Published Tuesday, Aug. 26, 1997
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1997 season preview
New Panthers hope to shake their losing ways
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1997 schedule Aug. 30, Southwestern Louisiana, 3:30 p.m. Sept. 6, at Penn State, 3:30 p.m. Sept. 13, at Houston, 3 p.m. Sept. 18, Miami, 8 p.m. Oct. 4, at Temple, noon Oct. 11, Notre Dame, 3:30 p.m. Oct. 25, at Rutgers, noon Nov. 1, at Boston College, 3:30 p.m. Nov. 15, Syracuse, 3:30 p.m. Nov. 22, Virginia Tech, 3:30 p.m. Nov. 28, at West Virginia, 2:30 p.m. |
By Alan Robinson
AP Sports Writer
PITTSBURGH _ Almost everything related to University of Pittsburgh football is new.
The coach. The athletic director. The assistant coaches. The uniforms. The colors. The offense. Many of the players.
Even the name is different: Pitt is out, Pittsburgh is in, as athletic director Steve Pederson tries to more closely align a campus that often seems an island unto itself with the surrounding city.
Unfortunately for new coach Walt Harris, something hasn't changed: The schedule.
Unyielding and unforgiving, it is filled with four preseason Top 25 teams and enough potholes from Labor Day to Thanksgiving to convince Harris that the Panthers' home games have been moved to the Fort Pitt Bridge.
Penn State. Notre Dame. Miami. Boston College. Syracuse. Virginia Tech. West Virginia. Somehow, the Panthers avoided Florida and Florida State.
With a schedule like that, you can't win _ and the Panthers aren't expected to, especially after going 25-52-1 with no bowl game appearances and only one winning season since 1990.
Pederson is right. Since the Panthers began a steady, precipitous downfall with a 3-7-1 record under Foge Fazio in 1984 _ 13 years and five coaches ago _ Pitt most definitely hasn't been it, except for two bowl appearances under former coach Mike Gottfried in the late 1980s.
``But someday soon here, people will be complaining about the schedule (being too easy),'' said Harris, the former Ohio State offensive coordinator. ``And I want them complaining, because that means we're winning.''
Lately, Pittsburgh has meant only losing.
Not even Johnny Majors, revered in Pittsburgh for transforming one of college football's most forlorn programs into a national champion in 1976, could rebuild the Panthers again. They were 12-32 from 1993-96 under Majors, who resigned in November amid speculation he would be fired if he didn't.
Everybody was wrong: Johnny couldn't come marching home again.
Exit, Majors. Enter, Walt Harris, the former University of the Pacific coach who has been an offensive assistant at Illinois, Ohio State, Tennessee and with the New York Jets.
``I knew what I was getting into,'' Harris said. ``If I didn't think it could be done here, I wouldn't be here.''
Harris' immediate plan is to copy the rebuilding jobs of two other coaches at schools that supposedly had no chance of winning, Gary Barnett at Northwestern and Bill Snyder at Kansas State.
The colors _ now, a Notre Dame-like shade of dark blue and gold _ and uniforms have been changed to create a new identity and to sever all ties to the past. The practices, which varied in intensity under Majors from occasionally demanding to often lax, are longer and tougher. Conditioning isn't optional but mandatory, in season and out. Players don't go home for the summer, they go to the weight room.
To get the fans back, at least for now, Harris will run a copycat of the high-performance West Coast offense he helped install as the Jets' quarterbacks coach.
``With this system, there's no reason for our quarterbacks to fail,'' Harris said. ``They may not always play great, but they should always play well.''
Next up: Improving recruiting and making the non-Big East portion of the schedule less demanding. Within a few years, Pederson hopes to excise some of the opponents who ensure big gates, but, also big defeats _ like last year's 72- 20 loss to Ohio State _ with opponents that are easier to beat.
On the field, the Panthers return nine starters on offense and seven on defense, although some might perceive that as a negative. Harris doesn't.
The West Coast offense is in, and so is a more aggressive defensive scheme. Neither of his quarterbacks, holdover Matt Lytle or the more mobile Pete Gonzalez is an exceptional down-field thrower, but in this offense they may not have to be.
``We're all getting a second chance now, and I know we're all looking forward to it,'' Gonzalez said. ``We're not thinking about the past now.''
The Panthers' deepest position is tailback, where former junior college transfer Dwayne Schulters has beaten out Billy West, the 1994 Big East offensive player of the year. West ran for 1,358 yards that season, but has spent much of the last two years in the trainer's room.
Fortunately for Schulters, West and fullback Chris Schneider, the offensive line returns mostly intact, led by right tackle Tony Orlandini and right guard Reggie Thomas.
Suggestion to Schulters and West: Get the ball, then turn right.
The defense got big contributions from a pair of freshman last season, lineman Demond Gibson and strong safety Seth Hornack, and leading tackler Curtis McGhee returns to safety after playing out of position at linebacker.
Harris also is convinced the Panthers will play better and with more confidence than last season, when he said they ``surrendered'' during a succession of bad losses.
Still, a schedule that sends the Panthers on the road for six of 11 games _ and keeps them at home only twice from Aug. 31 until Nov. 15 _ simply may be too much, too soon, too demanding.
