and that going back to Dixon's tenure there's always been a tendency to overrate mid-major coaches to a severe degree and it's happened again all year this year.
Like Gary Parrish said, a non-elite school is getting an assistant, a low-major guy, a 2nd tier mid-major guy, or a retread. There’s no difference in the expected outcome with that crop of candidates. It’s why non-elite programs stay irrelevant and non-elite. Why throw away money for more of the same? If you’re going to make stupid business decisions, you better have something up your sleeves and I’m giving Lyke the benefit of the doubt at this point.
I mean mid-major coaches are usually the young up and comers in the sport.
There is a very different expected outcome between hiring a young assistant or mid-major and hiring a "retread" coach.
We knew what Stallings did in the SEC, a conference inferior to the ACC, while having a few NBA players at Vandy. He had a long track record. My expectation wasn't all that high.
With the mid-major coach, your ceiling as far as expectations is usually higher. You're thinking if this guy can win his conference maybe he can build on that and win a bigger conference. There also may be a lower floor as the job could always be too big. That being said, we saw how Stallings has his floor drop out.
I don't think hiring a successful mid-major coach would be a bad business decision for Pitt if they think he's the best coach. A bad business decision would simply be going cheap on this hire like they did two years ago.