**** BREAKING RECRUITING NEWS ****

Well, not really, but interesting doings with the recruiting front lately.  Pitt just landed their QB of the future, possibly, perhaps, in local kid Jack Salopek from Norwin HS. A 3* recruit he grabbed the first actual offer that came along and will now be a Panther behind Pickett, Patti and 2019’s Davis Beville.

Beville’s mother, Cruella, said this about Salopek; “If he thinks he’s seeing the field as long as my son Davey is at Pitt he can crawl right back to that dirty, smelly steel mill his daddy probably works in.”  When the POV tried to explain that there were no more steel mills in Pittsburgh Cruella shouted “Of course not, it’s a loser town. I wanted Dangerous Dee to be a Gamecock at South Carolina but they didn’t offer him! Damn Muschamp to hell!”

Salopek has some pretty nice numbers after his sophomore year at Norwin so that’s all well and good – I just think committing yourself to a kid in 10th grade is premature but that’s the way of college ball these days.

So now Pitt fans can’t complain in June of next year that Narduzzi doesn’t have any commitments yet.  Hey, that maybe why we offered this kid!

In the “Duh” department 5* Paris Johnson Jr verballed to Ohio State.  You’ll remember Pitt signed his father on as a “FOP” (Friend of Pat’s) hire a while back.

The less cynical Pitt fans will point to his hire and say “Hey, he’s well qualified in his own right“.  Others will say it was an incentive for drawing his son to Pitt’s 2020 recruiting class.  Who knows really?  Doesn’t matter one bit because if you look at the kid’s offer sheet Pitt had virtually no shot at him anyway – new Director of Player Personnel or not.  But it does have a scent of ‘we swung and missed’ to it.

So what does Pitt do instead – jumps on the next bandwagon and is about to offer a kid from Imhotep Charter (I watched a bad movie about some dude named Imhotep a few years ago).  Here is a bit from PSN on the kid:

Pitt is still looking to add a big, athletic wide receiver for this recruiting class and Karam Cummings fits that profile.

The backstory to Cummings is an interesting one because he’s never played varsity football. 

Up until now he’s been a basketball player at Imhotep Charter in Philadelphia. However, a month ago, The 6-foot-4, 185 pound Cummings had a conversation with Imhotep Charter star safety Tykee Smith, who convinced him that he could be a star playing football.

Cummings has been working out with the team and opening some eyes. In fact, yesterday Cummings picked up a Power Five offer from Baylor.

Just like The Great Carnac I know what some Pitt fans are going to say even before they say it:  “But remember Sam Clancy – he didn’t play football in high school or Pitt and he was in the NFL!!”

Well, this kid hasn’t played a lick of football either or college BB so what does that mean…?  Maybe he’s not the best player to use an actual scholarship on?  Get him on the roster as a walk-on or something but if we offer this young man a football scholarship we’ll never hear the end of it. This smacks of desperation but its early days yet – let’s hope we find an actual WR to help us next season.

By the way – what happened to the last player who we talked about being so good even though he didn’t play much football in high school? Oh, that’s right – Thomas MacVitte.  How did that work out for us?

Pitt was pursuing 3* RB Brandon Wright but he chose PN’s old school rather than Pitt (and others).  Word is that Pitt was heavily recruiting Wright because 4* RB Daniel Carter took an official visit to Pitt last weekend then not only didn’t commit along with the bunch of other Florida recruits but went home and stated that ‘Pitt was in his Top 10’ after his visit.

That is a turn of events Pitt probably didn’t see coming.  Usually when a kid leaves his first official visit, and you know we rolled out the red carpet for him and his parents, then has less interest than before he arrived there is a problem – so Wright was Pitt’s second choice.  Next up!

The question burning through the Pitt Nation is when is Narduzzi going to get some offensive linemen committed in the ’19 class.  As of right now we have none.  Get on that Pat.  Last class we signed three of them – two of them from local areas.

Which is an interesting conundrum  – if Pitt fans keep saying there is no more talent in the WPIAL, then why are they jumping up and down about these 5.7 rated kids…from the WPIAL?

I’m confused. But you already knew that.