We have had a lot of discussions over the last week about our relatively new Athletic Director and his actions in the BB coach hiring process.  Readers on here and other media outlets have discussed Barnes in detail and expressed opinions ranging from feeling he should have his work closely looked into to showing support for Barnes in what he has done.

One of our readers and our favorite senior citizen Old Pitt Grad pointed out in the comments section of yesterday’s article that Barnes had held the “Senior Assistant Athletic director” position at the University of Washington inferring that must have been an important post to have had.

I lived in Washington State for three year back in the early 1990’s and attended many Washington Huskies FB games. Back then what really jumped out at me was just how similar in almost every way the University of Washington was to the University of Pittsburgh.

It sits in a nice mid-sized city, is an “Urban School” (be careful with that phrase Reed!”), but interestingly enough has double the enrollment as Pitt yet has just about the same track record in D1 football as Pitt has had over the years.

For this table remember that UW has been in the PAC-12 forever while Pitt was an Independent for almost ever and that’s why you see almost no Conference Championships for Pitt (and where did they get two?).   We kick ass in All-Americans though with our 43 to their 20

In reality the title “Asst AD” at U of Washington truly means little – for example Pitt has five positions that are equal or higher on the totem pole than Barnes held:

U of Pittsburgh Athletic Dept Administrative Staff

Scott Barnes             Athletic Director        412-648-8230           –

E.J. Borghetti            Executive Associate Athletic Director for Media Relations

Wendy Meyers          Executive Associate Athletic Director and Chief Financial Officer

Chris Ferris               Executive Associate Athletic Director for External Operations

Dan Bartholomae      Executive Associate Athletic Director for Compliance

Tony Salesi               Executive Associate Athletic Director for Coaches and Performance

Here is the Washington administrative make up for the AD’s office – you can see that he would have filled one of three positions as the “senior Assist.”

U of Washington Executive Staff

Jennifer Cohen        Interim Athletic Director

Lance Lopes            Senior Associate Athletic Director

Shondell Reed         Senior Associate Athletic Director

Stephanie Rempe    Senior Associate Athletic Director

Each of those administrators work directly for the AD himself.  So – Barnes going to Utah State would be on par if Chris Ferris would go to Akron and fill the AD spot there. In other words not a big deal at all.

Bottom line – his work as a “Senior Assist” at Washington is no great deal on a resume – and as stated above he went from that Mountain West Conference job to a school which is comparable to the MAC conference in quality level.

So IMO we didn’t really upgrade the AD’s position at all when we hired Barnes and I said so as soon as he was announced.  Fans were excited because it is Pitt, and let’s be brutally honest here, because he was any warm body who wasn’t Steve Pederson.

We get excited about anything that happens here but as hires go it was safe at best.  He may workout but from what I’ve seen in his 15 months on the job so far I’m wondering if he isn’t in over his head a bit here.

Another reader, wbb, made a very astute observation yesterday also regarding the challenges Barnes faces with a media scene that is way more sophisticated than what he faced in Logan, UT.

“My guess is that Barnes learned the biggest lesson of his professional life only 2 minutes in of the Q&A part of Stallings’ hiring press conference.

What he learned is that this is not Utah State … but even more pertinent … this is not Logan, UT where the sports media is entirely dependent on the university.

OK – onto more timely matters;

The Trib Live Radio has an hour of Chris Peak from Rivals.com talking about Pitt FB and other issues.  He starts of with the great day James Conner had on Sunday when he threw out the first pitch for the opener – and led the Buccos to victory.

He gets into Conner’s off the field life, setting aside his cancer, and praises him as a role model to others – an opinion of Conner I support 100%.

Peak is skipping BB this time and concentrates on FB – have fun listening to it as it is a perfect lunch time treat.

… and here is a video of it from the Post-Gazette:

KDKA’s Mike Vukovcan has multiple pieces about Pitt’s frantically offering any HS QB who can crawl across the floor to answer the phone. I do think all these offers are indicative of the real lack of confidence our OC Matt Canada has in veryone of our QBs on the roster save Nate Peterman.

We fans can hope and pray and think that Thomas MacVitte is the real deal, but that doesn’t mean Canada does.  I’m not saying Canada doesn’t think MacVitte can play as a starter at this level but one never knows.

Right now Pitt has offers out to seven class of 2017 QBs – four of which are Pro-style and three are Dual-threat… of those seven four are 4* kids and three carry 3*s.  Interestingly enough and a weird coincidence all three Dual-threat QBs are from North Carolina.

Sadly though out of all seven only two of the QBs are uncommitted at this time which means we still have a truckload of work to do to secure our future at this position.