Running through the usual list of PITT sports websites I visit every morning while I have my first cup of Joe I read an opinion piece by Joe Starkey of the Tribune Review titled What PITT Football could be that he posted on Wednesday night. I found that it mostly made sense and was well thought out, hitting on the the root of the matter of PITT football program’s mediocrity over the last 31 years and what Pat Narduzzi has to bring to PITT to change the culture of apathy on the part of the administration, students, local populace and, in my opinion, the local media as well.

Starkey opens his article with a simple declaration “It’s time for a key substitution regarding Pitt football: Excuses out. Expectations in”. That is a pretty simple stance to take and one he expounds upon later in his piece when he says:

“Time will tell whether Pat Narduzzi is the guy to change all this, but you have to like the fact he is coming from a place (Michigan State) where Mark Dantonio & Co. looked at all the built-in excuses, kicked them in the face and created an entirely new culture. And did so without batches of five-star recruits. After decades of mediocrity, Michigan State has become a bastion of positivity and big wins.

That is fantastic! PITT will do it right now if only Starkey would let us in on exactly how Dantonio & Co. accomplished it! I do wonder if Starkey and PITT fans forget that sometimes ‘excuses’ can also be seen as ‘reasons’ for an outcome and vice versa. If in the past, as a lot of us believe, the PITT administration tried to create and sustain a successful football program while stinting on the financial resources to make it happen then is it an excuse that it didn’t work out or is it a reason we did what we did?

Perhaps it depends on how one looks at the University’s financial situation as a whole or maybe just the level of honest interest the Chancellor and the BoT had in fielding a successful team, which might have been even less than we saw in public. To me that is a contributing reason for the poor results we have seen over the last two decades, to others it may just be an excuse. Nothing happens in a vacuum, there are always reasons things turn out the way they do.

Maybe Starkey believes all excuses can be banished by the strength of Narduzzi’s attitude alone:

“ I love the fact Narduzzi isn’t afraid to use the phrase “national championship.” Starkey says. He then goes on to state that he thinks “it says a lot about the pedigree of the Pitt coaching job, too, that even amid the upset of recent years, one of the most decorated coordinators in the country jumped at it when he did not have to.”

I get the first part of that, it is always good that a new HC says those things although Narduzzi isn’t the first PITT coach to say that, every HC preceding him uttered that phrase at one time or another. Perhaps Starkey likes the way Narduzzi said it, with his emotion and evident determination. I sure did.

But what about the second part of that thought regarding the ‘pedigree’ of the PITT coaching job? While Starkey is saying “one of the most decorated coordinators in the country jumped at it when he did not have to.” he conveniently forgets that our last HC hire, Paul Chryst, was in the exact same position; a ‘decorated’ (whatever that means, I guess it means awarded) coordinator jumped at it. I think we are putting a hell of a weighing factor on what we have been told about Narduzzi turning down other HC jobs only to take the same position at PITT.

Doesn’t anyone think that at the least a $700K pay raise was part of his thinking process, or that perhaps Narduzzi figured this might be his last chance at the golden head coaching ring and he better get off his ass and take it? Who really knows, but I am very skeptical that Narduzzi came to PITT as his ‘dream job’ or to be closer to home or any of the other romantic reasons we are bandying about with this hire.

Starkey is making it sound like it was Narduzzi himself who made it possible by noblesse oblige to be the HC and not PITT who actually did the search and subsequent hire. Who  believes that as soon as Chryst had a clear shot at the Wisconsin head coaching job Narduzzi immediately sent his resume in begging for the job? Of course not, PITT reached out to him and to others during the selection process as well they should.

The fact is that Narduzzi turned down exactly one head coaching job and that was at Connecticut last year. His boss, Mark Dantonio at MSU, has the real info when he said this before the 2014 season started:

“Pat wants to be a head football coach, he wants to be a head football coach at the BCS level, and I think he wants to do that at one of the major conferences,” Dantonio said. “But it’s got to be the right situation. And right now, from the standpoint of his salary, it’s gonna have to be a BCS job.”

Nowhere in there, or anywhere else I can find, does it say that the school had to be PITT.  It just had to be at a Power Five conference school that paid more than he was getting at MSU. That said, I have no doubt that the PITT administration is tickled pink that they landed Narduzzi, but to believe that this was the only job he’d leave MSU for is quickly becoming an urban myth.

The reason that PITT and many other schools never divulge publicly who was contacted and offered to interview for the HC job is because they don’t want anyone to know which coaches turned them down right off the bat. It could very well be that Narduzzi wasn’t PITT’s leading target at all and if we believe that PITT is “the only” head coaching job Narduzzi would ever consider taking then I’ve land in Hawai’i to sell to you.

Starkey makes it sound like Narduzzi would have been perfectly content being a coordinator as a lifetime position had not PITT begged him to come here. I very much doubt that. However, when Narduzzi starts taking a sledge hammer and crowbar to demolish the houses in Panther Hollow for a new on-campus stadium then I’ll believe he was ‘destined’ to be here.

Again, back to the ‘pedigree’ of the HC job at PITT… was Mike Haywood chosen because of our supposed pedigree, Todd Graham, Paul Chryst? Not really, they were chosen because they were men who PITT could hire to be the head coach while staying inside the Athletic Department’s budgeted salary limits. Even our last semi-successful HC, Dave Wannstedt, was picked primarily because he was a “PITT Man” and even then I wondered what sort of quality competition Wannstedt had for the job before he was named the HC.  I suspect there was none.

Here is the Murder’s Row who were supposedly knifing other prospective coaches in the back to get the head coaching pedigreed job at PITT since Jackie Sherrill left us for Castration City,TX.

Every guy PITT hired with any college HC experience had career losing seasons but two: “Back to the Future” Johnny Majors then Todd Graham and if you can look at what they did while at PITT without gagging then good for you.

Nobody, but nobody, has been beating down the door to be the head coach at PITT and I very much doubt that any current FBS head coach is looking specifically at the PITT job and salivating over the thought of being here because of some ambiguous pedigree.

The only time PITT has been a ‘destination’ job has been after the 20 year Pat Warner & Jock Sutherland run between 1915 and 1934 then directly after Major’s national championship season of 1976. Forget about when Sherrill left the program after going 50/9  in 1981… even with Dan Marino behind center the best we could do was with in-house talent hiring DC Foge Fazio.

All that said, I do believe Narduzzi is the right guy for the PITT job and am very much looking forward to how things unfold between now and this time next year. I’d like to think that he will be given the support, both financially and authoritative, to get the personnel he wants as soon as possible working with him and then hitting the ground running, specifically in recruiting, before the Feb 4^th LOI Day. While holding no real expectations I feel confident that Narduzzi will at the least hold a steady line.

All of us have truly no idea what the next phase of PITT football will bring but I think we all love the fact that we are starting anew in every aspect of the program. I just don’t kid myself that this is a match made in heaven because the PITT job is so much in demand.  Hopefully it is a match made in heaven because Narduzzi is ready and able to be a successful head coach.