When their collegiate head-coaching careers began on this same lawn on the same night in 2005, Dave Wannstedt and Charlie Weis, both carrying NFL PhD's, could barely have picked up two more different sets of cards.

Weis had a full house at Notre Dame; Wannstedt had a pair of 3s.

Anyone who dreamed that four football autumns later, the Adventures of Wanny and Weis would climax with a complete inversion of power, was generally considered to be doing only that: dreaming.

But that was no REM cycle at Heinz Field last night. That was the wide-awake Pitt Panthers, now a robust 9-1 with all of its intended implications, showing they can not only beat Notre Dame at home under intense national scrutiny, but that they can beat the Irish for that most dreamlike of reasons -- they have better players.

"It's all about confidence and it's all about swagger," said Pitt defensive end Jabaal Sheard. "You shouldn't be intimidated by anyone. Matchup wise, we're just as good as anybody."

No one with any real or imagined Notre Dame pedigree is likely to accept that assessment, as it is impolite to fire the head coach once you've admitted that he's pointedly outmanned, but Pitt made a lot of things clear last night. So, if Weis was fighting for his coaching life -- and what would that be, the 58th time in 60 games on the Irish sideline -- how ironic that it might have ended on the same thick white chalk line he paced the night it began.

"It was a great win for the program and especially for the people who've been in it for a long time because we lined up against them at the beginning and we had a bad experience here," said Wannstedt of that 42-21 humiliation Sept. 3, 2005.

"We found a way to get it done. We had 100 recruits here, and I can sit for six hours in someone's living room talking about Pitt, but that three hours on the football field tonight, that speaks volumes."

Volume I for the national audience likely will focus on the fate of Weis, who has lost eight consecutive games to top-10 opponents. He's 1-10 against teams that finish in the top 25 (a 41-17 win at home against Penn State more than three years ago).

But Volume II necessarily carries the familiar title, "Hail To Pitt."

The Panthers started cracking this one open late in the first half, choosing from an array of weapons at the disposal of offensive coordinator Frank Cignetti. Sophomore wideout Jonathan Baldwin caught a 21-yard pass from the perfectly protected Bill Stull at the Notre Dame 36, and Stull, on the very next play, sent Baldwin flying toward the right pylon.

Stull's perfectly thrown pass sailed over fingertips of Irish corner Darrin Walls and into the hands of a diving Baldwin for a 10-3 Panthers lead two minutes before intermission.

"That kid tonight made two catches," Wanny gushed, "that, well, you don't coach that."

Pitt plainly had figured something out, because Baldwin and Stull and Dion Lewis and the balance of the Panthers' veteran offense put together scoring drives on the first three possessions of the third quarter. Lewis' 50-yard touchdown made it 27-9 Pitt, meaning all that could save Notre Dame on this night rested on its own mythology.

Mythology, naturally, almost stood up and walked.

Much of Pitt's superiority to that point had been in its silencing of Golden Tate, but Tate scored on a dancing, 18-yard sideline strike from Jimmy Clausen and on a dazzling, 87 yard punt return to shake down a lot of thunder.

Not until Greg Romeus rattled the ball loose from Clausen in the game's final minutes and Myles Caragein chased it down for Pitt did Wanny's fellas nail this one to the wall. But it had been clear for some time just who had the hammer.

Clausen didn't have a lot of time to strike deep in the first half, and when he tried on a deep post to Floyd, Pitt's Jarred Holley and Dom DeCicco covered it so well that Holley came down with it at Pitt's 30.

It wasn't until five minutes before halftime that the Irish established anything that could pass itself off as an attack, that being a 43-yard drive Clausen managed to resuscitate with a 14-yard strike to Duval Kamara on third-and-13 from his own 44. Four plays later, David Ruffer's 42-yard field goal tied it 3-3 at approximately the last moment at which a prime-time ABC audience suspected it was watching a game between evenly matched programs.

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