Pitt football

It's been a whirlwind year at the University of Pittsburgh. Former head coach Todd Graham up and left for the Arizona State football job, leaving Pitt hanging. After conducting their latest head coaching search, the Panthers selected University of Wisconsin offensive coordinator Paul Chryst to be their latest head guy. I have no doubt that Pitt got it right THIS TIME. However, the proof is in the pudding. But this business at Pitt goes back a lot longer than what has tranpired over the last year. This goes back to the middle 1980s. I have written about this before, but it bears repeating. Pitt has an institutional problem when it comes to football. Pitt stunk in the early 1970s before the program hired Johnny Majors to be their head coach. Majors recruited Tony Dorsett and built around him before leading the program to the national championship in 1976 and Dorsett won the Heisman Trophy. Majors left for Tennessee and Jackie Sherrill took over the program, leading the team to three straight 11 - 1 seasons throughout the late 1970s and early 1980s. Sherrill then left for Texas A&M and Pitt hired Foge Fazio to be their head coach. Therein lies the downfall and the depths of mediocrity. Not a Fazio problem, but a Pitt problem. After Fazio, the coaches in order have been Mike Gottfried, Paul Hackett, Majors again, Walt Harris, Dave Wannstedt, Mike Haywood, Todd Graham, and now Paul Chryst. This creates a problem for a school with an urban campus and no on site football stadium. Heinz Field is not a college stadium and Pitt will never sell it out. The other problem is that, while circling the WPIAL and keeping local kids here, the university and the football program need to look at other areas of the country for talent. It also has to try and convince those recruits to go to Pitt. I have been a Pitt fan for a long time and what has been going on with the program bothers me. But the realist in me knows that the Pitt program has gone as far as it can go until a football coach can convince top notch talent to attend Pitt and play football there. That is a tall order. The move to the ACC will help the progam long term. But the short term does not look rosy. Four head coaches inside of a year is not a recipe for success and it is not good PR. Stability is key for any program, and especially for a program that needs to find its way before it can go any further in the hopes of contending for any kind of a championship. The administration and the athletic department need to realize that before the program can go any further.

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