Pitt Enters Fall Camp with Modest Expectations

Every summer, just prior to Fall camp opening, many outlets begin to reveal their preseason predictions for the upcoming college football season. This year, despite being the defending Coastal division champions, Pitt hasn’t been getting much respect in the majority of these prognostications. The vast majority, including Phil Steele, Athlon, and Bill Connelly’s (ESPN) S&P+ metric, have Pitt finishing right in the middle of the division at 4th. Sure enough when the official ACC Media Poll was released following the conference media days last month, Pitt was once again picked to finish 4th. Despite this, there is no reason to take this as a premature death knell to Pitt’s chances of a repeat Coastal title. This is because in addition to a rich history of the media being way off on teams in these preseason polls, it has also become a tradition for the ACC media to underrate Pitt.

The poll itself was unsurprising as a whole. Clemson was overwhelmingly picked to win the Atlantic division (and the ACC overall), while in true Coastal Chaos tradition every single team received at least one first place vote. Virginia was picked to win the Coastal after being picked to finish last in every preseason poll since 2014. This sets up a big game right off the bat for Pitt who play the Cavaliers in their first game on August 31st. If Pitt knocks them off to open the season, then they would immediately vault into consideration as a contender to win the division again. However, if they lose they’ll immediately be faced with an uphill climb.

While these polls don’t actually matter too much, they are indicative of a sense of disrespect that many Pitt fans feel the team gets from the national and local media. One could argue that this is a legitimate gripe, at least when it comes to the official media poll. As mentioned above, Pitt has consistently been underrated in the annual ritual compared with how their season turns out. Since joining the ACC in 2013, Pitt has on average been underrated by nearly two places in the final standings. From 2013-2018, Pitt’s average selected place in the preseason poll has been around 5th in the Coastal (4.83), but during that same period they’ve averaged a 3rd place finish. Additionally, they’ve finished ahead of their projected spot in 4 of 6 years and below it only once.

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As seen from the above chart, Pitt has finished ahead of their projected spot in 4 of 6 years and below it only once. Last year, when Pitt won the division despite being picked to finish 5th, likely sticks out as an example of the media underrating Pitt in the preseason poll. However, the 2014 and 2015 seasons are other notable instances where this has also been the case. In both those years Pitt was picked to finish 6th in the division, but would finish 3rd and 2nd respectively.

So what can history tell us about what to expect from Pitt football in 2019? Unfortunately it doesn’t reveal much, as it is just a sample size of six seasons. It is certainly no guarantee that Pitt is going to win the division or even finish ahead of 4th place. However, it does lend some credence to the idea that Pitt hasn’t always gotten the respect they deserve from the media and that many may be sleeping on Pitt once again in 2019. The reasons for this lack of respect are many and varied and not worth getting into here. However, if you consider this trend of Pitt being underrated in the preseason combined with the likelihood of significant offensive improvement under new Coordinator Mark Whipple, it’s nowhere near a stretch to expect Pitt to over perform the media projection once again.