Actual Pitt information is limited to the notebook columns today. Imagine this, Pitt will try to improve its pass protection. Good plan. In Pitt’s practices to get ready for Temple, they are preparing to face the athletic Washington and the more traditional McGann at the QB position. And that’s it.
The Trib. today, focuses on the Big East as a whole. No question, it’s a bad year for the Big East. We all knew that, but we didn’t know it would be this bad. Joe Bendel focuses on the right now, and how bad it is. Joe Starkey, by contrast, looks longer term and sees reason for optimism. Mainly in the fact that Mike Tranghese, the Big East Commissioner, has kept the Big East in the BCS. There is no small truth to the fact that it was a lot of Tranghese’s personal efforts and connections with the other conference commissioners that kept the Big East in the BCS for now. Starkey feels that having Tranghese at the helm is a good thing for the future as well. I’m not so optimistic. Unless the Big East has a big turnaround in the next 2 years, we will either find ourselves sharing the bid with the MWC or on the outside. The money will only be bigger and the pressure on the other conferences greater.
Finally, we have a Bob Smizik column to state the obvious: Pitt needs to get the hire of its next coach right. Wow. That’s insight. To be fair, he does make a point I totally agree: the next head coach does not need to be one with a lot of Pitt connections.
I recall the hand-wringing and insane desire to find a Pitt basketball coach with Pitt or Pittsburgh roots after Howland left for UCLA in basketball. This led to a very poorly executed search that really only interviewed Skip Prosser and Jamie Dixon. After a very public pursuit of Prosser, Prosser stayed at Wake Forest and Pitt looked stupid and like it was forced to “settle” on Jamie Dixon. They never even interviewed Bobby Gonzalez of Manhattan, and the only other names raised were other coaches with Pittsburgh roots — John”one-step-ahead-of-the-NCAA” Calipari and Herb Sendek. All because Pitt had a good coach and he left.
It happens. If it isn’t for a bigger college job. Then, eventually the pros start sniffing about. Butch Davis left Miami for the Browns. Oklahoma and LSU are sweating every year that this could be the time that Stoops and Saban will go to the NFL. That’s just the way it is. If Pitt hires a guy and a bigger program or the pros come sniffing around, then the positive is that means Pitt is doing well. Continuity is nice, but I prefer winning.
Smizik has a partial list of candidates with their pros and cons. I’m going to try to get a list of my own out later.
