Time for some media and navel-gazing while trying to put things in a little perspective.

If I was obsessed with numbers and hit counts, then I would want this coaching search to drag out for a while. People have been hitting this site hard. Commenting, refreshing, just trying to get any new scrap of info they can get.

But I’m not. I’d rather have this search over soon. If for no other reason than to let everyone take a breath and (over)reacting to every report, rumor, scrap and even when there is no information.

I get it. This is very tense. The next head coach will do one of three things. Push Pitt football forward and move it past where it is now to something greater. Neutral results that have Pitt still around the same place it has been for most of the past decade. Backwards where the program regresses and is just a general disaster. Or in terms of recent Big East coaches: Kelly, Wannstedt or Kragthorpe.

One of the things that puzzles me is the abuse heaped on the PG’s Paul Zeise for posting the information he is digging, being fed and trying to find. From the get go, he said that there will be misinformation provided. That and ass-covering, non-denials, and carefully phrased statements. In other words, what is typical in nearly every coaching search that takes place in college football and basketball these days.

On a national level, I don’t think there are any football writers, reporters who have a bead on Pitt’s coaching search. It’s in a conference that doesn’t generate a lot of media buzz, and lacks enough sources to leak information. Instead, they rely on being fed garbage by agents of coaches and assistants looking to get their names out there. Either to see if anyone will nibble (Wag the Dog situation) or to try and get another raise from their present employer (Houston Nutt is an insane master of this). For this reason, the absolute worst guy to read for following coaching rumors is Tom Deinhart of Yahoo!/Rivals.com. Going back to his time at the Sporting News, he just tosses anything he is fed out there in the coaching rumors in hopes it would stick.

Right now, aside from message board rumors, there are only three people writing about the coaching search with any regularity and real digging. Zeise, Tony Greco at PantherDigest and Chris Peak at PantherLair. Two of those are behind paywalls. That leaves Zeise as the main source, for better or worse. No one at the Trib is even bothering with the rumors and stories.

Again, for the most part, all any of these guys can do is pass along the info that they get. It’s not like they have sources placed in Atlanta, Stillwater, Philadelphia, Madison, and anywhere else that Pitt has been linked to possible coaches. Their sources are local. They might be able to get some info from colleagues they know in those cities with their own sources, but that makes it even more tenuous and removed.

This means that the information on the coaching search will be contradictory,  inconsistent and incomplete. Zeise has stated the information he has been told from sources. The anger seems to be that he has been just as contradictory How he could say in one post,

That brings us back to Oklahoma State offensive coordinator Dana Holgorsen, who, as I wrote earlier, has been interviewed and is, according to a number of people with knowledge of the situation, the top candidate on Pederson’s board and has been since this process began. The next step for him is to be properly vetted and his background to be looked into and his references and all that good stuff. Some of that has already been taken care of by the search firm – Parker Executive Search in Atlanta – but Pitt will continue the process to make sure he is the right fit.

And then 18 hours later this.

And today we get some real confirmation about Dana Holgorsen and his candidacy and that it was not nearly as far down the tracks and he was not nearly as close to the top of the list as was being reported over the past few days in a number of different outlets.

I was told today he won’t be considered. I was told it wasn’t he pulled out, it wasn’t the school pulled out, it was that he won’t be considered and that he wasn’t necessarily at the top of the list to begin with – Golden was.

Again, whether that is 100 percent true or not, I can’t verify it because, all together now, “everybody is lying to you” and everybody is spinning tails to suit their agenda — but I am fully confident in the accuracy of the information that Holgorsen is not going to be considered for this job.

Now, I would have preferred (and probably several of you as well) some sort of acknowledgement by Zeise that he was one of those “different outlets” reporting that Holgorsen was at the top of the list. But that is a relatively minor point.

A lot of the vitriol seems to have built up over the time and is now being vented.

I’m not always the biggest fan of Zeise, and I think he tends to be very incomplete in explaining the give-and-take required of being a beat writer. Thus, coming off as very condescending. On the other hand, he is at least making more of an effort to be transparent.

Frankly, the Trib and John Grupp have looked horrible since this went down. Practically no coverage, reporting or any information. They have been invisible.

Coaching searches should be treated with the sense of absurdity they deserve. Whether it is for Pitt, or other schools. You can get so wrapped up in every little tweet. Every rumor. Every speculation. You can become convinced that any athletic department is run by incompetents. Either reacting too quickly or micromanaging the whole thing into a fine powder.

The last few years I was writing at FanHouse, the thing that generated the most anger from fans was making fun of their coaching search. It didn’t matter how absurd it got (Oregon basketball) or impulsive it looked (WVU). People have no sense of humor about their team’s coaching search. It was all extremes in views. So, maybe that has me jaded or less tolerant of being a hypocrite.

So, take a breath and lets reset.