Didnt realize how behind we were to the other ACC teams in regards to the number and rankings on the rivals site for the 2023 recruiting season. Like it or not this is the best way to plug holes for the next season. Just ask Louisville or Florida State among others.Not only in numbers but in quality also in terms of how they fit in their schemes. In 2023 Louisville brought in 25, Ga.Tech 18, Miami 14, FSU 12 at the top.Pitt was 12 out of 14 with six . Only W.Forest with three ans Clemson with one were below us. And Dabo said recently that Clemson will hit the portal this offseason with more vigor.You never have enough talent that you can trust especially with Pitt being a developemntal program where some prospects dont develop quickly enough or not at all. Could be one of the many reasons why we are having this type of season so far.
Transfer Portal Recruiting
- Thread starter poconopanther
- Start date
When asked at the presser, Narduzzi said they'd hit the portal more (in a roundabout way) but also said he likes developing guys. I think he has too much confidence in himself and his staff in developing these under-recruited players. This is a business. These are pros. You have to be able to accurately project these kids after a year or 2 and then cut them if you dont think they'll be ACC level. Its a different game now. The NCAA wanted this. They allowed for this free agency/pro football. If Narduzzi doesnt want to be a pro coach (which is what these guys are now), then he can coach FCS. This is 100% pro football.
Development is great, but there's got to be raw material to work with.
Pitt certainly needs to hit the portal hard this offseason. If QB play was just mediocre this year, Pitt is probably 4-1 right now. The OL injuries just compound the problems on offense.
When it comes to QB, I hope they are done with portal guys that only have a year left. It seems like many of these guys are mostly damaged goods. Perhaps its a new system, new teammates, maybe they are pressing too hard,... whatever. It doesn't seem like it really improves things in most cases. I'd rather take a guy from the portal with that has multiple years left that got caught in a stacked roster, or already had success and decided to leave for greener pastures.
When it comes to QB, I hope they are done with portal guys that only have a year left. It seems like many of these guys are mostly damaged goods. Perhaps its a new system, new teammates, maybe they are pressing too hard,... whatever. It doesn't seem like it really improves things in most cases. I'd rather take a guy from the portal with that has multiple years left that got caught in a stacked roster, or already had success and decided to leave for greener pastures.
See I think this is an example of just cherry picking a few stats and running with it. Georgia Tech has been among the ACC leaders in transfers the last few years, too - that hasn't worked out so well. Arizona State had 31 transfers this past season; how are they doing? Indiana had 23 - what are they up to? Cal and Houston each had 20. UCF had 18.
These situations are not all the same. Louisville brought in a sitting P5 starting quarterback with ties to the head coach, for instance. And, in general, we have even a LESS chance of winning in the transfer portal than we do on the recruiting trail, because if you think there is competition for unproven talent, what do you think it's like for proven talent?
Perhaps the most remarkable oversight is the fact that the level of transfer we can bring in are clear as day.
Jackson Brown
Malcom Epps
Derrick Davis
Donovan McMillon
Daejon Reynolds
Christian Veilleux
Phil Jurkovec
C'Bo Flemister
Bub Means
Dylan Deveney
Shayne Simon
Kedon Slovis
Konata Mumpfield
Ryan Jacoby
Melquise Stovall
MJ Devonshire
Marcus Minor
DJ Turner
Keldrick Wilson
Joey Yellen
Lucas Krull
John Petrishen
Kylan Johnson
Nakia Griggin-Stewart
Nolan Ulizio
Those are the last five transfer classes. During these five years, we have had 19 players drafted into the NFL. Wanna guess how many of them came from the transfer portal? You got it - zero. Hey, maybe MJ gets taken this year. 1/25 is the business model you want to hitch your wagon to?
And don't get me wrong - some have been good players. But as NIL and the transfer portal have picked up, our average transfer quality had seemed to go down... and that's coming off some good seasons. You think it's going to be easier when we're coming off a bad season? Konata Mumpfield, for instance, is a fairly solid player... who would have never came here if he entered the portal after 2023. Hell, he might go back into it.
The fact that we suck and we don't take a ton of transfers does not establish causation and correlation, in my humble opinion. If anything, we need bigger recruiting classes.
These situations are not all the same. Louisville brought in a sitting P5 starting quarterback with ties to the head coach, for instance. And, in general, we have even a LESS chance of winning in the transfer portal than we do on the recruiting trail, because if you think there is competition for unproven talent, what do you think it's like for proven talent?
Perhaps the most remarkable oversight is the fact that the level of transfer we can bring in are clear as day.
Jackson Brown
Malcom Epps
Derrick Davis
Donovan McMillon
Daejon Reynolds
Christian Veilleux
Phil Jurkovec
C'Bo Flemister
Bub Means
Dylan Deveney
Shayne Simon
Kedon Slovis
Konata Mumpfield
Ryan Jacoby
Melquise Stovall
MJ Devonshire
Marcus Minor
DJ Turner
Keldrick Wilson
Joey Yellen
Lucas Krull
John Petrishen
Kylan Johnson
Nakia Griggin-Stewart
Nolan Ulizio
Those are the last five transfer classes. During these five years, we have had 19 players drafted into the NFL. Wanna guess how many of them came from the transfer portal? You got it - zero. Hey, maybe MJ gets taken this year. 1/25 is the business model you want to hitch your wagon to?
And don't get me wrong - some have been good players. But as NIL and the transfer portal have picked up, our average transfer quality had seemed to go down... and that's coming off some good seasons. You think it's going to be easier when we're coming off a bad season? Konata Mumpfield, for instance, is a fairly solid player... who would have never came here if he entered the portal after 2023. Hell, he might go back into it.
The fact that we suck and we don't take a ton of transfers does not establish causation and correlation, in my humble opinion. If anything, we need bigger recruiting classes.
Pitt from top to bottom, not only Narduzzi needs to realize it needs to hit the portal hard and not let this season nearly destroy the program, like nearly happened in the 90s. That realization includes the acceptance of hearty boosters involvement and NIL money it will need to take that, and that, gasp, that money will not be “fair and equal” across the board with the other university teams, due to some sports being much more, gasp, popular than the others.
Yes, as was said above, this is a professional business, most specifically a professional football business and not an ‘inclusive university athletics’ business.
Even with that it’s dubious Pitt can keep up or even make it up against their peers with booster/ NIL spending(we’re clearly far behind now); this is ramification of chasing away the boosters years ago and then shackling the few we have left.
Pitt will never admit it but it better have a contingency plan in mind for retreating from football as this spending leaps greater than ever, recruits use us merely to get better bids from the bigger spenders, and the conferences like ours slip further into peril.
Yes, as was said above, this is a professional business, most specifically a professional football business and not an ‘inclusive university athletics’ business.
Even with that it’s dubious Pitt can keep up or even make it up against their peers with booster/ NIL spending(we’re clearly far behind now); this is ramification of chasing away the boosters years ago and then shackling the few we have left.
Pitt will never admit it but it better have a contingency plan in mind for retreating from football as this spending leaps greater than ever, recruits use us merely to get better bids from the bigger spenders, and the conferences like ours slip further into peril.
First, players need to want to go to your program.
Second, they need to know their credits will transfer.
I think the second point has hurt Pitt in recent years. I believe PSU has gotten a few quality targets we wanted, because Pitt wouldn't accept their credits.
Second, they need to know their credits will transfer.
I think the second point has hurt Pitt in recent years. I believe PSU has gotten a few quality targets we wanted, because Pitt wouldn't accept their credits.
Lol. This is pro football. If Pitt doesn't accept credits from a prior school, then they should join the Patriot League. Who the eff cares what courses they took? They are pro athletes, not real students.
pittdan77
Athletic Director
Pitt also had a larger than normal number of players stick around for the extra Covid year so you don't always have the room to bring guys in.
We've also discussed this before but outside of a few big hits, most schools don't build winning programs with the transfer portal. The vast majority of these kids aren't really worth a lot of energy and some positions are just going to be really tougher to find a starter. Not like the last two high profile transfers have worked out here but let's beat this dead horse a little more.
We've also discussed this before but outside of a few big hits, most schools don't build winning programs with the transfer portal. The vast majority of these kids aren't really worth a lot of energy and some positions are just going to be really tougher to find a starter. Not like the last two high profile transfers have worked out here but let's beat this dead horse a little more.
Yep, good point. The best we're going to find in the portal are basically what we already have. David Green, Shayne Simon, Tyler Bentley, Bub Means, Konata Mumpfield, Blake Zubovic, Nate Temple... that's the exactly quality of player we're going to pull from the portal (and obviously some of those guys are from the portal). We didn't need to go to the portal too often because we already have so many of those guys.
We're not landing studs from the portal. Maybe one out of every 30 or something. We're landing filler tracks on the album from the portal. That's fine... but you've gotta have some star power, and that is coming from recruiting. This notion that we can build a team from the portal - at Pitt - is insanity.
pittdan77
Athletic Director
Zubovic was a Pitt recruit but the point stands. I think most of the time, you hit the portal for positions of need and depth. You might be able to develop a QB if you grab one that's still pretty young but it's going to be very hit and miss at skill positions. Maybe you get lucky with a Tom Savage, maybe you get whatever this is. It's not like the guys you listed are bad. They're just not great. I think Means and Mumpfield would be a lot better with a good QB but they ain't bailing out a bad one.
Speaking of cherry picking a few stats. Arizona State fired Herm Edwards because of recruiting scandals. Of course they are going to be hitt8ng portal hard.
I know, but I'm saying he (Zubovic), Bentley, Green, Temple, George, etc. are about the level of guys we're going to pull from the portal. We just didn't need to, because we filled those spots with elder statesmen Pitt recruits. In the future, we probably will pull a lot more depth/filler starter guys of that ilk from the portal... or so I would think.
I think QB is the one position that offers some exceptions in the portal because there can only be one.... but with that said, there clearly aren't enough good QBs in the country to have a quality starter who is ready to play on every team, as we're seeing. So you better have at least one young guy who offers some hope there, too.
Yeah. No receipt worth a dam is spurning us because Pitt isn’t accepting their their crappy fluff Anthro 80 class as the equivalent to our crappy fluff Anthro 80 class. We have to give up on this ‘academic superiority “ BS that is so ridiculous concept in college football that’s it’s now a punchline in a Doctor Pepper commercial.
Great transfer? Raise a boatload of NIL and bribe his ass to sign. Then it’s “welcome to the university, son”.
I really doubt that it's some kind of imaginary higher academic bar for football transfers that is discouraging kids from transferring to Pitt.
Well Louisville was referenced in the OP. Anyone with a coaching change is obviously going to have a high degree of turnover these days.
But I don't know why people think the cream wouldn't rise to the top when it comes to the portal. We're going to get the outfits the big boys tried on and determined they didn't like (McMillon, Reynolds, Ulizio, Hodges, Simon, Davis, Max Browne, Jurkovec from his ND days, Flemister, etc.), so how are we going to compete with them, or anywhere near them, if that's the basis for how we build are team?
Of course there are other types of transfers we'll get as well (guys who outgrew the G5, a few lateral moves, etc.), but every time a guys enters the portal the big boys will still have first dibs.
A top program with a top coach can afford to recruit
4 and 5 star players, and ALSO get elite portal players,
even if it's only for one year.
All you gotta do is look right here at Pitt and observe our
Volleyball coach. He recruits 4 and 5 star All American
types out of h.s. Two of his best players this year are
Freshman. He has a few transfers, and they're stars. One
of them is on the front line and is one of the team leaders
in blocks and kills. Last year his best player was a 6'5" elite
transfer out of the Big 10. She led the team in kills and
was one of the main reasons we were a Final Four team.
This year he has another elite transfer (6'4" Bre Kelley)
out of the portal (Florida) who is out injured. How good
is she?.....She was picked as a pre season ACC All Star
this year before she even played one game here.
I know it's not football, but coach Fischer is competing against
other volleyball coaches in his respective field. He's
clearly at the top of the heap in this field. Football?.....I
like Narduzzi, but seriously where is he in his respective
field relative to the use of the portal and h.s recruiting?
We all know the answer to that.
4 and 5 star players, and ALSO get elite portal players,
even if it's only for one year.
All you gotta do is look right here at Pitt and observe our
Volleyball coach. He recruits 4 and 5 star All American
types out of h.s. Two of his best players this year are
Freshman. He has a few transfers, and they're stars. One
of them is on the front line and is one of the team leaders
in blocks and kills. Last year his best player was a 6'5" elite
transfer out of the Big 10. She led the team in kills and
was one of the main reasons we were a Final Four team.
This year he has another elite transfer (6'4" Bre Kelley)
out of the portal (Florida) who is out injured. How good
is she?.....She was picked as a pre season ACC All Star
this year before she even played one game here.
I know it's not football, but coach Fischer is competing against
other volleyball coaches in his respective field. He's
clearly at the top of the heap in this field. Football?.....I
like Narduzzi, but seriously where is he in his respective
field relative to the use of the portal and h.s recruiting?
We all know the answer to that.
It's not a Narduzzi issue. It's a Pitt issue.
Pitt hasn't been a major factor in recruiting since the Gottfried years.
This is as doom and gloom as it comes because we struck out in the 2021 class and self-sanctioned the 2022 class so the result of that is we have no young talent. So if you have no young talent and you cant get good transfers, what the eff are we going to do? Its like we are starting from the bottom again. That self-sanctioned (due to keeping so many Covid year players) may end up hurting the program more than Covid year Kenny helped it.
Sorry, I don't agree. Get the right coach in here and we'll
see much different results in both recruiting h.s. players
and with the portal. Look what we did in basketball after
Dixon left. Is there anyone who believes our program
would have hit the bottom of the barrell as it did if
we brought in any number of name coaches?
As for football, same thing. I don't believe for one second
it's a Pitt thing. I've mentioned in other threads 3 Pitt
coaches who are getting it done in their respective fields.
They know their field, they have a REAL resume before
coming here, and Pitt isn't the anchor that's holding their
programs back. They're having tremendous success here.
I don't think we precluded ourselves from ever being good again; I just think it's going to take a few years to build this back up.
When the Pirates don't go all in and play for their window, people complain. Pitt did do that, and they had about as much success in a two-year period as you're going to see them have. So it's tough to say it wasn't worth it.
I have always said that it's not the 7-5 average that sucks; it's the fact that we deviate from that average so infrequently. Like... 10-2 and 4-8 is probably better than 7-5 and 7-5. This year sucks while we're in it, obviously, but as long as we're back to being 7-5/8-4 in like 2025 and being competitive in at least 10 of our 12 games, order will be restored. We'll see if Narduzzi can get us back to that point.
Those non rev sports are a complete 180 from football and men’s basketball in every way. The most significant way being that those are the sports Pitt believes is politically acceptable to be in, so Pitt actually supports their attempts to be excellent. It certainly also helps that the better coaches and recruits for those sports don’t cost a fraction as much to obtain.
Pitt hates needing to have football, but it pays the bills for the sports it loves to have.
Unfortunately Pitt still gets the money for having football no matter how bad the team is. It takes paying (not just an average salary for the HC, but all coaches, for top recruiting, aka sleazy unethical ones, and complete willingness to unleash boosters). Pitt haters all that too and as was posted above, hasn’t permitted it since the 80s. So guess what, we’ve sucked since the 80s. Pretty easy equation to solve. And since the ACC still gives us our full check, it’s great. For now, of course. The day of reckoning is coming for all the college football programs that operate with the Pittsburgh Pirates business model.
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Penn State just lost a kid earlier this week because of a credit transfer issue.
Pitt just lost Cephas straight up. The same credit issues that he ran into at Pitt also presented themselves at Penn State, which is why he couldn’t enroll there until August instead of January like he wanted to.
Yea, I'd rather go 10-2 and 4-8 than 2 7-5s but going 11-2 didnt cause this. It was the decision to not cut players so the 2022 class could have had 22-25 players. If we felt the covid year kids would be difference makers, we should have cut some younger players. Those kids from the 18, 19, and 20 classes still arent very good.
You are comparing apples to oranges. Football recruiting isn't even remotely comparable to other sports.
Football is big business. If you want elite recruits, you have to pay. It takes several thousand just to get a visit out of a lot of them. Pitt doesn't have the monied boosters willing to go all in on college football, nor do they enjoy any type of geographical advantage the way they did 40 or 50 years ago.
Well I think part of it might have been that you didn't really know how good they were, because they were blocked. Like if you're going all in on last year, for example, then Haba, Alexandre, Morgan, and Hayes are consuming most of the playing time and probably consuming most of the 1st (and even 2nd) team reps in practice. So how do you really know what you have in Temple and Brima to want them out? I mean, I assume the coaches knew they weren't stars who couldn't be kept off the field, but maybe they thought they could at least be as good as the guys who were blocking them due to experience (similar skillsets = more experienced guys are going to play). There is only so much practice time available.
We had a good culture and one of the longest-tenured coaches (i.e. there were no mass exodus situations) at the time when you just so happened to be allowed to have over 100 scholarship players on your roster. I have no doubt it hindered some development and some evaluations. Still tough to say we didn't benefit from it.
I’d have agreed with that if there were all these fantastic transfer players lined up just craving to come in, but clearly that wasn’t the case, and hasn’t been the case since the NIL sham got really rolling, coincidentally right at that same time. Pitt is not exactly Prime but we certainly will nudge the ballast out the door. And we still would today as well. But we’re not being ‘nice’ in keeping the ditch digger guys we have; we need the bodies. The problem is attracting better guys to need to push out the bad ones for. Where are they?
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Also, what is distorting a lot of this is Jurkovec. It's tough to make any grand declarations when your QB can't hit an effing Woolly Mammoth in stride. We're not very good, but we're also not 1-4 bad. With average QB play, we're probably 3-2 with an outside chance at 4-1. Narduzzi is a complete dumbass for the way he has handled (or not handled) the offense the past two seasons. Just hope it doesn't have long-term ramifications. But QB play THIS bad feels like a special exception. We're like a 5-7 to 7-5 team that is probably going to finish 3-9 or 2-10.
Here's Mark Stoops begging for more money to buy better players. UK isn't exactly cheap when it comes to college athletics, but clearly they can't compete with the big dogs in football.
Stoops: UGA 'bought some pretty good players'
Kentucky coach Mark Stoops publicly pleaded for more financial support for his program on his weekly radio show, saying after a blowout loss to Georgia that the Bulldogs had "bought some pretty good players."
It does. Cin, WVU and VT are proven bad teams and maybe we normally win those with even a Tino playing QB. But with this stiff remainder of a schedule, it’s unlikely there would have been many, if any, more wins with someone like him. So at best you still have the talent of a 4 win team. That’s not only disappointing recruiting but quite near scandalous, 18 months removed from a conference championship.
It certainly shows the devastating impact of NIL money already decimating our recruiting (needing to pay recruits thousands of dollars merely to visit the school) …but frankly it also appears Narduzzi, the staff, the whole AD really, just put their feet up after 2021 and went into cruise control, when it actually needed to double down on things to capitalize what everyone suspected was the freakish
2021 success.
But, surprise, the school didn’t give a sh1t. That’s exactly what they are going to get back too, in donations and ticket sales … sh1t.
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I don't disagree that they're bad, nor do I disagree that we're bad.
Cincy, WVU, VT, Wofford, Syracuse, BC, Wake... in the grand scheme of things, they all suck.
Duke, Louisville, ND... okay teams, but not world beaters.
It wouldn't take much to find a handful of wins out of those ten games. I'm not making excuses, and it's Narduzzi's dumbass fault for where this offense stands today. But my God... Jurkovec wasn't just bad; he was all-time awful. Being a 5-7ish team (7-5 was probably going a little too far) against this schedule isn't exactly saying much.
After 2021, we should be recruiting (and have the quality of coordinators and assistants) to the level that the only teams on the current schedule that we should have outright doubt in beating are ND, FSU, and possibly UNC. Not that we couldn’t lose to a Louisville having a hot year as well. But we certainly should win or expect to win all the others. Instead the paucity of talent brought in since that CHAMPIONSHIP year is so extreme that we figure there isn’t a single team on the schedule that couldn’t beat us. That is remarkable failure, really. Even the 1996 team, it was a long slow slog through the entire decade that led to that low point. This was a mere 75 weeks.
Please don’t bring up our schedule 😳
You’ll get the people started who think our biggest problem is our brutal OOC schedule.
Absolutely, if academics matter when recruiting high school or transfer guys then drop to a lower level, share CMU's stadium, that's practically on campus
, but if you plan to be a Power Conference team, you push out players who suck with no remorse, like Coach Prime and you accept football talent without regard for academic record or ability.
You kick the ones who can't play at a high level to the curb, like Coach Prime would.
It wouldn't matter unless we could find ones who can play to take their spots. I'm doubtful on that. For the most part, I think the ones who have absolutely no business playing at this level do leave.
You can have higher academic standards, FOR THE REAL STUDENTS, they can all have 1500 SATs all 19900 of them, then the 100-150 football and basketball players can average 800, it won't lower the overall average
