As always there are more than one answer.
Foremost, Pitt does not want to be among the top programs in the revenue sports. Period. It’s the internal culture of the admin and faculty. Going back to the 19 freaking 30s, once the program gets rolling, it isn’t appropriately followed up on to take it the next level. It is neutered from within.
And partly yes it is the money. The outside money. It is correct, that outside money needs to be immense. For that you need large boosters. Pitt had that in its most successful seasons. As mentioned above, Pitt itself neutered that.
Specifically it needs to be directed at the university. Not merely the specific individuals who come and go as chancellors, deans, trustees etc … but the overall university entity. The culture. The attitude. The perpetuation of all this as current ones hire future ones. And it goes back to the 1930s and then, of course, the 1970s and 80s.
Pitt tolerates having football, as it has its appeal to the unwashed, and regrettably there are always some unwashed. It pays its head coach similar money to all the other programs, as the defenders will cart out. (Which of course is merely the tip of the iceberg needed to be competitive).
But Pitt won’t tolerate football rising beyond its ‘place’. If it happens to deliver the occasional (very, very occasional) good season the school will jump on the wagon, but it then quickly derails that wagon. Or maybe more accurately in this latest iteration of failure, Pitt stood by, mostly uninterested, and let the increasingly deranged ‘Captain’ of the wagon derail itself (running off Whip, hiring a tired failure like Cig).
But besides that, Pitt also keeps a mighty clamp on booster spending…a clamp its had in place since the late 1980s (when the school insiders had enough of the ‘outrageous’ football focus of the late 70s).
This NIL thing is not going to be successful for Pitt with the likes of Sauce giving his annual Fifty bucks. It takes huge boosters, led by incredibly wealthy and bored alums (or just merely huge fans), willing and eager to give hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of their own money or that of their (likely annoyed) ‘investors.’
But, ah, those type A boosters aren’t going to give that money merely to get a 30 second photo opp on the field with Heather Lyke (which usually occurs right after Pitt gives up a score and the crowd ain’t cheering for anything…. the poor bastard ).
No, they would give/raise that money to bring difference maker football (not volleyball, not soccer) players and coaches here. Without bureaucratic interference from fussbudget university nerds and ‘flakes.
And that is something Pitt never allows, but for long anyway.
Pitt refused to allow this kind of “outrageousness” to continue in the 80s and sure as hell not going to allow it now, even if it has a ‘perfectly legal’ NIL wrapper on it. Football needs to know its place (Volleyball, on the other hand…)
