Published: November 19, 2009 02:51 am      

HERTZEL COLUMN: Panthers’ Stull quiets criticism with his play

MORGANTOWN — Remember when you were a really little kid, when everyone was picking on you and you didn’t know which way to turn?

Remember how you’d arch your back, glare at your tormentors, and spew forth the words that had worked for as long as there were kids and bullies?

“Sticks and stones may break my bones but names will never hurt me.”

There were times during the past year or so when Billy Stull felt like just standing there at midfield on Heinz Field, turning to the crowd and screaming out the old sticks and stones line.

See, he knew about the broken bones up close and personal, and then he was learning about the names, some of them names that even a kid out of Youngstown, Ohio, which isn’t exactly hoity or toity in any respect, had never heard.

“I’ve been through some rough times, the lowest of lows,” the Pitt quarterback said as he took some time during an off week before beginning preparations for the Nov. 27 Backyard Brawl meeting with West Virginia University to chat with the Mountaineer media. “Now we’re starting to get some high points here.”

Two years ago, Stull was supposed to be the Pitt starting quarterback but a stick or a stone or some such thing broke one of his bones, that being his throwing thumb, and his chance to prove himself as a starter after doing nothing but mop-up duty behind Tyler Palko ended in the season-opening game.

That meant, of course, he was not the quarterback in the most crucial game in Pitt’s modern football history, the night they upset West Virginia and kept it out of the 2007 national championship game.

Stull came back last year and had a rough go getting into things, becoming the whipping boy of the fans, the object of their disaffection. It reached its greatest depths when he was yanked in a terribly embarrassing 3-0 defeat in the Sun Bowl.

Pitt changed offensive coordinators, bringing in Frank Cignetti Jr. during the offseason, and Stull was back to Square 1.

“It was tough for me. Having a system for four years, and knowing it like it was the back of my hand, it was tough. There was some doubt whether I was going to be able to pick it up and feel comfortable with it,” he said.

Cignetti, the son of the former West Virginia coach who became one of the great Division II coaches at Indiana, Pa., got him through it with some patient coaching, getting him ready physically for the opener.

But no one could get him ready mentally for what would transpire. After his second pass of the season, Stull was booed heartily by the fans and yes, name calling can hurt.

Stull was hardly ready for that, but he wasn’t going to let it ruin his career.

“The criticism is going to be there,” he said. “I’m my own worst critic. The things I heard are nothing compared to what I put on my own shoulders.”

He just shrugged off the latest round of criticism and moved forward.

“I wouldn’t change things,” he said. “I don’t know if I’d be the type of player or person I am without it. It makes you stronger mentally.”

Stull said the injuries he has suffered, led by the broken thumb, have been harder to handle than the name calling, but he has handled it.

All of a sudden, as Pitt comes into this Backyard Brawl, the Panthers are 9-1 and need only to defeat WVU and Cincinnati to earn the Big East championship and a BCS bowl spot.

While freshman running back Dion Lewis has been the star and wide receiver Jonathan Baldwin has been spectacular, Stull has been the glue, the blue collar worker who is the foundation.

He ranks fourth in the nation in passing efficiency, behind only Kellen Moore of Boise State, Max Hall of BYU and Ryan Mallett of Arkansas. He’s thrown 294 passes, and only four of them have been intercepted.

And that is pretty much what coach Dave Wannstedt and Cignetti are asking of him, to conduct the game efficiently, without mistakes and without turnovers. Do that, toss in the running game and a strong defense and football becomes a rather simple exercise.

You might say it becomes almost a kid’s game.

E-mail Bob Hertzel at bhertzel@hotmail.com.