Will officially be what kills Pitt football. Imagine giving a dude NO ONE else wants $6.5M/year through 2030, lol.
The Narduzzi Contract
- Thread starter TheWerewolfFromTwilight
- Start date
Heather with another boneheaded financial decision.
Heather did more damage than anyone wants to admit.
- Volleyball albatross
- Narduzzi lifetime contract for lucking into Addison/Pickett and still finding 3 losses for those of you who count bowl games
- selling marquee home games to Ireland
Narduzzi is coaching for his job next season. Needs to go 6-6 or better to get 2026.
Jerry Dipola after the season: Coach, that's a pretty tough way to end a season.
Nardumbf#ck: Ey, we beat West Virginia, mmmmmkay?
Nardumbf#ck: Ey, we beat West Virginia, mmmmmkay?
He's been a lot better for Pitt than the coaches someone else did want. (Todd Graham & Paul Chryst)
He can be the best coach since Sherrill and his shelf life expired. They are not mutually exclusive
It hasn't. There's a huge difference in talent & NIL budget between Pitt and Louisville. Both are going to be 7-4 after today.
A change might make people feel better, but it won't do anything.
Indiana is 10-1 and Florida State is 2-9. It's not *all* about NIL.
You apparently weren’t around from 1990-1999. The most wins we had in a single season was 6. We are stuck in football purgatory. 90-99 was hell.
Haha. Not if you're going to use a one year sample size. Give that one a 3 or 4 year window and get back to me. If FSU had been willing to outbid Miami for Cam Ward, they would probably have 6 wins this year.
Take a break tonight, Dopey. We could go 2-10 and you'd be afraid of going 0-12. Weak.
Bowl games affect the record. Bowl games determine final rankings. Bowl games setup momentum for next year. Until they don't go on your record, they count. Lookup how many less than 3 loss seasons pitt has since what, 1982? 2021 won't be on that list, as they lost a major bowl game and a top 10 finish. I don't understand why that doesn't count.
They're not gonna move on from Narduzzi after next year. He's won more than anyone since Walt, and before that Sherill. Who exactly are we bringing in? I've seen enough of the Wannys, Chrysts, Haywoods and Grahams.
The football program I loved is becoming very Pirate-esque in their constant underwhelming performances. A ton of teams in the country have had at least one 1 or 2 loss season even in this millennium. But when it comes to Pitt football, you get ish.
What should’ve been a terrific decade the school decided to make it one of the worst. Never recovered from it.
No, Arizona State and Indiana didn't get an influx cash into their program. And quite honestly, it shows. Because any time either one of them step on the field with a good team, they get their ass handed to them.
They have a nice record against weak competition over a one year sample size. Nobody is impressed with that. Dillingham constantly trips over his own d*ck, and at least this year, it hasn't seemed to cost him. I think his career record after tonight is 12-11.
There is no version of college football that is built for any coach with inferior talent. Other than Kent & YSU, Pitt isn't vastly superior to anybody on their schedule. That's a problem. They also found a way to win 7 games with this team.
I would have to disagree. Of all the things wrong with the Pitt football program, Pat Narduzzi is way down the list.
Like him or hate him, all the man has done is brought stability to a football program that very much needed that from its head coach. It seems too be hard for some of you guys to understand that you could have the best college football coach in the nation (Dan Lanning, Oregon...Kalen DeBoer, Alabama...Ryan Day, OSU, etc...) here at Pitt and it wouldn't change a single thing. The school does NOT prioritize the football program at Pitt. It hasn't done so for decades, it isn't going to change any time soon.
None of those other HC's I mentioned will be able to recruit high school talent better then Narduzzi and they certainly would not be able to get the top talent via the transfer portal. If Pitt really wanted to improve the football program, they could do so immediately by going out and offering top NIL money to high end high school recruits and players in the transfer portal. That would require the school to spend some money and Pitt is not going to do that. Why? The answer to that one is easy. Pitt is too cheap to do so. Sucks to say that, but it is true.
Leave Narduzzi alone he is actually a very good representative of the university. Find a big time donor with deep pockets and use that money to bring in the top talent and you will see that Pitt can compete for a NC.
Lol, where to even begin with this.
1. Stability - this is an adjective people use when there really isn't anything all that appealing to say about a coach. It's like a realtor saying a house has potential. Everybody knows what you're saying. Who cares about stability? I want results. Narduzzi was 8-4 and 8-4 in history first two seasons here. In his most two recent he'll be 3-9 and 7-5. Tell me more about this "stability." If anything it's time to experience the recruiting bump that comes with bringing in a new coach.
2. What a sanctimonious take to act like we couldn't do any better with anyone else. Like, that's borderline insane. You'd have told me Syracuse couldn't do any better than Dino Babers if you were a fan of them. Nope, after Dino averaging 5 wins for 8 years, they're going to win 8 or 9 this season. You'd have told me Kansas couldn't make a bowl again before Leipold got there. You'd have told me there's no way 1-11 Colorado could go 8-3 in year two of a new coach's tenure. Do you want 1,000 more examples? Ever hear of a school called Indiana?
Guess what we're also proving? Stability doesn't mean a damn thing. Ask Wake Forest how they're enjoying years 10 and 11 of Dave Clawson.
To say that people don't understand that Narduzzi is the best we can do... get out of here with that defeatist nonsense.
Stability = how long anyone keeps you around. He’s certainly stabilized that Pitt is a 6-6 to 8-4 type of program with an occasional outlier though.
Kind of like a performance review at work where the only positive thing to say is they are "punctual"
Inherited a 6-6 program and improved them to a 7-5 program. Some stability
Glad you addressed that nonsense Wolf - saved me some keystrokes.
Yeah, I'd like to set up that poster on a blind date with a girl with a great personality.
The baseline for Pitt football for me is 8-4 in the regular season. Narduzzi has...
8 wins - 3 of 9 seasons (potential for a 4th)
7 or fewer wins - 4 of 9 seasons (potential for a 5th)
9 or more wins - 2 of 9 seasons
Narduzzi has been a good coach for Pitt and he's taken this program forward from Chryst. It also feels like he's maxed out his potential has has Pitt on the fall.
8 wins - 3 of 9 seasons (potential for a 4th)
7 or fewer wins - 4 of 9 seasons (potential for a 5th)
9 or more wins - 2 of 9 seasons
Narduzzi has been a good coach for Pitt and he's taken this program forward from Chryst. It also feels like he's maxed out his potential has has Pitt on the fall.
Clawson has been .500 at a school that's historically .421. He has a better career winning percentage than the previous *12* coaches going back to 1937-1950. They were the only non Clemson division winner over an eight year period.
Coaches should be judged vs their budget/attendance/NIL funds and not thin air. Wake is much harder to win at than most ACC schools. If I were an athletic director at UNC, I'd be more eager for a change than at Wake.
Pitt and Narduzzi? Somewhere in the middle. Hes overperformed compared to our post 1982 average and won more ACC games than he should considering our finances but he's also slumping badly now.
I know, big my point is that he hasn't done that as a result of stability. If anything, he's been going backwards lately.
Some people would rather go 7-5 every year, because Stability!, than hire a guy who in, say, his fourth season wins a conference championship and maybe wins a playoff game, but then Ohio State has an opening and that guy leaves you to take that job.
It's the same sort of thing that always has some people wanting to hire a "Pitt man" for the job. Because they assume that the "Pitt man" won't leave you for someone else. But really, who cares? We are not at the top echelon of college sports (except for maybe volleyball and men's soccer). The goal should be to hire a coach who ends up being so good that the top programs in the country WANT that guy to be their coach instead of yours.
The notion that stability should be in any way, shape or form a goal of a Pitt coaching hire is bonkers.
Spot on…. if anyone had carefully analyzed how Narduzzi performed his job from day one instead of closing their eyes and crossing their fingers they would have had severe misgivings about him 5 years into his tenure. But instead the obsession over stability blinded Lyke into competely ignoring this guy’s flaws and giving him a lifetime contract the moment after he finally accomplished something.
I think there are certain grads who take the Pitt brand way too personally. When a coach leaves their school, they feel like a guy whose wife just left him.
For all we hear about that 2010-2012 coaching carousel business, the program never really suffered all that much because of it. We were a 6-6ish team all the while; there was no massive bottoming out, which contradicts the scathing warning some describe it as.
Also, like Stallings, no one ever said you have to make a poor hire(s) after parting ways with a coach.
I agree that we should want a coach who succeeds enough to be a hot commodity. Elevate our brand and then we can hope to find someone else to sustain that. There are very few programs that *aren't* stepping stones. Hell, Notre Dame's coach bolted.
I thought and still believe he earned the chance to right the ship, especially since he was willing to think outside the box with the new staff/philosophy. But losing out cuts into the good graces. The seat has to burning hot next year. It can't be another 7-5 or even 8-4 season. Needs to be a come to Jesus meeting with Greene and the bar has to be set at 9 wins and a top 20 finish in 2025. Anything less and it is time to move on.
Of course, I won't be too upset if the plug is pulled this year, but I think one more year is fair.
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If you want to talk results, Pitt isn't going to get any better results than they have already gotten under Narduzzi. Doesn't matter if the coach is Narduzzi or someone else. That isn't defeatist. It's reality.
Most coaching changes are good to clear the air and feed some grass to the sheep. There really isn't that much substance behind them unless it relates to a procurement of talent. And 4 or 5 years ago, it mattered. Today it really doesn't. Indiana got their bump because Cigs was able to bring over an ungodly number of upperclassmen & IU's schedule was ass. Next year, the Hoosiers will go right back to being irrelevant.
They can keep Narduzzi, fire Narduzzi, whatever... Success isn't really possible or sustainable without getting high end talent. Can't be done.
So if Narduzzi goes 30-22 over the next four years, there wouldn't have been a single person on Earth who could have gone 31-21?
Lol. What? No. That’s not what I'm saying at all.
Pick any coach in the country you want to coach at Pitt for the next 4 years and the results won't be substantially different between any of them. That's all I'm saying.
You can't really believe that.
You just can't.
You might believe that there is no coach that is going to turn Pitt into a perennial national championship contender. And I would agree with that. But the notion that no matter who coaches Pitt the next four years won't make any substantial difference at all in the record is dumber than just about anything SMF has ever posted, it's that dumb.
Really? I guess it depends on your parameters for the word substantial.
Do you think there has been a substantial difference between Walt Harris, Dave Wannstedt, Todd Graham, Paul Chryst, and Pat Narduzzi? I don't.
So Pitt fires Narduzzi and either lures Nick Saban out of retirement or hires the 2025 version of Gerry Faust and it will make no substantial difference in where the program is and how much it wins over the next four years?
