I had a thought I posted about on twitter that I wanted to elaborate a bit on but I’ll start with a few caveats. First, Jamie Dixon is a great coach and the odds are whenever he’s replaced the new coach probably won’t be on his level. Second, I do not advocate firing Dixon; he has earned the right to try and get this program back to where it was a few years ago.
But, do I think he will turn it around? Doubtful.
My thought is this: coaches, with a few exceptions, have a limit on how long they can succeed in one place. At a certain point, a coach makes a critical mistake he can’t overcome or the situation changes and he can’t adapt enough. He gets stuck in a situation where he can’t figure out what he needs to change to right the ship. For our beloved Jamie Dixon, that situation is likely a combination of recruiting and assistant coaches.
I was talking to a fellow Pitt fan about this and it hit me that Dixon’s struggles right now remind me of Andy Reid with the Philadelphia Eagles. No objective person could deny he’s a great NFL head coach. He has his flaws (notably clock management) but his resume speaks for itself. After a long time with the Eagles, he made a series of mistakes he couldn’t overcome.
I won’t dig into all of those mistakes, but failing to replace the contributions of the late Jim Johnson and Donovan McNabb are the two main culprits. The mistakes snowballed to the point where it didn’t appear as if Reid had a solution. While he’s a great coach, he couldn’t fix the situation and needed a change of scenery. Now with the Chiefs, he led them to their first playoff victory since 1993 in his second season at the helm.
The Eagles went big with their replacement, Chip Kelly, and ended up firing him after only two seasons. Kelly is not as good of a coach as Reid, but that doesn’t change the fact that the Eagles were right to move on from him. They were in a hole and Reid was not the man to dig them out.
As of right now, Dixon is in the 90th percentile of coaches in terms of tenure at one school, 34/351 on this slightly outdated list. In college football, only 3/128 would have a longer tenure (again, outdated list since it includes Beamer, Pinkel, and Richt). NFL? There are only two: Belichick and Marvin Lewis. NBA and MLB each have one. NHL has zero. Dixon is one of the longest tenured coaches in major American sports.
College basketball is the exception with coaches who can succeed over a long period of time, but that doesn’t change the fact that most coaches in any sport eventually hit a rough spot they can’t overcome. Basketball seems to be unique in that regard, but a lot of the coaches with more time at one school than Dixon also don’t have the same level of expectations. Central Connecticut, Presbyterian, Austin Peay, South Dakota State, and numerous others would have no issues with what Pitt has accomplished the past few years. Programs like Duke, ARCHRIVAL ORANGE, Louisville, Michigan State, and UNC are exceptions, not rules.
What does that mean in terms of fixing the problem? I see two solutions:
1) Give Dixon everything he needs to build the program back up until it’s blatantly obvious he’s not the man to do it. If/when it gets to that point, fire him.
2) Lower our expectations for the program.
You shouldn’t fire a great coach while doubt remains. I’d love to see my two year old son in the Oakland Zoo as college student watching a Dixon-led team (I have a hair less than seven months to teach him to chant Penn State sucks). There’s still an opportunity with different assistants and a new recruiting plan that we could be rooting for a Pitt team to make a run in the NCAA tournament instead of hoping to just make it in and maybe win the first game. If in two or three years that still hasn’t happened, we have a choice. Pitt can fire him and likely get an inferior coach to replace him or everyone can lower our expectations.
It’s not an easy decision. As I stated above, I do not advocate firing Dixon at all. There’s still a chance he can get the job done. Give him two or three more years with all of the resources he needs. At that point Scott Barnes will have to decide on whether or not an above-average team is acceptable.
Is an above-average program acceptable to you?
H2P!!!
winning record (17-16)
I think Jamie saves his job if, we make the tournament next year and if Jamie recruits a decent class. If he doesn’t I think it will only be a matter of time.
Not what UPitt and a few others want to hear.
UPitt is very emotional and wants to make a move based on those emotions. Fans are built with emotions so nothing wrong there…But, if you look at Dixon like it’s a business deal I think one would agree it’s not time to be talking about Dixon being fired yet.
But here on earth, there is no way in HELL Pitt comes up with the +$12 million (estimated) it would take to buyout Dixon’s contract. Pitt basketball doesn’t have the wealthy alum support needed to come up with that kind of scratch. We could start a “gofundme” account and maybe get things rolling, with, you know, maybe a couple grand….
Hopefully, Barnes forces Dixon to bring in some new “Shady” assistants to recruit. Every program needs a “get it done” guys, who is willing to do what needs to be done to get the next tier talent Pitt needs. Joe Lombardi was that guy in years past. I think Slice was willing to work with people too.
Worst case, some of these assistants get caught bending some rules, then it is easy to self impose a 1-year ban from the tourney and whack Dixon for cause. 🙂
Let’s get this straight, I am not a JR apologist, it’s just some of the comments are just crazy and most likely made for effect. He is an average point guard who much, much more was expected of. I am really afraid we will miss him next year unless Wilson has an ephinony.
If you think Young is a stud you are really kidding yourself. Physically he cannot play the 4 at next level. Sorry, that’s just the truth. Let’s hope he gets it quickly, like tonight or our season is done.
He’s a mensch and capable of doing the right thing.
Plus I don’t think he’d suffer he and his family getting vilified a bunch more years.
If it comes down to it, he’ll work out a deal neither will refuse.
1. JD should coach Wake Forest
2. “Great” is a relative term. Because JD took Pitt to the Elite 8 once in more than a decade of coaching he is great. For the blue bloods, one elite 8 in 14 years is miserable.
3. Everyone here has read the Termination for Convenience provisions in JDs contract.
4. Pitt should be happy to be the equivalent of Cliff Robertson in the movie CHARLIE.
5. Barnes is powerless
6. Anyone from Ba Ba Beaver County with the last name of Miller should apply for the HC spot.
7. Pederson could not have screwed up more in his 2nd tenure at Pitt had he tried.
I think Pederson tried to screw it up. He wouldn’t be the first or last employee to sabotage his employer….watch Breach.
Adios.
Thank goodness for Coach Duzz and the 2016 FB recruiting class.
Go Pitt.
And why are you picking on Young when Artis has attempted only 4 foul shots in the past 6 games … an incredible stat! As Starkey indicated, it’s Artis that needs to get dirty. I don’t even know the stats but I’m willing to state right now that Yonng has been to the foul line more than anyone.
So the soft Michael Young leads the team in both getting to the foul line and getting rebounds? … by far??
Tonight is a sucker bet. 10 is way to high so I love the bet and the panthers by 10. Remember Vegas is crooked. Everyone will take WF +10.
Panthers by 13!
I like the Andy Reid example. The problem is the Eagles haven’t been as good since he left. Reid leaving gave Reid an opportunity for more success but not the program he left.
Almost no one except maybe a small handful of coaches in the major sports will have consistent success as a top 10% team. To lose your mind over a couple down years is the kind of thing people that go bankrupt in the stock market do. Panic when things are low rather than riding them out. The most successful programs in all sports tend to have coaches with long tenures, despite that there were bad stretches during those tenures. Look at the Steelers. A top 3 NFL organization. They had bad stretches of multiple years under each Knoll, Cowher and Tomlin but are on the whole a top organization (or the Pats, probably top in the NFL, had at least two different years of the Belichek-Brady era where they missed the playoffs). Or look at the Spurs, the top NBA, a historically great run, and they had years where they barely made the playoffs. Example after example.
But the metaphor i think is the stock market. If you panic when things are low despite being in a by and large robust economy (US has down years, still strongest and most stable economy on earth) you will dig yourself into a hole repeatedly. Until someone can say with some reasonable certainty that there is a better coach that will come to our program, then Dixon is and should be the guy.
I just don’t want to see this basketball program go through the same embarrassing carousel that the football prgram went through until Narduzzi — who by the way, still has a way to go to actually prove himself. One decent year isn’t enough, if we apply pitt fan logic. But there doesn’t seem to be any pitt fan logic (these are the same people who chased out Wanstache because he didn’t live up to ridiculously unrealistic expectations).
“The decision was based on the overall performance the past three years,” Wellman said. “I looked at our February and March records and how the performances declined rather dramatically. We were 16-17 in February in those three years and in March 4-7, and 1-6 in postseason play, including the ACC tournament. In six of those losses, we were the higher-seeded team or better seeded in five of those losses. Yet the games weren’t even close.”
Wellman admits at some point he had to ask himself “can that be rectified or should we move in a different direction. I chose to move on.”
That team was Wake Forest 5 years ago….haven’t had one winning record since that time 17-16 and haven’t even made the CBI tourney in same time period.