Apparently the question of new recruiting coordinator/TE coach Greg Gattuso, loyalties were the big questions.
“No, I’m a Pittsburgh guy coming to Pitt,” he said without hesitation yesterday when asked how a Penn State guy (he was a standout nose guard for the Nittany Lions from 1981-83) ended up on Pitt’s staff.
“I’ve been here my whole life. There is nobody in this town that I haven’t played softball against or basketball against and there isn’t a referee I haven’t yelled at. And half the high school coaches either coached on my staff or were my former players so I think I have a pretty good rapport with the people of this area. There is nowhere else I would have gone but here.
“I have always been a huge Pitt fan and a huge Pitt basketball fan so this is something I am really excited about.”
It’s a stupid question. The guy left a fairly comfortable and successful situation at Duquesne for this job.
Gattuso was a two-time Mid-Major Division I-AA Coach of the Year and a seven-time Metro Atlantic Athletic Conference honoree at Duquesne. His teams were 66-7 in league play, including a 33-game winning streak, and 97-32 overall, winning eight MAAC titles and the 2003 consensus national championship.
Just because he went to Penn State, people wonder if how he could coach at Pitt. Easy. It’s his job, career and livelihood being a coach. Even if he wasn’t from Pittsburgh, that shouldn’t be an issue. The issues are competence, ability and desire. I’d say he has all three of those. If he’s ambitious and hopes this new position will get him further up the coaching ladder, I say great. Hiring ambitious coaches is what you want. They know the only way to move up is with success.
I like how he seems genuinely juiced about all of this.
As recruiting coordinator, Gattuso will assist Wannstedt in re-organizing the way the Panthers identify, evaluate and pursue prospective players.
He’ll also be responsible for recruiting parts of Western Pennsylvania, which means he’ll likely compete with Penn State and his former coach, Joe Paterno, for players. He was asked if he had talked with Paterno and how he felt about recruiting against him.
“I haven’t heard from him but I’m more interested in seeing how he feels in going against me in recruiting, that’s the real question,” he said.
Gattuso was known as a great recruiter at Duquesne and that success should continue at Pitt. He now can give out scholarships as opposed to recruiting at Duquesne, which is a non-scholarship program.
“I just spent 13 years recruiting kids and sitting them down and then telling them, ‘You have to pay $7,000 to come here,’ ” Gattuso said. “Someone asked if it is going to be hard recruiting for Pitt — I know there will be battles, and we will fight them hard, but at the end of the day, we’re bringing them to a great city, a great program, a great school, only they don’t have to pay a dime to come.
“I can’t wait until the first time I can sit down with a kid and tell him he can come to this place for free.”
And he still won at Duquesne. He obviously knows how to coach, and I think he has potential to rise on the staff. He strikes me as a strong fundamentals guy — proper tackling, blocking, positioning. Things that have not been a strong suit for Pitt, despite the progress of the program.
