Hate him. And hate the "negative Pittsburgh media". He was an ass for his "Come Clean" comments at the initial PC and he owns up to that. But my god......did he nail this. Here are some excerpts of his column when Stallings was hired.
Believe it or not, I’m not here to bury Kevin Stallings.
I don’t know Stallings. I don’t care about Stallings. I’m not remotely invested in his history at Vanderbilt, where he coached 17 seasons, had a losing record inside the SEC, never finished first and hadn’t won but a single NCAA Tournament game since 2007. I don’t care about this man or his borderline miserable/mediocre career in college basketball:
I do care that our city’s preeminent program is trending toward systematic suicide.
Let’s not pull punches here: Pitt’s hiring of Stallings, made official by the university early Sunday afternoon, is one of the most mind-numbing in any walk of local sporting life. And given that it’s happening at the same institution that brought you those halcyon pre-mugshot days of Mike Haywood, that, my friends, is no faint praise.
This has the potential to crush basketball at the university.
It’s exactly that big.
More....
I do care that Pitt’s novice athletic director, Scott Barnes, has apparently just gone out of his way to paint himself as a rash, tone-deaf and possibly disingenuous buffoon in this process.
I do care that Barnes paid the search firm Collegiate Sports Associates to find this coach, even though the firm is run by former Vanderbilt AD Todd Turner, the very man who hired Stallings at that school. Actually, Turner is the founder and president of the firm, so it’s impossible to imagine he could have recused himself from this process.
I do care that, in general, this process with search firms stinks. It’s scandalous. It’s kickbacks all over creation. It’s buddies taking care of buddies. Barnes has known and worked under Turner. Turner has always taken care of Stallings. And that Barnes had better have some highly detailed and plausible explanations for all this when he gets grilled at the Monday 2:30 p.m. press conference. Because at the moment, this looks scandalous on this front alone.
And more....
Now imagine all this anger, which comes across on social media as stunningly universal, combined with a lesser roster, combined with a sense that this coach’s career never had an upward incline to offer any hope and … man, it’s tough to even fathom how long it would take to undo the damage, isn’t it?
No, seriously, Mr. Barnes and everyone at Pitt, what were you thinking here?
I get that it was Patrick Gallagher, the new chancellor, who found a gem in Pat Narduzzi — without the help of a search firm, it should be stressed — but couldn’t he have been at least peripherally involved in preventing this fiasco?
Couldn’t anyone have studied up on past mistakes from search firms?
Or the smell from the firms themselves?
Couldn’t anyone have suffered more than a momentary lapse of common sense?
Believe it or not, I’m not here to bury Kevin Stallings.
I don’t know Stallings. I don’t care about Stallings. I’m not remotely invested in his history at Vanderbilt, where he coached 17 seasons, had a losing record inside the SEC, never finished first and hadn’t won but a single NCAA Tournament game since 2007. I don’t care about this man or his borderline miserable/mediocre career in college basketball:
I do care that our city’s preeminent program is trending toward systematic suicide.
Let’s not pull punches here: Pitt’s hiring of Stallings, made official by the university early Sunday afternoon, is one of the most mind-numbing in any walk of local sporting life. And given that it’s happening at the same institution that brought you those halcyon pre-mugshot days of Mike Haywood, that, my friends, is no faint praise.
This has the potential to crush basketball at the university.
It’s exactly that big.
More....
I do care that Pitt’s novice athletic director, Scott Barnes, has apparently just gone out of his way to paint himself as a rash, tone-deaf and possibly disingenuous buffoon in this process.
I do care that Barnes paid the search firm Collegiate Sports Associates to find this coach, even though the firm is run by former Vanderbilt AD Todd Turner, the very man who hired Stallings at that school. Actually, Turner is the founder and president of the firm, so it’s impossible to imagine he could have recused himself from this process.
I do care that, in general, this process with search firms stinks. It’s scandalous. It’s kickbacks all over creation. It’s buddies taking care of buddies. Barnes has known and worked under Turner. Turner has always taken care of Stallings. And that Barnes had better have some highly detailed and plausible explanations for all this when he gets grilled at the Monday 2:30 p.m. press conference. Because at the moment, this looks scandalous on this front alone.
And more....
Now imagine all this anger, which comes across on social media as stunningly universal, combined with a lesser roster, combined with a sense that this coach’s career never had an upward incline to offer any hope and … man, it’s tough to even fathom how long it would take to undo the damage, isn’t it?
No, seriously, Mr. Barnes and everyone at Pitt, what were you thinking here?
I get that it was Patrick Gallagher, the new chancellor, who found a gem in Pat Narduzzi — without the help of a search firm, it should be stressed — but couldn’t he have been at least peripherally involved in preventing this fiasco?
Couldn’t anyone have studied up on past mistakes from search firms?
Or the smell from the firms themselves?
Couldn’t anyone have suffered more than a momentary lapse of common sense?
