Final installment. The subject, Coach Dave Wannstedt.
Some actual notes of interest. It looks like College GameDay is almost assuredly going to happen.
A Pitt spokesman said the deal is not yet finalized, but yesterday coach Dave Wannstedt made a reference to “Gameday” when talking about the 8 p.m. game against the Fighting Irish.
Also, there is still no answer regarding the status of back-up QB Joe Flacco as to whether he will be coming back to Pitt.
At Big East Media Day, Wannstedt was the celebrity coach given his NFL past, and having won national championships as a player and coach and has a superbowl ring.
“I talked to Pete Carroll (Southern California), Chan Gailey (Georgia Tech) and Mike Shula (Alabama) before I took the job,” Wannstedt said. “I got a little something from each of them. Pete talked about recruiting, Chan talked about building a staff and Mike talked about going back to his alma mater. It was very helpful.”
Wannstedt said the biggest changes from the NFL are the year-around commitment to recruiting, which he was prepared for, and the importance of time management, which he’s still getting used to.
“In the NFL, if I wanted to keep the players from 7 a.m., to 7 p.m., it was fine,” said Wannstedt, who’s taking over for Walt Harris, now the head coach at Stanford. “But now, you get an hour and a half here and an hour and a half there, and you have to maximize that time. You can’t waste time in your meetings, and you can’t waste time in practice.”
Wannstedt also emphasized that while he expects to win and wants to win, that he appreciates that winning isn’t everything at the college level, an attitude after being let go by the Dolphins despite averaging 10 wins per season.
He also knows that he’ll be able to make a mark on his new community.
“You’re going to have a chance to do things in the community outside of football, you get to give back,” Wannstedt said. “To me, that’s exciting.”
Well, you definitely don’t want to talk to Chan Gailey about recruiting.
A West Virginia columnist tries to put cold water on Wannstedt erecting a fence around Western Pennsylvania.
“Now we’ve got it turned to the point where we’re going to dominate Western Pennsylvania. We’re going to be competing with Penn State and West Virginia because they’re there, but we’re going to eliminate most teams from even coming in here. We’re going to put a fence up around it and we’re going to dominate that area. And I don’t care who it is.”
That, of course, is easier said than done. Harris couldn’t do it. Johnny Majors couldn’t do it again. Certainly Paul Hackett and Mike Gottfried and Foge Fazio couldn’t do it. Jackie Sherill and Majors the first time pulled it off, but that’s really the only time in modern history — we won’t go back to the Jock Sutherland days, thank you — that Pitt was able to recruit Western Pennsylvania with anything resembling a fence around the place.
But then he has to concede that it could actually happen.
Somehow, though, you tend to think that if anyone can pull it off again, it might be Wannstedt. He has the charisma, the NFL background kids love, the Pitt connections to the glory years. He’s got a network of Dorsett and Mark May and Dan Marino and Bill Fralic and, yes, even Johnny Majors, to make it happen.
But it won’t happen overnight.
…
All in all, it makes for a pretty perfect situation for Pitt’s new coach. With all of that, maybe he can build that fence.
We shall see.
