How does Luxbacher keep his job?
- Thread starter nandoal28
- Start date
SP absolutely doesn't care. Luxbacher can't beat other teams with limited scholarships and he couldn't win if Pitt had twice the maximum number of available scholarships. We won't fully fund any more men's sports because that would require adding another sport for women. That makes it difficult to hire a good coach.
The funny thing is that I'm sure Pitt soccer is losing far more money than it did under Luxbacher. I'm all for the soccer spending, just saying they were getting what they paid for.
Nothing like digging up the past and see just how far an athletic department can go with the right leadership. Amazing how the right hire can change the culture of a sport for both men and women. Now, if the football and basketball teams can improve and push those sports to top 25, we would approach more of a Stanford respect with athletic success across all sports. We have seen 4 sports just jump into national respect, we just need football and basketball to move forward in a big way.
Well, that leadership was Scott Barnes. We got REALLY lucky with timing an the Jay Vidovich hire. It was a no brainer that fell into Pitt's lap. I don't think we get Randy without Jay being here first either.
And Fish was hired by Pederson.
The story goes like this:
Jay left Wake to take over Portland Timbers 2. Didnt like it, quit after a year and wanted to get back into college. His old AD at Wake is good friends with Scott Barnes from their time spent working together on the NCAAT committee (which begs the question, do they let any schmo on that committee). The old Wake AD called Barnes and told him he had to hire him. Barnes, to his credit, convinced the university that he needed more funding so he can hire him
Aren't you supposed to wait until #ThrowbackThursday to bring back a thread this old? 🤔
Whatever the reason for the hires, one thing they show is that following the “safe” path of automatically hiring an alumnus in the “minor” sports is not the answer.
Obviously, I’m extremely happy with the hires of Fisher and Vidovich, but I’m equally happy with Waldrum. He had a tougher hill to climb because women’s soccer can’t rely on foreign players nearly to the extent the men’s team can, and lots of top players verbal as early as 10th grade. So, there will likely be a two or three year lag between improved results and landing National recruits. I understand the same thing is true in women’s volleyball, so we should start to see Fisher get even better recruits in the next couple of years.
Obviously, I’m extremely happy with the hires of Fisher and Vidovich, but I’m equally happy with Waldrum. He had a tougher hill to climb because women’s soccer can’t rely on foreign players nearly to the extent the men’s team can, and lots of top players verbal as early as 10th grade. So, there will likely be a two or three year lag between improved results and landing National recruits. I understand the same thing is true in women’s volleyball, so we should start to see Fisher get even better recruits in the next couple of years.
