Larry Fitzgerald represents a second chance of sorts for the Pitt football team.
It's not that Fitzgerald can undo disappointing losses to West Virginia and Miami in the final weeks of the schedule, defeats that dropped the Panthers from contention for the Orange Bowl in Miami to the consolation prize of the Continental Tire Bowl in Charlotte. Even Fitzgerald, great as he is, cannot change those travel plans.
What the gifted sophomore wide receiver can do, as he embarks on a three-day mini-tour of the postseason awards circuit, is perhaps earn individual accolades that will take some of the sting out of an 8-4 season that left so many thinking it could have, should have, been better.
"We had a decent season, definitely not what we expected and hoped for," Fitzgerald was saying Wednesday, during a news conference at the UPMC football facilities before he left for Orlando, Fla., and the ESPN College Football Awards Show tonight. "But it's always an honor to your team and your coaching staff when individual players are honored for individual awards at the end of the season."
Fitzgerald, who had been freshly minted as the Big East Conference offensive player of the year a day earlier, is hunting bigger game on this junket. At different times today, he will find out whether he has won the Walter Camp or Maxwell awards, both of which seek to identify the college player of the year, or the Biletnikoff Award, given to the outstanding receiver.
Saturday night in New York, it is the Heisman Trophy that will be on the line.
If Fitzgerald wins any or all of these awards, glory will reflect on the Pitt program. The program could use it. This is about more than Fitzgerald's nod to the Walt Harris offensive system that allowed him to produce so well.
The Heisman, especially, would be a source of great consolation for player and program alike.
"It puts you in a very, very elite group. It's something that can never be taken away from you," Fitzgerald said. "It does a lot for you. But it does a lot for your team and your program in terms of recruiting. It does a lot of stuff. It does a whole lot."
Whether Fitzgerald can prevail remains open to debate, likely right up until the announcement Saturday night.
Arguing against him are his relative youth as a sophomore, his position of wide receiver, and Pitt's disappointing season.
Arguing for him is the evidence he compiled weekly. Begin with an NCAA-record of 18 consecutive games with at least a touchdown catch, another record of 34 TD grabs as a freshman and sophomore combined, and half of the single-season NCAA record of 12 games with a TD catch that he shares with some guy named Moss. The 6-foot-3, 225-pound Fitzgerald has been a monster statistically as well as physically.
Soon, we will find out if that will earn him trophies and statuettes
