Is we bout to be looking for a new AD?
- Thread starter TheWerewolfFromTwilight
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Heather Lyke out as Pitt athletic director
Pitt athletic director Heather Lyke has been relieved of her duties, sources at the university informed the Post-Gazette on Monday morning. Lyke,...
www.post-gazette.com
Well the scuttlebutt is that her devotion to the Olympic sports do not align with the vision of others.
The good thing is that when everything hits the fan and Olympic sports get nixed, Chris Peak will be able to use Victory Heights as the new PantherLair Studios.
I wondered about all this, how much leadership can be provided when you are known to be looking at lateral moves.
Oh don't be silly. She's only used USC as leverage.
And Michigan State.
And Michigan.
And Washington.
And Northwestern.
And Ohio State.
And probably a few I'm forgetting.
She makes Jamie Dixon look like the Doctor of Loyalty.
I agree, but reading the article, pretty much sounds like a complete dump job. What else could be driving such a move? ( Honest question)
Ironically her devotion to Olympic sports is what got her recognized and frankly right now the best Pitt teams are out of those sports. But as a football and basketball guy I am happy if we move to a new AD.
Best thing, it seems, she has done for big time sports if have patience with Capel. Things appear to be going up in that arena.
Best thing, it seems, she has done for big time sports if have patience with Capel. Things appear to be going up in that arena.
Olympic sports is a loss liter. It’s not going away. Aside from what it provides for campus life, those athletes all become future donors to the athletic Dept.
Yeah, I don't think they'll go away entirely.
But it's kind of funny that so much of her recognition and accolades stems from them, while football - because of her aversion to NIL - is in a worse spot than it's been in quite some time.
I know some good things happened in football during her tenure, but this new landscape happened fast. And she did not adapt.
is lyke anti-football? Serious question. seems like we prioritized football big time under HL. we devote a very large portion of revenue to Narduzzi and the program, more than any other AD that i remember.
im curious why pitt fans think Lyke is anti football and hoops.
im curious why pitt fans think Lyke is anti football and hoops.
I don't think any AD is anti-football. But I do think she's anti-NIL, which is basically synonymous nowadays.
Yeah there has to be something more to this story in order to abruptly fire a successful AD less than a month into a new school year.
This was likely not done for any performance reasons. Removals out of the blue like this portend some sort of scandal within the athletic department, for which there doesn't seem to have been any rumblings that have leaked, or major philosophical or personality conflicts (inside or outside the university). We may never know, and it may be best that we don't.
Clearly she was very well perceived in the AD community outside of the university, which may make her replacement more complex.
This is an extraordinarily dangerous time for the university. Any coach will tell you that one of their major determination in their retention is their working relationship with their boss, and by all accounts, Lyke had great relationships with her staff.
This is going to very interesting.
And no, success in olympic sports have not, and will not, come at the expense of revenue sports. However, it is a harbinger of overall athletic department health.
Clearly she was very well perceived in the AD community outside of the university, which may make her replacement more complex.
This is an extraordinarily dangerous time for the university. Any coach will tell you that one of their major determination in their retention is their working relationship with their boss, and by all accounts, Lyke had great relationships with her staff.
This is going to very interesting.
And no, success in olympic sports have not, and will not, come at the expense of revenue sports. However, it is a harbinger of overall athletic department health.
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NIL
I think the staff has adapted as well as possible, but it's obvious Pitt is on the wrong end of the NIL food chain.
The football program isn't using NIL to improve their roster. They use to retain productive players & out of desperation to fill needs.
It's probably not out of the blue. Somebody, somewhere has been leaking to the media linking her to other jobs. Hindsight suggests she knew her days were numbered at Pitt and she was looking for a landing spot.
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I hope no scandal - yikes, that would be bad. A power struggle with someone (Chancellor, Trustees, Boosters) seems plausible.
However, if she was NOT recently extended as some reported, then wasn't her contract due to be up in December '24?
It could be as simple as the Chancellor/BOT knowing they weren't going to extend her and wanting to get a head start on finding her replacement, rather than having a lame duck. That's a reasonable approach from a business perspective.
I don't think it's out of the blue either. She's publicly been courting other jobs and she's been going through a contract negotiation because her current deal ends this year. She never got her new deal.
i think she bit off more than she can chew with the victory heights project. and i think that with her interviewing at multiple schools while under contract rubbed people the wrong way.
but pitt fans painting this as a huge win for pitt football is amusing so let them have their fantasies, as unrealistic as they are.
That’s a silly take
My bet is in athletics being de emphasized
Somebody hasn’t had folks reach out to them for other jobs before .
It could be a major dispute over her contract where her demands were unreasonable and her overtures to other schools aggravated that. Who knows
Historically at Pitt, changes of these types have seldom worked out well.
To follow this up, the rumor mill that is now churning, this was not due to any scandal. It was, perhaps, an inability to come to agreement on a contract. Take it all with a grain of salt.
A line in the sand? Heather says 5 years or I'm leaving and Pitt says goodbye?
From what I've observed, there are plenty of posters here that think if an AD is trying to run a healthy athletic department top to bottom and isn't putting 99% of financial resources into football and basketball while running everything else on the thinnest budget possible; that they aren't pro-revenue sports enough.
As conference realignment continues to be a concern for Pitt; I feel that something like Victory Heights will only be an asset in positioning. Conference networks mean non-revenue sports are being televised when they hadn't been previously to fill out programming schedules and if a school's facilities are embarrassing to show on television; that's a strike against it compared to schools with better facilities in what will be a cutthroat positioning competition to see what schools find a home with relevance and what schools get left behind.
I do wonder what this means for the football team's future at Acrisure Stadium. Going to Cincinnati and seeing the visual of a full Nippert Stadium drove home how much better it would look during a broadcast if Pitt was playing in a right sized stadium. On campus would be nice; but challenging. Joan Gabel came from a university that in recent history moved from playing in an NFL stadium to an on-campus facility, so she would probably have as good an idea as anyone about the pros and cons of such a move.
That said, I'm still undecided on if Gabel is a pro-athletics chancellor or not. What little I know about her tenure at Minnesota does not really answer that question for me.
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