a simple math equation of last year’s performance minus key players lost, with bonus points for having a name that people respect.

Other than the ducks-in-a-barrel choice of picking Clemson to win the whole thing, there’s not a lot that goes into the preseason polls. We all talk about them, but the truth is, preseason polls don’t mean whole lot, particularly since actual games will determine the outcomes.

And, you know, when you see N.C. State getting a first-place vote in the Atlantic Division, it kind of tells you what the whole exercise is worth.

Still, if the ACC media is going to go to the trouble of compiling a poll, the least we can do is talk about it, I suppose. So let’s do that.

Pitt was picked to finish fourth in the Coastal Division this year, behind everyone’s current darling (runaway Coastal favorite North Carolina), everyone’s 1980’s darling (Miami) and everyone’s contractually obligated darling (Virginia Tech).

Whatever. I understand why North Carolina is No. 1; they have Sam Howell, possibly the best quarterback in the league. I understand why Miami is there; they have the best athletes in the division, and we know they have the best athletes in the division because of the U on the side of their helmets. And I understand why Virginia Tech is there; they have….well, okay, I’m not really sure why Virginia Tech is there.

But why is Pitt ahead of Virginia, Duke and Georgia Tech? What separates the Panthers? And should they be higher?

It starts with Kenny Pickett, the rare fourth-year starting quarterback in college football. From there, you have the defense, which has been good enough for long enough to build a reputation for and expectation of strong play. Throw in some odds and ends like a top-of-the-conference receiver and punter, and that’s the case for Pitt.

Of course, the case against Pitt is that the offense has been rather lowly the last few years - basically since 2016 - and the defense has proven to be susceptible to talented quarterback play (although most teams are). And the trend in the last few years of losing the real separation games is not a good one either.

Basically, ACC media doesn’t think it can rely on Pitt for much more than a middle-of-the-pack finish, so that’s where the Panthers ended up: the middle of the pack. Behind three teams and ahead of three.

Can Pitt do better?
We can all acknowledge that preseason polls don’t mean a whole lot, but let’s reflect on them for just a moment longer. Because if we look at preseason ACC polls in the Pat Narduzzi era…well, there’s a trend there.

In fact, there’s a pretty positive trend for Pitt, insofar as the Panthers have outperformed their preseason prognostication in almost every one of the last six seasons.

In 2015, Narduzzi’s first season, Pitt was picked to finish sixth in the Coastal Division and ended up finishing second.

In 2016, Pitt was picked to finish third and finished in a tie for second.

In 2017, Pitt was picked to finish fourth and actually finished fourth.

In 2018, Pitt was picked to finish fifth and won the whole Coastal Division.

In 2019, Pitt was picked to finish fourth and wound up in a tie for third.

And last season, Pitt was picked to finish eighth in the division-less ACC and ended up in a tie for sixth.

You can see the trend:

In five out of the last six seasons, Pitt has finished higher than its preseason polling spot. And in the one season where the Panthers didn’t exceed the media’s expectations, they finished exactly where the poll put them (and that was easily Narduzzi’s worst season).

Granted, we’re juking the stats just a little bit here with how we’re positioning the tie in 2016. That year, Pitt was tied for second in the Coastal with North Carolina and Miami; all three teams were 5-3 in ACC play that season, but Pitt lost to both UNC and Miami.

Pitt was in a tie with UNC and Miami in 2019, too, as all three teams were 4-4. But I think the Panthers would actually win that tiebreaker. They beat UNC and UNC beat Miami, so it goes to win percentage in division games; Miami was 2-4 against the Coastal, while Pitt and UNC were 3-3, so the Hurricanes drop out, leaving Pitt against UNC and the Panthers won that head-to-head.

Either way, the ACC says that tiebreakers are only applied when determining the division champ, so we can split whatever hairs we want but I’ll opt for the more positive spin:

Pitt has outperformed its preseason poll placement in five of the last six years.

That’s a pretty positive trend, and it would seem to bode well for Pitt’s chances in 2021.

ONE PREDICTION

This will be cool
Hopefully you saw the announcement we made this morning:

Panther-Lair.com is going to be the home of the Kenny Pickett Show for the 2021 football season.

Starting next Wednesday - two days before the players report - and continuing every Wednesday throughout camp and the season, Kenny will join me for an exclusive discussion of everything going on in Pitt football. We’ll be breaking down the last game, previewing the next game, talking about the team and, most of all, following Kenny as he moves through his final season at Pitt.

You don’t find a lot of four-year starting quarterbacks in the country, but that’s what Pitt has - and with this show, we’re going to have a front-row seat on the culmination of his career. We all know what’s on the line for Pitt and Pat Narduzzi in 2021; short of truly going behind the scenes, I think this show is going to give us a great look at what’s happening with the Panthers on a week-to-week basis from the perspective of their redshirt senior starting quarterback.

I’m really excited about this. We’ve never done anything like this before. We’ve never had this kind of weekly, direct and candid insight from a player - especially a prominent one like Kenny. And he’ll be with us every Wednesday from now until December (with a break during the off week).

There will be opportunities for you to get involved as well. Each week, we’ll take questions from Panther-Lair.com subscribers for an “Ask Kenny” segment. We’ll moderate those questions, of course, but I think it will be fun to have a little Q&A between Kenny and the fans.

So this should be a lot of fun. No one knows what this season will bring, but I am almost 100% positive it won’t be boring. Kenny will be with us each week to talk about what’s happening, good or bad, and I hope you enjoy it as much as I think you will.