Pitt Football Suffers From Dave Wannstedt Condition: Ugly Flare-Up Today

Periodically throughout the past six years, "Wannstedt Condition" will break out all over the Pitt blogosphere discussing the pros and cons of the self-touted greatest coach ever—the one and only Dave Wannstedt.

Wannstedt condition provides the suffering Pitt fans with a variety of ailments - everything from a slight itch to festering sores.

This week, even before the big game with Notre Dame, the condition is already breaking out in huge scaly rashes among his supporters, the delusional, emotional faction, and his detractors, the reality-based sector, criticized for pointing out things like the schism between expectations and achievement.

Wannstedt's supporters, a significant yet diminishing slice of the Pitt fan base, are the first to see the symptoms. They are defending their hero ad nauseum but they're having to find new excuses. All that tension begins to itch.

They are a lot like Christine O'Donnell supporters in neighboring Delaware. Like Wannstedt, she's all mouth but in a snoop-in-everyone's-bedroom kind of way. Christine wants to know if you've been masturbating. She is keeping a tally of whose going to heaven and whose going to hell. Unfortunately, she is on the latter list. That's what happens when you've been a witch.

Wannstedt is all mouth too. He loves to talk about his problems. He offers preachy, morale-rousing solutions. Unfortunately, his supporters hear him but his players don't. He had the exact same problem at Chicago and Miami.

But in both cities his supporters converted to detractors much quicker than is happening at Pitt. I guess shelling out big bucks for seat licenses and season tickets focuses the mind.

Wannstedt condition is doing a slow creep through the Pitt fan base. Wannstedt's backers are slowly joining the detractors in demanding nothing less than a Big East title this season.

That itch was evident today when Bob Smizik wrote yet another column about the inevitability of a long Wannstedt tenure at Pitt. Smizik is just like Joe Paterno if Paterno were a columnist and not a coach. Paterno isn't much of a coach these days and Smizik isn't much of a writer so the two should be friends.

Smizik's diatribe began with something like Pitt doesn't have to win Saturday.

See, Bob was trying to win points from the Wannstedt backers who are working hard to expand the book of excuses for their hero. It looks like the books you can buy to treat allergies. They seem reasonable at first but none of them work.

Wannstedt's detractors are a lot like the media and the majority of Delaware's citizens. They aggravate the O'Donnell condition, a new malady that popped up after the Republican primary and is only alleviated by earplugs and news avoidance, by confounding her fantasy of being a distinguished alum of a prestigious university.

Pointing out that sitting in a room on the campus of Harvard doesn't make you a student or a graduate rebuffs O'Donnell's claims to a distinguished education..

Unlike the Delaware electorate who have a confirmed date to vote and end the embarrassing condition O'Donnell has put her state in, Pitt fans realize Wannstedt condition has no terminal date.

That's the one point Smizik got right today. Wannstedt has nudged his way right in between the cracks, happy to remain the subject of so much debate.

He has even convinced his supporters that having him as head coach is better than hiring a young gun who would stick around a few years then leave. Wannstedt is at Pitt for the long run.

To this line of thinking his detractors retort: With a sixteen-year coaching record barely above .500 and no titles or championships of any kind to claim, who would want him? 

Maybe his backers will eventually run out of excuses and the Pitt athletic department will run out of cash.

Like Bears and Dolphins fans, Wannstedt detractors know one way to end the current condition of Pitt football is to vote with cash. In this case voting means donating no cash. It's the only method of containment that really works.

Even the Supreme Court agrees.