An article on the first year’s work of Pitt AD Jeff Long. A bit of a puff piece, but useful to recall everything he’s done and been through in the first year. There is something at the end of the first paragraph of the article that was left unexplained.
In his first year as the athletic director at Pitt, Jeff Long has experienced the death of a student-athlete, the near-destruction and resurgence of the Big East football Conference, been named to two high-profile committees, struck an important broadcast deal with Fox Sports and put the “Pitt” back in the University of Pittsburgh.
That is a dirty tease. I eargerly read the article hoping that meant the school was going back to Pitt, but nothing. Bendel, the writer, did constantly call the school Pitt, though.
Through no fault of his own, Long has been involved in a lot of activity this past season. I’ve noted when Long has done good things for the program. Clearly, he has been instrumental in getting Pitt sports on the airwaves. It looks like it is one of his great strengths — an understanding that radio and TV programs are big keys to raising the awareness and profile of Pitt.
Long has moved quickly, decisively and deftly in his moves in this area. Pitt now has a TV propaganda show on Fox Sports Pittsburgh (I mean, how embarrassing was it that Fox Sports Pittsburgh had stuff for Penn State, WVU and even Lehigh, but not Pitt). He brought back radio shows for the football and basketball head coaches. This spring he got deals for call-in and radio shows centered around Pitt sports. Huge.
The one area where Long hasn’t made a move yet is the issue of merchandising and the Pitt logo. Last fall, Long expressed a desire to get a better “secondary” logo for Pitt and improve the merchandising side. The secondary logo was important to Long for better reproduction in smaller sizes.
Logos. These are the logos of every team from the NCAA basketball tournament. The image has been reduced a little more from the original. Take a look. Some are virtually unrecognizable in smaller size. 
Pitt’s is the little blue-gold blob in the upper-right quadrant between Oklahoma State and Wake Forest. It just doesn’t work. The blue and gold in the panther logo blur too much to be a strong icon. A good logo needs to be simple and visible. The Pitt logo isn’t. The use of “Pittsburgh” underneath the panther head makes things worse, because it has to be shrunk further. SO you have a very tiny typeface to fit the word “Pittsburgh” underneath and it just plain sucks.
Scrap the present logo.
