Going to BCS bowl, barring voting scandal

Arizona is nice in January. So is New Orleans. Where will Pitt go? Well, there’s still another… Arizona is nice in January. So is New Orleans. Where will Pitt go? Well, there’s still another week of football until that question will be answered, but place kicker Josh Cummings has his preference for a destination.

“I went to the Fiesta Bowl my freshman year, and I’d love to go back,” Cummings said Saturday night. “Got to love Arizona around January first.”

But before the players get too excited about a BCS, bowl, they have to find out if they’ll actually be going, because if the Panthers lose to South Florida, the BCS bid could be given to the 6-5 Syracuse Orange.

Yeah. No typo there. It’s possible, but very unlikely. Here’s how everything will pan out:

Pitt and Syracuse are both eligible for the BCS bid because they are both 2-1 in the “mini-conference” that was created with the four-way conference tie between them, West Virginia and Boston College.

If the Panthers win, they’re in. That simple.

However, a Pitt loss would mean the bid would go to the team with the higher BCS ranking. In that scenario, Pitt would be 7-4; Syracuse is 6-5. Pitt would still have the better record, with wins at Notre Dame and against West Virginia.

If neither of the teams is in the top 25 of the BCS standings, which, in this scenario, is possible, it’ll come down to whichever team receives more votes in the coaches’ poll. The updated coaches’ poll will came out Sunday, and Pitt is ranked No. 21, receiving 193 votes, while Syracuse is unranked, receiving one vote. If Pitt loses to South Florida, it would undoubtedly lose its top 25 ranking in the poll, but it in all likelihood not lose all 193 votes, especially since Panther head coach Walt Harris has a vote in the poll. Interesting side note: Syracuse’s head coach, Paul Pasqualoni, does not have a vote.

So Harris could do more than coach his Panthers into the big one — which is hard to believe, considering that three weeks ago, Pitt representing the Big East in a BCS bowl was as much of a possibility as Tyler Palko marching into Notre Dame and throwing five touchdowns.

Palko’s five touchdowns are now a fact, and the BCS bid is a South Florida-win away, thanks in part to West Virginia’s late-season, Pitt-like collapse.

Pitt would also like to thank Syracuse for losing to Temple, then turning around to blowout the Eagles of Boston College 43-17 on Saturday.

Several Panthers gathered to cheer on the Orange on Saturday in a back room at Oakland Cafe.

“It was nice to see those guys put a whooping on BC,” Palko said Saturday. “They took care of business and helped us out.”

Also deserving thank-you notes from Pitt is Boston College for pulling out an upset-win in Morgantown, W.Va., against the Mountaineers — the team that was favored to win the Big East.

But that preseason favorite did everything it could to give the Panthers the bid, including handing them the bid on a Thanksgiving platter.

In the Backyard Brawl, West Virginia reached its average of 79 penalty yards per game in the second half alone. Penalties helped Pitt score 10 points in the second half and kept West Virginia from scoring a touchdown when it marched all the way to the Pitt three-yard line.

Also deserving credit are the players on this team. They never gave up. Even after a loss to Syracuse made winning the Big East seem unattainable, they never gave up.

“You don’t ever throw in the towel,” Palko said, wearing a Boston Red Sox cap on his head — another team that came from out of nowhere to win. “You never pack things in. We’ve proven that now.”

The talk began Saturday night about Pitt in a BCS bowl game. ESPN analysts fought over whether it is fair. But this team has just gotten stronger as the year progressed, so there is no reason to think that Pitt would not be a worthy opponent in a BCS bowl, because they have proven that they will not go down quietly.

But that’s a week away, and the Panthers are going to play it that way.

“Things worked out for us,” Cummings said. “We still have one more game.”

Jimmy Johnson is the sports editor of The Pitt News, and he can be reached at jimmysjargon@yahoo.com.