About that Pitt-Miami college football prediction I made Friday, never mind.
If only I were a heavy drinker, I could plead drunkenness. Would you believe it was the bit of undigested beef, blot of mustard, crumb of cheese or fragment of underdone potato like what Scrooge blamed for his hallucinations?
Didn’t think so.
Regardless, suggesting Pitt would play Miami close and easily could win outright have proved to be the ravings of a lunatic.
Oh, for a time it seemed to be on course early Saturday afternoon. Pitt scored at the outset of the second quarter to go up 7-3 and the prediction seemed to be prescient.
Then Miami scored and scored, and scored, on the way to a 38-7 demolition of the Panthers, before a crowd charitably announced at 49,845. Considering all those glaring yellow empty seats, Acrisure Stadium must hold 100,000-plus when full.
The people who stayed away from this Top 25 matchup knew better than I what to expect.
Pitt was, in the words of the announcers, “undisciplined.” When things went bad, it seemed as if the players were reading from the quotebook of coach Pat Narduzzi, but got confused. The “Narz” said he didn’t care if his team lost by 100 or more to Notre Dame, not to Miami.
Alas, the Panthers played as if they were willing to have a C-note laid on them.
Miami, inexplicably locked in a battle with Notre Dame — a team the Hurricanes beat this season — to get into the national championship playoffs, certainly would have liked a triple-digit final margin.
As it was, Miami beat Pitt by a larger amount than Notre Dame had two games back, not that it matters because, Notre Dame.
As a former high school football coach friend of mine used to say after one-sided losses, at least we (Pitt) saved the uniforms.
And now we contemplate whether the Steelers will underperform as badly as Pitt did. Recall, the second half of my Pittsburgh sports weekend parlay was the Steelers having good prospects against the visiting Bills Sunday.
The positive news is it would be tough for the Steelers to look more pathetic against Buffalo than Pitt did vs. Miami and, by extension, make my pick look as bad or worse.
Sam Ross Jr's site 