Cannon Firing Line
Relax Guys
By Ellis G. Cannon
PSR Publisher

With March Madness upon us, it's not a bad idea to look back at what happened over the last couple weeks of February. If nothing else, there's a helpful lesson as March unfolds.

From our point of view, the Pitt basketball season came down to the last seven regular season games. An oversimplification, perhaps, but the games leading up to that point shaped what to expect down the stretch.

With wins against Notre Dame and Syracuse, the Panthers started out 2-0 in our mini-season before the wheels came off and they lost three in a row. Just as the entire program was being thrown under the bus, Pitt pummeled Boston College on Big Monday.

That's the nutshell. But it's not the entire story.

Something odd was going on here in the midst of that losing streak. On the night of the West Virginia collapse--and it was a major collapse--there were calls for Jamie Dixon to be fired. It got worse, culminating with scattered booing of him at the Peterson Events Center on Senior Day.

Besides that drama, local pundits and fans were burying them. And they deserved criticism. But suddenly, Pittsburgh had become a major market of college basketball experts. Not only did he have to be axed, it had to happen before he did more damage. Like lose Pitt's "automatic" NCAA bid.

Pretty ironic when you consider while the locals talked of how Pitt was on the "bubble," the projected ESPN tourney bracket had the Panthers as a #7 seed. After the UConn loss. So much for the infamous "national people hate Pittsburgh" stuff; the locals were doing it for them.

Still, the Panthers have holes and they can be exploited. They have inexperience. They lost more than most truly thought from last season. There's Chris Taft and the Dixon seasoning process. They were drifting and vulnerable, even if they still had control of their fate. Frustration and concern were not misplaced.

Still, booing Dixon on Senior Day, after losing to the defending national champions, with the players' families there--fed a perception of sports fans nobody wants.

Lots of folks explain it with "expectations." You know the refrain; the fans have been spoiled from success they could only find in dreams until recently. But there's more.

Dixon has indeed been victimized by the program's success. But the fans have a responsibility, too. To recruit at the higher levels, Dixon has to tell kids the program has arrived. Pitt reloads.

That's called selling. It's a big part of recruiting. There's also an element of fiction to it. Not that Pitt isn't becoming national, but there is still a sale with it.

What's happened is the vocal and visible minority of dissatisfied fans that has become, to some, the face of Pitt fans. There's a huge difference between reality and recruiting and the fans have the responsibility to know the difference.

Admittedly, it may be difficult because Pittsburgh is still not a mature college basketball market. That includes the opinion-makers.

So the Kool-Aid drinker expects what's being sold to recruits should be reality. Before you know it, the football mentality takes over--the BCS applies to college hoops, right?--and you have a mess.

With Madness here, expect, well, madness. The Panthers are what you've seen most of this season. They are not National Champions. That's all part of a process. Relax.

"Ellis Cannon's Sportsline Pittsburgh" airs weeknights, 6-8 p.m. on FM NewsTalk 104.7. Ellis is also a regular contributor on the "#1 Cochran Sports Showdown" aired Sundays at 11:35 on KDKA-TV.