Oblivion to irrelevant...wow. Ripped down the FB stadium to build a BB arena when conference affiliation and the money is all about FB - real bright! No one is disputing what Nordy did regarding academics. Still doesn't change the fact that he was incompetent in every aspect of managing athletics including personnel decisions. And his extending Pedersen's contract, which you conveniently slugged over, was indefensible!
Trib with a Two-parter on Pitt trying to play with the big boys
- Thread starter CorsosRevenge
- Start date
And yet, it led us to a better conference with more money and revenue.
Seems plenty bright.
And yet here we are in a power 5 conference during one of the most unstable periods in recent memory.
Blah, blah, blah...there's no comparison between Pitt's FB tradition and the other pretenders who could have been in competition with Pitt. Uconn and Cinci.... Pure garbage, although Nordy's incompetent handling of the FB program probably made the competition closer than it should have been.
There's a difference between cause and effect and two events being temporally close together. Notdy was chancellor at the time Pitt was admitted into the ACC which in my mind was attributable to past FB tradition which far outstripped anything the likes of Uconn or Cinci could claim- they have NO tradition and no name value. And if you believe academics had much to do with entry into the ACC then you must have forgotten how quickly the ACC grabbed Louisville, an academic underachiever. Pitt got into the ACC despite Pedersen and Nordy who up until the very end nearly buried Pitt FB.
True- there is a difference between cause and effect.
You claimed there was one. I demonstrated there was not one.
You think we were admitted to the ACC because we were good at football 40 years ago, but not the decade earlier when it would be more relevant? Stop it.
No blah, blah, blah. While tradition does have some say, it is also the current environment today that made the ultimate decision. If Pitt was irrevelant as you say they were under Nordy, Pitt would not be in the ACC. Plain and simple. No conference would select an irrevelant program. And FB drives the bus.
Look you can give that bum Nordenberg whatever credit you want for Pitt's admission to the ACC but you will never be able to rationalize away or defend the act of arrogance and cronyism he committed on his way out the door, an action that cost Pitt two million dollars and fircwhich he should be ostracized and shunned. All you need to know is that when the ACC expanded the first time they took a garbage BC program ahead of Pitt largely because of Nordy the buffoon.
The logic of a pill bottle filler. That's why you fill bottles with pills and never use your intellect because it stutters and putters. Yes, Pitt's FB tradition is precisely why they got into the ACC. They have been crap in FB for 30 years thanks to buffoons like Nordy and his predecessors. You want to give credit to Nordy for their membership- he was a dumb bystander who readily accepted credit.
Pitt Stadium was a dump and an eyesore. Heinz is a much better venue and so are the practice facilities. Pitt was never getting into the B1G and certainly not the SEC. They got Pitt into the ACC and athletics are making more $ then they did before.
Except for hiring Stevie P...especially the second time, you are wrong on pretty much every point
But the tradition didn't get them in over Boston college or Virginia tech.
Stop it
Pitt got into the ACC primarily because we are in Pennsylvania (Pittsburgh specifically is ranked #23 TV Market in the country). Pitt's football tradition and basketball performance was a plus.
Syracuse got selected because they are located in New York. Syracuse football tradition and basketball performance was a plus.
Notre Dame (everyone wants ND) brings their National TV Appeal to the ACC Conference (even if only for 5 football games with the ACC).
ESPN after doing a market analysis told Swoffard (ACC comish) that the 12 team ACC Conference would never get a network by itself (too small of a conference foot print) and recommended Pitt,Syracuse and Notre Dame to make it possible.
The ACC Conference linear network to start in 2019.
Rutgers got selected for the Big Ten Conference primarily because they are located in New Jersey. Rutgers football tradition and basketball performance was a negative.
HAIL TO PITT!!!!
Last edited:
I didn't know Pitt spit out so many big education doops. This is how education is these days, learn how to listen and be told how to do things assbackwards, and just shovel it in, never question any of it. If you believe Nordy and Pedey were good for Pitt football, you really have your head up a rear end.
so they got into the ACC because of their head to head competition with Cinci and Ucon and/ or because of their superior hoops program? You swing and miss every time you come to the plate
Yes.
Because were the most Attractive fit.
Same with cuse .
You think the big 10 scooped up Rutgers because of their tradition? Or poached Maryland for football ?
Stop it
Your binary view of the world from the prism of conventional wisdom is stupid .
Souf, where did Pederson end up, what school bid for his services, since he and Nordy saved Pitt football LMAO
Just so we are all on the same page here, Pitt's record in football in the five years before Mark Nordenburg became chancellor was 18-37-1. For the mathematically challenged, that's a winning percentage of .330. We made zero bowl games in those five years. So yeah, pretty clearly no improvement there.
The Big 10 selection of Rutgers was a decision premised on completely different criteria than that which the ACC relied upon in selecting Pitt and Syracuse. The Big 10 in selecting Maryland and Rutgers was exclusively concerned about cable tv markets, nothing else. Pitt, by the way, didn't get in the first time the ACC expanded because Nordy, the nimrod, was intent on making the BE work. You whiff once again...badly! The main point, however, is Nordy had nothing to do with Pitt's admission to the ACC other than signing the application and playing bigshot.
Nope , same criteria.
Expect the big ten didn't need Pitt because they had penn state .
Nordy tried to make the big east work because it was our only option at the time . Until we had a better option.
I could say worse about you and I would be correct but I'm more mature than you! You think you are an insider and you're nothing but an archivist!
What I say about you is 100% accurate.
Truth is truth. There are few I respect less in 20 years on these message boards.
The feeling's absolutely mutual! You are a self-important archivist who on this and every other website pushes his agenda and attempts to "keep people in line".
I wish you had a modicum of an archivist's insight.
Last edited:
We can agree to disagree, Nordy and Pedey made a mess of Pitt football. This new administration gets it totally, and we will see the ship righted soon, as well as all the other improvements made at Pitt non sports related as well. We now have a fully functional, competent administration, haven't had in many many years
That is pretty spot on, except to note in regards to peer spending that unfortunately Pitt is often competing, at least in recruiting, against insurgencies into our back yard by ND, Michigan, Ohio State, Notre Dame, and Penn State. So you have to carefully define "peer." To coaches going head to head against these other guys, definitions don't matter, but reality is what it is.
Pitt subsidized the athletic program at a more than reasonable rate...something like around $10 million a year, + or - a few m, depending on the year and that was in the upper end of BCS programs. Besides lack of donor support, there was also a huge revenue problem. So despite the subsidization of athletics from the university (which was at an all-time high under the past administration), spending was absolutely less than many "peers," although in line with others that more closely resemble Pitt as an instituion (so I agree with both you and Souf). Spending was absolutely was always going to be less than some "peers" unless Pitt started winning more and could scale up with revenue increases. That happened somewhat in hoops, but it didn't get to point it needed to be in football. The olympic sports were basically kept on life support, and were being outspent by just about everyone.
What wasn't ever going to happen under the last administration was plunging the university into more debt, which is what some people wanted because they want to spend without restrictions, and you see the results of doing stuff like that at Maryland and Rutgers. The university is always stuck with the bill, and you can see that going back to Pitt Stadium or more recently at Texas A&M. Absolutely there was a "lack of institutional support" across the university for many academic and athletic projects, because that is absolutely what the institution needed at the time: fiscal conservatism.
People forget how bad of a financial spot the university was overall circa 1995, something not remotely faced by a school like UMD. Pitt was having trouble filling its beds. It was a complete mess, and trending down....really poorly run for for a long time and I mean that going back to Posvar, who did some good things but was not a good administrator. And then, come the 2000s, and just as it started pulling out of the mess of the 90s, Pitt gets double walloped by massive state appropriations cuts timed with fairly huge cuts to federal research funding which is a huge source of revenue for Pitt. What is amazing is that Pitt's academic and athletic credentials during these financial crises only kept climbing: remember how many times during the last decade we were ranked among the best combinations of football and basketball? And Pitt actually got more competitive and successful in obtaining federal research funding. Frankly, if you look across the spectrum of universities in similar situations (and few faced what PA did to Pitt), it is downright astounding, especially given the starting point in the 90s.
But yeah, cost control was the mantra, born out of necessity. As anyone that has ever managed a complex institution knows, you have to balance things carefully and sometimes get creative, because every school, department, division, and center has their hand out for fantastic sounding missions and advancements if only they could have a little more. And a lot of those academic pitches land more central to the actual trustee-mandated core mission of the institution than does a plea for an assistant coach or another scholarship for baseball. Hence the creativity: spinning off the medical center is probably the most significant example. Subsequently partnering with it and the local pro team for facilities is another. The bottom line is that there is an infinite list of great uses for money, but no infinite supply. Some people just can't seem to wrap their head around the latter. Pitt tried the spend and ask questions later path in the 60s, and that is why it is now beholden to the state.
Gallagher has much more money to work with though and a much different starting point...as you said, essentially starting with at least being competitive on both the academic and athletic side. The foundation was set by the prior administration, and the current one absolutely recognizes that, and Barnes has even publicly commented how responsibly managed the financial aspect of the department was that he inherited. That wasn't just lip service. There is very little debt service, so all this new ACC money is even more impactful than it is at other schools because of that. So there is an opportunity there to make some pretty significant leaps pretty quickly given this substantial new revenue source. There is absolutely reason for optimism.
Last edited:
BC couldn't block a 90lb linebacker.
BC doesn't want UConn in, but UNC and Duke couldn't keep Louisville out either, or kill the 2003 expansion. There are more important things at play in expansion than what BC wants...and what BC wants means very little. Expansion in the last decade has been explicitly undertaken for reasons involving football & media markets (essentially football media markets).
It does make UConn fans feel better to think BC is the reason.
Last edited:
It's not. Winning is. We did that far more often under Mark Nordenberg than under his predecessors.
But hey, I get it. Some people never, ever let the facts stand in the way of one of their emotional rants.
I have no problem and an opinion like this. What I have a major problem with is revisionist history or uninformed statements by personal narrative-driven individuals with no interest in understanding historical realities and context.
Nordenberg made a lot of mistakes, and not just in the area of athletics. A lot of the mistakes are easier to pinpoint a decade removed from the decisions than at the time that the decisions had to be made, but that is life, and no pass is expected for those. Some actions are still legitimately debatable as to whether or not they were actually mistakes. What also is very much disputable is the significance of both certain and debated mistakes to the overall larger picture. What absolutely is not debatable is the shape that he left the athletic department (and football program) in compared to what he inherited. Neither debatable are the incredible storms that he successfully navigated the athletic department through during his tenure, and the amount of personal resources he invested in order to do so.
I tell you with absolute certainty, if you hate Nordenberg and love Gallagher (which makes little sense), there is absolutely no way in hell the university lands someone like Gallagher without the previous 18 years of Nordenberg's leadership.
Last edited:
Latest posts
-
-
-
-
Suggestions for 2 teams for your rooting interest ...
- Latest: TheSpecialSauce