Recruiting jabs...

This stuff is just too good not to comment on...apparently Dave Wannstedt pushed the buttons of Rich Rodriguez...earlier this week, our favorite Pitt coach had this to say:

“West Virginia comes up here and recruits Pennsylvania,” he said. “We know that – they’ve always have. In my opinion, we don’t have competition here. We don’t have much – Penn State, and every once in a while Notre Dame or somebody. But there shouldn’t be and there won’t be much other competition. The best players are going to come to Pitt.”

Now, if you can't follow that, let me translate: If given the choice between West Virginia and Pitt, players come to Pitt. Why would anyone want to go to West Virginia?

And, in case that didn't make it clear enough, a newspaper in Pittsburgh was sure to make mention that none of the West Virginia players from Western Pa. were offerred a scholarship from Pitt. Translation: West Virginia players aren't good enough to play for Pitt.

That, of course, was fodder for West Virginia. But, Rod was classy and didn't say much about it leading up to the game...not in public anyway. I'm sure there was plenty of discussion about those comments in the lockerroom though. Following the game, and the 45-13 whipdown, here's what Coach Rod had to say about recruiting against Pitt...and these are great:

“This may help us in recruiting a little bit,” Rodriguez offered. “We have a hard time supposedly recruiting in certain areas of Pennsylvania. It will give some of our coaches some extra motivation.” “Our guys from up there who weren’t recruited at all by Pitt were excited to play,” he said. “For us when you go to bowls and have success it makes it more difficult recruiting in some respects because you’re practicing for bowls and all that,” said the coach. “I hope that recruits understand that, hey, we want to spend as much time as we can with you but we’ve got to get ready for a bowl game where other teams don’t have to worry about that.”

Absolutely awesome. Translation: While you're sitting at home trying to recruit the "best players" at Pitt, we'll be playing in a probably BCS bowl. And, that group of players that weren't "good" enough to play at Pitt, well, they just whipped your butts.

Don't think that Wannstedt erred with his remarks about Pitt getting the best players...this goes way back to when Pittsburgh referred to West Virginia's football teams as "Western Pennsylvania trash". But the only trash I saw at Mountaineer Field last night wore god-awful "gold" helmets. And that trash won't be taken out again before the next football season rolls around.