Enter the South Shall Rise Again Zone

A good Monday morning to you, the 13 Pitt fans who haven't killed yourselves. I'm your host, and I'm always in my seat 90 minutes before kickoff, even when Pitt loses to CCAC-South Campus. The factor would like to erase the memory of Satrday night, and almost was able to, thanks to a cocktail of gin and ketamine. Unfortunately, all the factor did was wake up Sunday pissed off, and with the mother of all hangovers. And a dead hooker next to him. It was at that moment that the factor felt the closest he ever had to Wlat. There were no positives to take away from the UConn game. None. How is this possible, in year three of the Wannstedt regime, with young talents like LeSean McCoy on the team, you might ask? This is the conundrum of Pitt Athletics. Pitt Athletics, the 70-year old Michael Corleone of college sports. Ineffective, racked with diabetes, and guilty because we sold our souls in the late 70s to become relevant for 10 years.

We turn our attention this week to Charlottesville, VA, and the University of Virginia Fightin' Grohs. UVA is famous for many things, not least of which is being just as mediocre as Pitt at every athletic endeavour possible. In fact, it is almost hard to root against UVA this weekend, because they are just Pitt's southern most branch campus. Pitt-Charlottesville (as UVA wil henceforth be known) is a glimpse into the future of Pitt-Main Campus football as both have swung for the fences to try and capture the Pete Carroll NFL coaching retread magic, and both have popped out to the catcher. With a record of 42-33 in his first 6 seasons (that's an average record of 7-5 for you mathematically challenged UConn fans who are still stopping by), Groh and Pitt-Charlottesville define the sort of mediocrity the factor (and Pitt fans of all stripes) has come to embrace. This is a team that in the past 5 years has lost 7-5 to North Carolina. Do you see the 7-5 trend? Hell, when you type 7-5 into google, the first image that pops up is of this mediocre murderer (pictured above left, looking guilty and insane). All the signs are there. Pitt-Charlottesville are our brethren. As such, we shouldn't mock them for being founded by noted racist Thomas Jefferson,
nor should we have a good guffaw at their expense about Ralph Sampson, the meat in the biggest NBA bust sandwich of Sam Bowie and Greg Oden. We should embrace them for the outright stupidity of their favorite son, George Allen (right, on his way to a lynching), he of macaca-gate. We should celebrate Virginia, the cradle of the tobacco industry, merchants of death, whose cries of "There is no evidence that smoking is addictive" is akin to the wild cries of "He needs more time" often heard from Pitt fans.

Fittingly then, we here at Panther Rants declare this week to be "Love Our Southern Brothers Week". All week we'll be providing reasons why Pitt-Charlottesville deserves our respect, and providing the hard-hitting analysis you expect from the crack staff here at the Rants.