Heinz Field's banks of lights had flickered to black, the speakers and seating areas had long since fallen silent, and Pat Narduzzi was still going at it. This was inside Pitt's friends and family lounge, down by the press conference room, and barely a few of those remained. But the coach's mouth never stopped moving. Arms flapping. Finger pointing.
The only difference between that and the four hours before?
It was difficult to discern, in all honesty, if anyone was still listening.
The Panthers lost a football game here late Thursday night, 39-36 to No. 25 Virginia Tech and, in the process, fell to 5-3 overall, 2-2 in the ACC, with that latter figure meaning by far the most. Because they won't be winning the Coastal Division in James Conner's final year, they won't be competing for the conference crown and, perhaps most painful, they won't be really much different than the Pitt teams we were witnessing before Narduzzi's arrival.
They won't sound much different, either.
"This hurts. It hurts a lot," Nate Peterman would say after another rough night behind center, 13 of 22 for 267 yards, not to mention a hard beating on five rushes. "We worked really hard, put so much into this. It's not easy."
"We wanted this," Conner would fairly echo. "We know what this meant."
Oh, they'll take a couple or more of their final four, possibly even stick it to unbeaten Clemson, but that'll bring nothing more than another Megabus ride to the BBVA Purple People-Eating Pizza Bowl or whatever, and all the faithful will pile up false platitudes for false achievements.
Rather than the very real advancements in the program we'd all seen, both last year and right through that now nearly forgotten Penn State upset.
What happened?
Well, at the risk of reckless oversimplification, this happened against Pitt's single coverage ...
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