I never rejoice in anyone losing their job but this is definitely good news for Pitt football fans. Steve Pederson is notoriously difficult personality with whom to get along and basically every coach that has ever worked for him has complained about his meddling in their program.

Also, he seemed to treat most of the fan base with contempt. I cannot name five people who did not want to see a return to the script Pitt uniforms that Pederson himself had changed some 18 years earlier and he flat out refused. Then, he finally gave in but did it in the most ridiculously incompetent manner possible. I believe it was an intentionally subversive way to give the fans the middle finger because he knew he was on his way out the door.

I mean who changes logos in midseason and has no merchandise available to go along with it? Who changes logos but keeps all the old markings on the field, in the coaches gear and everywhere else? That made no sense at all so I think it was intentional. Pitt still does not have a single script Pitt T-shirt or sweatshirt for sale for Christmas. How ridiculous is that? Whether it was incompetence or malice, either way he had to go.

I don't think a Division I football AD's job is to serve as a de facto general manager. His job is to raise money and remove hurdles from his coaches whose jobs are to mentor young people and win football games without embarrassing university at large.

Firing Wannstedt when we did, and especially how we did, was a VERY big mistake. We are four years removed from that decision and we are very clearly a worse program now then we were the day we fired Wanny for coming in second place in the conference too many times.

Also, I disagree with the earlier poster who absolved Pederson of responsibility for the Todd Graham debacle. I think it was entirely Pederson's fault. I would buy that it was just bad luck had not happened before in Graham's career. However, he did it to Rice too so you can't have something like that to happen and then have it happen again and say, "We had no idea this was part of his character." Of course you knew it was part of his character, he had already done it.

Also, an ENORMOUS part of any coach's success at any program is his cultural fit to that program and area. We have all seen good coaches go to programs where they simply did not fit and it did not work. Rich Rodriguez at Michigan is a great example of that. The guy is clearly an excellent coach who just did not fit the Michigan culture. Todd Graham never fit the Pitt culture and that was clear to me about three days after we hired the guy. It was disturbing that our athletic director did not consider that when making the hire.

I feel the same way about the Mike Haywood incident. People say that was just bad luck and that nobody could have predicted he would beat on his baby mama. Again though, the truth is Minnesota was also set to hire Haywood but their background check revealed all sorts of red flags regarding his character so they passed and hired Jerry Kill instead.

You're telling me that Pitt did not have access to the same information Minnesota had? I find that exceedingly difficult to believe. I think Pitt had the same information but just ignored it and paid dearly for it. That is entirely on the athletic director and frankly, the chancellor.

I have said this 100 times on my own board. Pitt has not been unlucky over the past few decades, we have been incredibly stupid. Given our resources and our recruiting base and our history, it is embarrassing how all these Johnny-come-lately schools have succeeded while we have floundered. It is entirely unacceptable and a change in leadership was clearly needed and is probably a solid 5–7 years too late.

My first choice for Paul Chryst's replacement would be Joe Rudolph. I like what Chryst was building here and I think Rudolph would do a very good job continuing that and maybe even improving on that.

I also like Pat Narduzzi a lot. People can compare him to Steve Kragthorpe or whoever they want but Narduzzi is very highly regarded in coaching circles and I like his aggressive defensive philosophy. Also, we have built for the past three years to play a certain style of offense and I think it would be a huge mistake to tear that all down and move to a spread offense. We saw with Rodriguez at Michigan that overhauling all of that to move to an entirely different offensive philosophy would likely take a solid 3–4 years to pull off and I'm not interested in that.

We have been rebuilding for the better part of the last decade and I'm sick of rebuilding. I'm ready to try to win and I think Rudolph and Narduzzi give us the best chance to win quickly and big.

Finally I will say this much. If Pitt hires Tom Bradley, a 58-year-old career assistant who was implicated in GRAND JURY TESTIMONY during the Sandusky trials as being a part of the cover-up, then I am done as a Panthers fan. I am dead serious about that.

I own 16 season tickets to Pitt football and have since the 1980s. I would resign all of the seats on the spot if we made that idiotic decision. I want no part of that creep.

Well, Dr., I think it's quite encouraging that Gallagher has taken the reigns on this and wants to turn things around. It's impressive to me that he was able to make a bold decision like this despite the time remaining on Pederson's contract. That's good leadership - when something's broken you work to fix it.

I hope that I will be able to say that I'm equally impressed with his hires. I, too, get the sense that things are changing for Pitt for the better. I agree with you, too - why not us?

As for coach - I don't really care what their philosophy is or whether they're an offensive or defensive minded coach. What I want is someone who is going to put the players in a position to win and not try to push them into a "system." We saw what happened with that. I think Chryst had in mind what he wanted to do, but he also changed when it was necessary - see Voytik running read options and being the 2nd leading rusher on the team this year.

That's what I want to see. I'll evaluate the credentials when I see them.

I posted on the other board regarding Wannstedt. I don't think he should have been forced out, what are Pitt fans' opinions?

He shouldn't have been forced out. It was over nonsense with Pederson which is example #1 of why it's good to see that he's not around anymore.

Wannstedt wasn't the greatest shakes himself but his firing without a plan to hire a replacement subsequently set our program back 5+ years. The 5th year seniors on this team have had 7 coaches including all the fill in coaches for bowl games.

(12-18-2014 12:36 PM)ndlutz Wrote:  He shouldn't have been forced out. It was over nonsense with Pederson which is example #1 of why it's good to see that he's not around anymore.

Wannstedt wasn't the greatest shakes himself but his firing without a plan to hire a replacement subsequently set our program back 5+ years. The 5th year seniors on this team have had 7 coaches including all the fill in coaches for bowl games.

that's just ludichryst!

(12-18-2014 01:24 PM)Hokie Mark Wrote:  

(12-18-2014 12:36 PM)ndlutz Wrote:  He shouldn't have been forced out. It was over nonsense with Pederson which is example #1 of why it's good to see that he's not around anymore.

Wannstedt wasn't the greatest shakes himself but his firing without a plan to hire a replacement subsequently set our program back 5+ years. The 5th year seniors on this team have had 7 coaches including all the fill in coaches for bowl games.

that's just ludichryst!

ok, that was pretty funny.

Miami WR coach/RC Brennan Carroll, asked about numbers for 2015 recruiting class, jokes "If I knew math, I wouldn't have gone to Pitt."
-- Matt Porter @mattyports

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