Basically the issue was underachieving. Pitt had the talent they just weren't coached up enough to take advantage of it. A lot like the current Penn State teams.
Firing Wannstedt
- Thread starter PittHOFs
- Start date
Basically the issue was underachieving. Pitt had the talent they just weren't coached up enough to take advantage of it. A lot like the current Penn State teams.
Well, all those guys were innovative high school coaches, so hire Eric Kasperowicz.
Tons of, but none of them mean nothing to nobody and they back, and are losers. Souf loved Pederson, enough said!
Talk about incapable of understanding something? What the F subject are you even on Joe? Your question has nothing to with my stance or anything I've said. I'm not nor did I ever compare anyone to anything...when you come back to us, let me know
For the love of god. Going 8-4 and winning at a top 5 VT, and barely losing to ranked wvu and #1 Miami was much more impressive than going 9-3 and beating no ranked teams.
Yeah, they both had a WTF loss in NCSt and a&m but walt played a much tougher schedule for his entire career at pitt than wanny ever did.
Yeah, they both had a WTF loss in NCSt and a&m but walt played a much tougher schedule for his entire career at pitt than wanny ever did.
You really have lost your mind.
We are talking about the context in which things happened. Was the Big East a better conference at the end than it was years before? Of course not, which anyone with even half a brain knows. Which means that winning in that conference was significantly easier.
The fact that you can't follow along with such a simple argument probably does a good job explaining why you think that Dave Wannstedt was a good football coach.
Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha hA
Wanny's overall record was was 43-32, or 58%. There are likely dozens of active coaches with the same or better winning percentage. Steve Addazio, Paul Johnson, and Will Muschamp are almost identical. Except these 3 did it in the ACC and SEC and didn't go .500 against freaking UConn and Cincinnati. And NO ONE pines for those guys. They're ok, that's it.
I cannot understand the obsession with an average coach who was average against terrible competition.
They are either fans of S&M or flamers. Unless you have a sure fire bona fide coaching star AND the backing of big boosters to pay a few recruits, changing coaches is the dumbest thing. Narduzzi will get it, but ooooh I wish we still had president stache as coach.
They were coached up individually just fine. The issue was bringing it all together and winning more games.
He should have been hired as an assistant several years ago which at least would have given him a chance to move up the ranks. Despite all his flaws, Todd Graham got pretty far in life by hiring good high school coaches onto his staff and letting the move up.
I don't think it is. Lot's of quality players. Half the Big East All Conference team. He wasn't able to use their talent to have more success, even if he could develop them as players.
I never once compared or discussed the Big East Conference. Discussed who was a better coach, etc - so go **** yourself with not following along asstard
I don't really disagree all that much here. It's the asstards that say he's a loser and put down the 9 and 10 win season and focus on nothing but the bad is what I focus on. There's an obvious agenda their and it's sad. Put down a dude that gave you one of the best seasons we've had in 30+ years is just retarded and arguing for argument sake
Right, of course you didn't bring up the quality of the Big East Conference, because it is abundantly clear that you simply do not understand context.
In Dave Wannstedt's season of all seasons we played exactly ONE team that was in the top 25 when the game was played, and two teams that ended the season in the top 25, number 8 Cincinnati and number 25 West Virginia (and for what it's worth, we lost them both). As of this week's poll we have already played teams ranked 11 and 12, and we have games still left on the schedule with teams that are ranked 6, 17 and 24. We also have two other games left with teams that are receiving votes but are not in this week's top 25, teams number 28 and t42. Surely even you understand that this year's schedule is significantly more difficult than the 2009 schedule, don't you? Surely even you understand that if the 2009 team played a schedule as difficult as this year's schedule that not only would they have been extremely unlikely to win ten games, they wouldn't have even been likely to win eight. Or conversely, if this year's team played a schedule as easy as the 2009 team did that this year's team would be very likely to at least make a bowl game.
You can't keep playing up that magical ten win season without also acknowledging that it came against inferior competition. Or at least you can't if you have more than half a brain and are intellectually honest. If Army wins 10 games this year no one, literally no one, will think that winning ten games against a schedule that features teams like Libery, San Jose State, Layfayette and Colgate is the same as if someone like Washington or LSU or Penn State wins ten games, because people understand context and they understand that the strength of the schedule that you play matters.
Or I guess maybe I should say that no one would think that Army was as good as any of those teams except you, because you truly seem incapable of putting things into their proper context.
That what the biggest waste of 1 minute of my entire life , ignorant
Great response!
I know you guys don’t like facts about wanny because it puts him in such a bad light.
the three worse moves still haunting Pitt:
1) Not forming an all-eastern conference in the 1980's and separating from traditional rival PSU & WVU. PSU is the only thing Pitt fans are passionate about. It is the only game at Heinz where people stood in my section the whole first half and no one yelled sit down. It rained miserably but the game was still packed. Yet we are divorced from them.
2) Not renovating Pitt Stadium and moving to Heinz. I didn't hate Pederson as much as some, but this is proving to be the death sentence of Pitt football. Hard to ignore the yellow seats in the social media era. Personally I like playing at Heinz with the amenities and easy access, but it is way too big for our fan base and we will never fill it consistently.
3) Hiring Ed Bozik.
Notice that Wannstedt firing is nowhere on the list.
Firing him when they did, after one "down" season following 2 pretty promising ones, remains a pretty baffling decision. He should have still been the coach in 2011, perhaps with a slightly hot seat underneath him.
That said, I'm not convinced Wanny would have survived long in the ACC, and I definitely don't think he'd still be at Pitt. And that's not to draw any comparisons to how he'd have done vs. what Chryst or Duzz has done, but he'd have been here a decade or so, and if Pitt seemed like they were stagnating in the ACC at the 6 or 7 win mark (which is where I think they would have been), they would have canned him by now.
That said, I'm not convinced Wanny would have survived long in the ACC, and I definitely don't think he'd still be at Pitt. And that's not to draw any comparisons to how he'd have done vs. what Chryst or Duzz has done, but he'd have been here a decade or so, and if Pitt seemed like they were stagnating in the ACC at the 6 or 7 win mark (which is where I think they would have been), they would have canned him by now.
It was simply really. Pitt should have supported the program a little bit more when it was one top. Retaining and hiring decent coaches should have been a no-brainer. And why couldn't they have upgraded the bathrooms and concessions at Pitt Stadium. People love to talk about how terrible those things were, but why were they so bad?
I already covered you when I said that someone would need at least half a brain and to be intellectually honest to agree. The only thing still up in the air is whether you fail one of those or both.
7 wins in year 6 isn’t trending up.
Especially getting absolutely dismantled by wvu on national tv to end the season.
I said it at the time and I will say it again, firing Dave Wannstedt when we did and especially HOW we did was among the dumbest things I’ve ever seen Pitt do. And that is saying a mouthful, because Pitt has done some of the dumbest things in the history of intercollegiate athletics.
We fired the guy - a true Pitt guy no less - because we were sick of coming in second place in the conference.
Unreal.
Let that sink in for a second. We were successful but just not quite as successful as we thought we should be, so we fired the guy.
I still can’t believe we did it.
This is typically the part where someone chimes in about the program being completely out of control and all the rest of that BS they were fed at the time. Look, if you want to buy that propaganda that’s entirely up to you. However, I can tell you with absolute certainty that’s a bunch of horseshit.
The only one who should’ve been fired at the time was Pederson for voluntarily choosing to become the face of crime among college football programs based on a deeply flawed article by Sports Illustrated. He should’ve done what Trump does every time there’s a negative article about him – just cry “fake news” and move the eff on as if nothing has happened.
Seriously, whoever gave Pitt the advice to take owner of that article should’ve been sued for malpractice. It’s the dumbest advice I’ve ever seen given, much less taken.
In fact, it was so dumb that I think Pederson intentionally did it to rid himself of a political rival among boosters. I genuinely believe that Pederson sacrificed Pitt to save his own hide and I think we are still paying for it.
I realize that sounds a bit conspiratorial, but that’s the only explanation I can come up with for why any educated human being would decide to have a press conference like that. No intelligent person, much less a team of intelligent people, could possibly have thought that was a good idea. There had to be ulterior motives.
We fired the guy - a true Pitt guy no less - because we were sick of coming in second place in the conference.
Unreal.
Let that sink in for a second. We were successful but just not quite as successful as we thought we should be, so we fired the guy.
I still can’t believe we did it.
This is typically the part where someone chimes in about the program being completely out of control and all the rest of that BS they were fed at the time. Look, if you want to buy that propaganda that’s entirely up to you. However, I can tell you with absolute certainty that’s a bunch of horseshit.
The only one who should’ve been fired at the time was Pederson for voluntarily choosing to become the face of crime among college football programs based on a deeply flawed article by Sports Illustrated. He should’ve done what Trump does every time there’s a negative article about him – just cry “fake news” and move the eff on as if nothing has happened.
Seriously, whoever gave Pitt the advice to take owner of that article should’ve been sued for malpractice. It’s the dumbest advice I’ve ever seen given, much less taken.
In fact, it was so dumb that I think Pederson intentionally did it to rid himself of a political rival among boosters. I genuinely believe that Pederson sacrificed Pitt to save his own hide and I think we are still paying for it.
I realize that sounds a bit conspiratorial, but that’s the only explanation I can come up with for why any educated human being would decide to have a press conference like that. No intelligent person, much less a team of intelligent people, could possibly have thought that was a good idea. There had to be ulterior motives.
No, I have 3 moves that will trump Wanny. These guys were very good coaches who had a lot of success at Pitt.
1) Letting the poindexter’s ruin the dynasty Jock Sutherland built.
2) The idiots in charge letting Jackie Sherrill walk because they thought they would do just as well without him.
3) Barnes opening the door for Dixon to leave rather providing the additional resources he needed for assistants.
I also remember that when he was fired there were very, very few of us warning that it was a ridiculously idiotic decision.
There were a handful of us and I remember exactly who it was that had the proper perspective. I also remember who was out to lunch.
I say that not to brag because really, why would anyone brag about something so meaningless? What does it really matter? However, I think that we can and should learn from that mistake here.
I’m not interested in defending Narduzzi or pretending that everything is just hunky-dory, because I don’t feel that way. I am as disappointed in this season as anyone. I think there are some real legitimate causes for concern.
However, I have also seen how insanely our fan base tends to act at the first hint of adversity and I’m definitely not with those folks either.
I think the Pitt mob who view every single game as a referendum on the coach’s job stability and the direction of the program, and who throw public temper tantrums every single time something doesn’t go their way are dangerously unstable and usually very ill-informed.
I think they ran Harris out of town, then Wannstedt. It’s only now with years of hindsight that a lot of our fans are FINALLY like, “Hey, I was just looking at our recruiting rankings and our records and watching some old videos and it occurred to me that firing a coach who was excelling in all of those areas, but not quite winning the week-ass Big East, may not have been the brightest idea in the world.”
De’r!
I can assure you those same rocket scientists would have run Chryst out of town prematurely as well, but he got out ahead of the posse. He too has proven to be a pretty good football coach.
My point is that as you read this website for the rest of this season - and probably in the next several seasons, because Narduzzi just signed a seven-year extension and isn’t going anywhere, gang – take all of it with a huge grain of salt.
Don't Let It Being You Down
There were a handful of us and I remember exactly who it was that had the proper perspective. I also remember who was out to lunch.
I say that not to brag because really, why would anyone brag about something so meaningless? What does it really matter? However, I think that we can and should learn from that mistake here.
I’m not interested in defending Narduzzi or pretending that everything is just hunky-dory, because I don’t feel that way. I am as disappointed in this season as anyone. I think there are some real legitimate causes for concern.
However, I have also seen how insanely our fan base tends to act at the first hint of adversity and I’m definitely not with those folks either.
I think the Pitt mob who view every single game as a referendum on the coach’s job stability and the direction of the program, and who throw public temper tantrums every single time something doesn’t go their way are dangerously unstable and usually very ill-informed.
I think they ran Harris out of town, then Wannstedt. It’s only now with years of hindsight that a lot of our fans are FINALLY like, “Hey, I was just looking at our recruiting rankings and our records and watching some old videos and it occurred to me that firing a coach who was excelling in all of those areas, but not quite winning the week-ass Big East, may not have been the brightest idea in the world.”
De’r!
I can assure you those same rocket scientists would have run Chryst out of town prematurely as well, but he got out ahead of the posse. He too has proven to be a pretty good football coach.
My point is that as you read this website for the rest of this season - and probably in the next several seasons, because Narduzzi just signed a seven-year extension and isn’t going anywhere, gang – take all of it with a huge grain of salt.
Don't Let It Being You Down
People that posted since Frank's old board were banned over posting, about the idiot decision by the two nimrods in charge at the time!
I’m sure that post with me all kinds of friends as well, but what the hell? When you’re right, you’re right and I was/am very clearly right.
Look, we have done this to ourselves and we now have absolutely no choice but to support this guy, so you had better hope like hell that he figures it out and turns things around or you’re going to be completely miserable for the next three or four years at a minimum.
Look, we have done this to ourselves and we now have absolutely no choice but to support this guy, so you had better hope like hell that he figures it out and turns things around or you’re going to be completely miserable for the next three or four years at a minimum.
Are you sure that wasn’t Drew M? Then again, it was so Drew F to represent himself as Drew M.
Yes, those were all bad decisions as well. I would also argue that firing Gottfried was an absolutely idiotic mistake.
However, the decisions to run out of town both Harris and Wannstedt rank right up there with them.
We just don’t know what we’re doing.
We can’t even get our own throwback colors right. How are we going to make a multimillion dollar coaching decision if we can’t even get our own freaking colors right?
As I said earlier, it may seem incidental to many others but it’s important to me because I think it suggests an overall inattention to detail that infests the entire program.
It looks like we may have lucked into a basketball coach with Capel, and I surely hope that turns out to be true. However, are you confident we’re going to be able to keep him?
At this rate, I’m half expecting him to have a really good recruiting year and then announce next year that he’s leaving us to take the head-coaching position at Saint Bonaventure.
