I don’t know what to think about anything regarding the coaching search at the moment. I know even less about the whole deal with Dana Holgorsen, WVU, Oliver Luck and Bill Stewart.
Was Pitt looking at and trying to get Dana Holgorsen? Yeah. I do think that. At the very least, there was strong interest in him and Pitt had discussed things with him. That’s about as far as I’m willing to go with it. I don’t think contract was even close to being worked out, and I’m not even sure the job was actually offered to him. But I’m reasonably sure they talked.
On the West Virginia side of things, there was plenty of dissatisfaction with Bill Stewart that rivaled the Pitt fans dissatisfaction with Wannstedt. Remember that before the Backyard Brawl, there was less than a tongue-in-cheek suggestion that the losing coach could find himself out of a job. Heck, even after winning, a “rumor” suddenly was circulating that Stewart would retire after this season.
In fact, it was just as obvious to their new AD Oliver Luck, that there was a growing issue with a reported 10,000 plus no-show for the season finale against Rutgers. A very unnerving sight.
It has been very obvious that Luck was not enamored with Stewart. It now appears that Dana Holgorsen has been in Luck’s mind for some time. The two go back to Luck’s time in Houston. He had gotten to know Holgorsen when Holgorsen was the OC at Texas Tech and Houston. And as details are now emerging, clearly he had been getting ready to get Holgorsen sooner.
Holgorsen, 39, and WVU Athletic Director Oliver Luck worked out the arrangement last week after an initial meeting between the two was canceled earlier this month. The two sides are said to be working toward a formal contract.
So if there had been talk with Holgorsen and Pitt, it could have been as much Holgorsen trying to force WVU’s hand and up the money.
And that appears to have worked..
Holgorsen reportedly has agreed to a six-year deal with WVU, the final five of those seasons as head coach.
According to the website OStateIllustrated.com, Holgorsen has agreed to a $750,000 deal at WVU for 2011, and then around $2 million annually once he becomes head coach in 2012.
If those numbers are accurate, that is a lot to pay for an assistant to become the HC. Of course part of it is to deal with being put in what is clearly an awkward situation — one that seems more likely to create some hard feelings.
Still that money jumps out. Oliver Luck is taking a big risk that this works. Spencer Hall at EDSBS wrote a great piece on Florida’s choice of hiring Will Muschamp. His thoughts on how the Florida AD was looking to find the equivalent of 1999 Florida DC Bob Stoops in 2010. But still it is a gamble.
The truth is that there are no guarantees, but the next truth is that Muschamp is even less of a guarantee than any of these because he has never been a head coach at any level before, and that thought alone should make Florida fans shit anvils this morning. Ours was magnificent: a weighty rhino’s head of finely hewn iron, it’s in the backyard lurking like the head of a great black Bullet Bill caught in mid-air. You’ll feel clean as well-maintained natural gas pipeline once you pass it.
The same was true of [NAME REDACTED,] and of Charlie Weis at Notre Dame. It was also true of Stoops when he took over at Oklahoma. To say you have any idea how this will turn out is insane, and enough wagering’s been done here. Let’s just leave it at what is known: he’s potentially brilliant, young enough to happily give the pound of flesh the job takes out of you, and is not demonstrably dumb like some people you’ve hired in the past. What is also known: this hire, unlike Foley’s last, is a massive roll of the dice on an unknown quantity, a naked skydive into a raging forest fire armed with a car-sized fire extinguisher compared to the easy nod to Urban Meyer in 2005. This simulation features live fire, bears, and the worst beast of all, real live existential dread of the unknown. That won’t pass for quite some time, we’re afraid.
Bruce Feldman at ESPN.com also has a piece on the hit and miss of coordinators and even elevating mid-major head coaches (Insider subs).
When athletic directors and college administrators interview coaching prospects they try and determine whether they have the right guy and a good fit by seeing if the candidate has a vision and a plan, but while much of that stuff sounds great in theory until they’re actually doing the job — making the decisions, dealing with the headaches — you don’t truly know what you have.
In the past decade or so, it’s such a mixed bag of high-profile former coordinators who have thrived or flopped as head coaches, you can’t say with much clarity who will succeed and who won’t.
Among the ones who hit: Mark Dantonio, Kyle Whittingham, Chip Kelly, Dan Mullen, Bret Bielema, Skip Holtz, Bo Pelini, Bobby Petrino and Gene Chizik.
Among the ones who missed: Greg Robinson, Chuck Long, Mike Sanford, Mark Snyder, JD Brookhart, Ted Roof, Nick Holt and Randy Shannon.
The jury is still out: Mike Stoops, Jimbo Fisher, Charlie Strong, Mike Locksley, Lane Kiffin, Sonny Dykes, DeWayne Walker, Steve Sarkisian and a few others.
Part of the reason is the change in the way you have to do things. But also it concerns how you decide on the staff.
From my observations, the most critical part of taking over as a first-time head coach is your staff and who you surround yourself with. I’ve seen firsthand what can happen when staff chemistry goes awry. You get the job and the guys you plan on hiring, whose names you jotted down on the notebook paper before you interviewed with the college brass that was thinking of hiring you, well, those coaches aren’t actually coming to work for you. A few might. A few get cold feet. Their families don’t want to move. Others who are also on the staff you’re coming from see the opportunity they may have with you leaving. Or the coaches who you worked with 15 years ago, when you were both grad assistants, recall what you were like back then and decide you might not be such a good boss.
Instead, you get the guys who you can get. Maybe you bring some grad assistants with you and promote them up for their first time as full-time assistants coaching a position, running their own positional meetings and being out on the road recruiting on their own.
You’re learning on the job. Your assistants are learning on the job. Mistakes happen. You feel like you can’t trust some of the guys you have on staff, so you bring in other guys later on who you know, older guys who need a break. You know them. You feel like you can trust them. Problem is, they don’t run the stuff scheme-wise that you want to run, so you have them clinic with other staffs or a consultant for a two-day cram session. Now, you’ve got a 25-year assistant whose whole world has been built around running The Power and he’s trying to grasp zone blocking or to figure out the nuances of a 3-3 stack defense. More mistakes happen. Big mistakes.
You’re frazzled. You don’t react to players the way you did as an assistant.
Meanwhile, the administration is getting jittery. They’re meddling. Promises aren’t kept. It starts getting real tense. Coaches’ families see it. The players see it. Soon, it’s toxic.
Welcome to the worst case scenario.
Yeah class act program up at PSU. “Since 2002, 46 Penn State football players have faced 163 criminal charges, according to an ESPN analysis of Pennsylvania court records and reports. Twenty-seven players have been convicted of or have pleaded guilty to a combined 45 counts.”
Do your homework before posting Tom. Thanks.
Congrats on that math degree.
Another quality candidate we missed out on…. What makes it worse is that he is a PITT Guy and would have taken the job for sure.
Looks like dental hygiene even exists in WVa. with their AD and rhodes scholar candidates. God.. look at the moss on those tusks
Laughing at the billies always brightens my day.
That and Poopie Pants Joe.
Looks like dental hygiene DOESN’T even exist in WVa. with their AD and rhodes scholar candidates. God.. look at the moss on those tusks
Laughing at the billies always brightens my day.
That and Poopie Pants Joe.
Comment by B 12.14.10 @ 8:43 pm
My bad
Luck can’t help how he looks, but here is a story from a West Virginia sportswriter about a search making the school/program look bad. Read the whole thing and feel a little better about Pitt and Pederson.
Think about the possibilities.
it seems a lot of people on this board are concerned with the “pitt image”. no offense, but do we have one? we haven’t been relevant in football for decades. let’s pick a guy that wins, period. i don’t care if he has a southern drawl or wears a mullet. whatever. if he has the drive and the football mind to win games the rest takes a backseat. are people across the country worried when alabama hires nick saban (from west virginia by the way) and he has an accent and a team-hopping attitude? no, he wins championships…end of story. pitt needs someone that wins….regardless if they are from new england or the deep south. lastly, this whole “pitt image” thing and pitt needing a classy coach to fit the image…some of you posters need to re-read the definition of classiness with your less than classy stereotypes of west virginians. i live in pittsburgh and those comments are like the pot calling the kettle black. yinzers vs hillbillies…not so different then we would like to think.
Comment by pittman11 12.14.10 @ 3:45 pm
Let me get this straight, you can compare yinzers to hillbillies but I can’t make fun of Oliver Luck’s dental hygiene.
Give me a break tool
i hate to break the news to you though: we’re all in appalachia and all share common beliefs/attitudes/blah, blah, blah. just because you cross an imaginary boundary that separates wv from pa….things don’t change dramatically…if at all.
sure pittsburgh is the biggest city in the region, has the pro sports teams, the best mueseums, the best universities, etc….but at the end of the day…we are still the “paris of appalachia”. i embrace this commonality while you try to ideologically fragment our region to perhaps bolster your own self worth.
see:
link to parisofappalachia.com
sorry for getting off track…now back to football.
I still think that chris Pederson is the best choice. It’s going to take some $$$$, but I don’t think it’s impossible.
Nordy needs to quit the Jack Benny impersonation (Old cheapskate reference) and open up the purse strings. Pay the big time money for a big time coach, or drop down to Div II.
Answer: 40 out of 65. 40 BCS schools have lost, fired or retired their coaches withing the past 4 years. Almost 2 out of 3.
We tend to wish for an instant fix to our football woes with a quick hire of the next great coach who will love the job and stay forever. But the reality is that most coaching choices are mistakes.
THe best we can expect is a good search process that yields a viable candidate who can re-excite the fan base. Chances are we’ll be back here in a few years to do it again, but maybe we’ll get lucky.
Majors I was a lucky choice (lucky that he brought Jimmy Johnson and Jackie Sherrill with him). Sherrill was a lucky choice too.
So much depends on unmeasurable factors. Can he build a staff? Can he relate to kids with big egos? Will he get along with the admin? The alumni? Can he make decisions under pressure? Etc., etc. For the most part, you just don’t know.
We all need to chill a bit and hope for the best. The stats indicate that most of the guys that looked like hot prospects but have already been hired elsewhere will be gone within 4 years anyway.
If he had confidence in himself and his abilities he would have walked years ago like so many have done during his tenure. It’s called the conservative approach and playing not to lose we have had enough of that on the football field over the last six years.
Bradley has made his bed now he needs to lay in it.
Mike Haywood (you blow me)
No disrespect but it was to easy and I have been saying it every time I hear his name mentioned.
The Most Disgusting Shit I’ve Ever seen,never will pitt suceed in forming a powerhouse program with is bozo of a clown running the show! How much is a average price for a ticket for heinze field, times that by 66,000.
No, best let that subject die out….
“If nothing else think of this as a good sign for Pitt fans if Haywood is indeed being hired today — Pitt picked a head coach on the same day that Neil Diamond has been inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame!!!”
Hail to PITT!
It was witty enough for that witty premise(if that’s what you want to call that drivel). And I could care less what blog trolls like you think about Pitt, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania and America as a whole.