Football Notes 7/13

The Post-Gazette had a really interesting article up today talking about how Pitt is helping high school kids who they might not even be recruiting:

"We'd get 100 or 200 kids here [in camp] and, really, we might only be interested in four or five and maybe one we'd offer a scholarship," Wannstedt said. "That just didn't sit right with me. I thought we could make the experience better for the players and really make the camps something that could help more kids play college football.

"We can only take 15 to 25 kids every year but there are an awful lot of really good football players out there who we'd bring to our camps and I felt like we could do a better job to make the camps something that would be helpful to them and help them get a shot that maybe they wouldn't get otherwise."

That's how Wannstedt came up with the idea to start inviting college coaches from all different levels to come to the camps. This year's prospect camps -- which took place in four one-day sessions June 11, 12, 18 and 19 -- were the most attended of Wannstedt's tenure.

Here's a behind-the-scenes video of Pitt's new commercial that should be airing soon.

Bob Smizik has the scoop on the ACC's new deal with ESPN - it's more money than I thought and might stress the fact that maybe the Big East doesn't need an entire channel to itself after all.

ESPN.com's Brian Bennett hit Pitt pretty hard recently - here's a story on center Alex Karabin, who, as has been discussed before, is without a scholoarship:

Karabin is expected to make all the calls and anchor an O-line that was arguably the best in the Big East last year. And to do so while still paying his own tuition. He said earning a scholarship would be great "but that it's more important to win games."

Whether Pitt can win as many games as people expect this year may depend a lot on how their walk-on center performs. Karabin knows one thing: after all this time waiting for a shot to play, he's going to give his best effort.

"I definitely don't want to give it up now," he said. "I will lay it all out on the line to keep my job."

BB also talks about the Big East's home run hitters including Dion Lewis and Jonathan Baldwin and has a video breakdown of the Panthers.