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Bummer…, His support for athletics has been second to none. Hopefully they’ll get someone in next year that will be as supportive.
FANTASTIC NEWS!!!!
Hopefully they get someone in who values basketball and also tells Heather the university isnt going into debt for her volleyball arena.
Gallagher was in charge of the total destruction of the basketball program. Remember, I predicted Heather wouldn't hire the next coach. Well, that's going to end up being true. She will want to land on her feet somewhere rather than work for a new boss while the basketball program tanks.
Too bad we have to wait until the summer of 2023 for him to be gone. And I'm not just talking about issues with the basketball program.
Be careful for what you wish for.
Someone similar to J. Dennis O’Connor could be hired.
My understanding is that Nordenberg was a much, much greater friend to athletics.
What has Gallagher done wrong with athletics behind the scenes?
My understanding is Nordenberg was much more friendly towards basketball and Gallagher is much more friendly towards football.
Nothing wrong, but Nordenberg was a very, very strong supporter in many ways — most importantly fanancial.
Nordenberg was supportive of both I can assure you.
Too bad it's not next month.....the university got too woke under his administration. Not the same views we share.
Good bye!
Nordenberg is the primary reason Pitt football is in a power conference right now. Clueless people have no idea how much effort he put into athletics and football. Really, the most pro-athletics chancellor Pitt had since Samuel McCormick back in the 1920s.
The selection of a new Chancellor is an enormous decision. A bad one can do a lot of damage in a short amount of time in so many different areas.
I am basing the lack of support for football on Dave Wannstedt not even getting $ to replace old carpets that he requested and getting pinched on $ for assistant salaries.
The knock on Nordy was he was all in on hoops and not as big into football. I personally know he was a HUGE basketball fan. HUGE. Not like just like he had to be because he was the Chancellor but a legitimate big-time fan. He even kept his season tickets for Stallings Year 1 but I haven't seen him back since though my attendance isnt anything close to what it once was so its possible I may have missed him.
He may have been a bigger hoops fan, but he was still a huge supporter of football.
It's so discouraging to me that people do not know for a fact what I know about the Chancellor, and what you know even much, much more definitively than I do.
I will repeat your quote: "the most pro-athletics chancellor Pitt had since Samuel McCormick back in the 1920s."
I don't even want to think were major athletics would be now without him. Especially football.
Every year, Nordenberg was completely steadfast on subsiding athletics to the tune of millions of dollars when many powerful forces within the University of Pittsburgh were dead set against it.
What you are speaking of is absolutely by no means a decision that a University Chancellor should have anything to do with.
My understanding from those who I speak to is that Gallagher is fairly ambivalent towards basketball and football. Because of the ACC, athletics is more solvent than it was when we were in the Big East is the former Chancellor had to consistently mandate athletic subsidies.
Here's another tidbit for you all. Heather would like to look further into an on-campus stadium. But she's been discouraged not to do it by guess who.
Here's another quote directly to someone I know who shared it with me: "I'm not sure where people got the impression I'm all in on athletics."
Gallagher struck me as an Athletics guy at first. He was a Cross Country coach and said all the right things. But apparently not. Decades from now, he will be on the list of villains we still talk about. Some of it is probably unfair but he was the guy in charge when the basketball program is gutted. I have said many times that the least the university could have done was investigated the Stallings hiring process.
If indeed the guy is negative about emphasis given to the revenue sports, he’s certainly a good fit for remaining at the school as faculty as he is, because Pitt faculty by and large share that hostility. Too bad he’s staying.
How did he rate the Teflon he got for bumbling the Dixon/Barnes/Stallings fiasco anyway? It was then and remains now a tremendous, sustained situation of malfeasance or at just incompetence. Nothing personal but he should have been dismissed at the time, and certainly shouldn’t be welcomed to stay on in any capacity now. Unless that’s just lip service paid to all brass who mutually part ways, like when a bumbling company president is let go but remains a (muted) member of the board…
How did he rate the Teflon he got for bumbling the Dixon/Barnes/Stallings fiasco anyway? It was then and remains now a tremendous, sustained situation of malfeasance or at just incompetence. Nothing personal but he should have been dismissed at the time, and certainly shouldn’t be welcomed to stay on in any capacity now. Unless that’s just lip service paid to all brass who mutually part ways, like when a bumbling company president is let go but remains a (muted) member of the board…
The thought of a "Tulsa game and other dribbles" on a random tuesday night in February makes my churn
I mean you dont fire a President over sports but the Barnes/Stallings situation was so bad, he probably should have been fired. The decision to hire Barnes was the rough equivalent to the Death Penalty and to make matters worse, its pretty likely Barnes and Turner broke some laws in the hiring process.
Letting (or worse, coercing) things go to hell with Dixon is really the original sin, even before Barnes and Stallings. That actually may have begun with Nordenberg, which is why I definitely don’t see the golden aura around him that others do.
I’ve read enough threads here to know saying this triggers some who gripe about donors pushing to get rid of Dixon. Well part of good leadership is shutting out that noise IF the second part of that isn’t included in the arm twisting, namely, providing the funds not only to buy someone out but to fund the acquisition of a definite upgrade. It’s not who you get rid of (especially when it’s your greatest coach of the sport of all time), it’s who you replace him with.
This is on both chancellors.
I’ve read enough threads here to know saying this triggers some who gripe about donors pushing to get rid of Dixon. Well part of good leadership is shutting out that noise IF the second part of that isn’t included in the arm twisting, namely, providing the funds not only to buy someone out but to fund the acquisition of a definite upgrade. It’s not who you get rid of (especially when it’s your greatest coach of the sport of all time), it’s who you replace him with.
This is on both chancellors.
Not to mention the ascension of Pitt's academics which no doubt helped us when the ACC was looking at expansion.
Just like Louisville🙄
How about someone who seems buddy buddy with Nordenberg, addressing why Nordenberg allowed (or maybe even facilitated) the difficulties that Dixon started suddenly facing with recruiting? It was like a near 180. Leading to all that has happened up to this season.
Sorry, but that isn’t very ‘athletic friendly’.
And hasn't that stagnated or worsened under Gallagher?
The opposite, actually, at least on an undergraduate level. For the structural disadvantages Pitt faces in the rankings, it’s impressive the improvements that have occurred under Gallagher.
Many programs have been hurt academically under Gallagher, especially some respected graduate level programs. His undergraduate vision is far too left, woke and politically correct for the tastes of most.
This is a weird take, considering the credentials of the incoming undergraduate classes continue to get better and better every year, and the number of applications and class sizes continues to increase.
You didn't read what I wrote.
But rankings of Pitt undergraduate programs have at least stagnated and have deteriorated in some cases since Gallagher was here. It has nothing to do with class sizes and number of applications.
It does, though. You wrote that Pitt has implemented a vision that is “too far left, woke, and politically correct for the tastes of most.” My point is if that was true, then Pitt wouldn’t receive record levels of applications each year, and the credentials of the incoming undergraduate classes wouldn’t be improving every year. If Pitt’s culture was as unpopular as you make it seem, wouldn’t we be seeing the opposite?
One thing fellas, I am sure most of you identify with He/Him as pronouns, so I am comfortable in calling yinz "fellas". Anyways, alot has changed in college sports since the mid 90's and even mid 2000's.
There is so much money now in college sports led by football that whoever takes over is going to have to take it seriously. So I don't think you are going to get a J Dennis O'Conner and Mary Briscoe coming in and destroying things.
It is now more than a "front porch" to a University, it is a vital support of all the athletic programs and serious revenue that is used throughout.
And there are so many examples of schools ranked in all of the "Best School" rankings that are peers and even higher ranked that take athletics seriously. Pitt is not the University of Chicago, though some old trustees seems to want to think it is that.
There is so much money now in college sports led by football that whoever takes over is going to have to take it seriously. So I don't think you are going to get a J Dennis O'Conner and Mary Briscoe coming in and destroying things.
It is now more than a "front porch" to a University, it is a vital support of all the athletic programs and serious revenue that is used throughout.
And there are so many examples of schools ranked in all of the "Best School" rankings that are peers and even higher ranked that take athletics seriously. Pitt is not the University of Chicago, though some old trustees seems to want to think it is that.
Circa 1995-96, some at Pitt were pushing a "Villanova model" where we drop to D1AA football. Any notion of that stopped with Nordenberg.
Wannstedt doesn't come to Pitt without Nordenberg.
Nordenberg was the defacto commissioner of the Big East football schools during and following the original ACC raid of Miami. The Big East doesn't survive as a BCS autobid conference without him. It also would have split, with football schools forming something like the American without any pretense of power conference status. And even without any of that having happened, Pitt likely ends up in the American, not the ACC, if Nordenberg, or someone not similarly dispositioned towards athletics, isn't leading the university. Nordenberg was very active in making sure Pitt remained in the top echelon of athletics. More active than any chancellor should have to be, but it was a extremely tumultuous period.
He significantly increased athletics funding (subsidy), including football, within the existing severe budgetary constraints of the university that existed in the late 90s and earlier 2000s...those conditions don't exist now. True this was done at the expense of long neglected Olympic sports, but he recognized you have to take care of revenue-generating programs first. Everything for athletics was plowed into football and basketball. Pitt was an absolutely institutional mess circa 1996...wasn't even filling its beds, faculty was greatly discontented, athletics stuck in a 1960s-like nadir, general malaise among students and staff. Pitt couldn't even upgrade the score board at Pitt Stadium without a major uproar of misplaced resources. Pulling out of that quagmire required the right person at the right time to provide leadership. The easy solution would have been the Villanova model.
He made multiple mistakes too. Gave Pederson too much leeway. Then rehiring him. But Nordenberg was not a micromanager and let the people he hired do their job and wasn't keen on undercutting them.
I think many fans have the misguided belief that because Nordenberg oversaw the destruction of Pitt Stadium, that alone means that he was not a supporter of Pitt football or Pitt athletics. That’s always been a far too simplistic thought process.
How do you reconcile all of his efforts with the fact that the non-revenue sports were completely unprepared for competition in the ACC?
That was an extremely difficult decision under extremely difficult budgetary conditions after multiple failed attempts at fundraising and a terrible set of cards left behind by the prior administration.
Ideally, you don't tear it down. But even now, I'm not sure we are in a power conference if we hadn't because of the timing of conference realignment and the financial issues then being faced by the university.
