Dave Wannstedt Apologists Silent After UConn Loss: Has Fire Wanny Movement Begun?

Pitt fans are so pissed about Thursday night's game at Rentschler Field that they are circulating this email address—[e-mail]—as in Steve Pederson, former athletic director at Nebraska, now A.D. at Pitt.

Write to him. Get that emotional release you need. Tell Steve what you think of his coach. Do it now while the iron's still hot.

Two days and a night ago, Dave Wannstadt laid one of his biggest piles ever on the Pitt fanbase. Instead of securing first place in the woefully weak Big East and cruising into a Fiesta Bowl berth, Wannstedt and his aging-by-the-minute team convulsed and threw up all over Rentschler Field.

By this time Wannstedt's apologists would have been all over the blogs, doing their best song-and-dance to silence the growing legion of fans who simply get it: For all of his strengths as a recruiter, Pitt alum and community member, Dave Wannstedt is a bad head coach and not the guy who should continue there.

The personification of Murphy's Law, Dave Wannstedt should have found a good coordinator's position with a pro team and stayed put. 

He refuses to do, or is incapable of doing, the kind of thoughtful analysis after a loss that could produce a real change in one of the essential components of a winning program: firing up your troops, adapting your game plan to maximize advantages over the opposition and being astute enough to change that plan in the course of the game as necessary.

As one angry fan put it, it's six years of Wannstedt always being the same, always running a conservative game plan, always choking in the big game.

In a blog entry simply entitled "Briefly and ticked" on pittblather.com, one fan wrote this:

"I hate hate hate saying this but Dave Wannstedt has failed. I really wanted to believe, but you have to ask yourself is it worse for the Cowboys to be 1-7 or for the Pitt Panthers to have lost to Notre Dame and UConn nevermind getting blown out at home by Miami. Dave is a great great football man its time he was a man and admitted he is just no good as a head coach." (www.pittblather.com, Nov. 12, 2010)

Another fan just put it out there with no hedging:

"Big lights = no fight. Miserable experience to watch as a fan. Ill-prepared. Poor QB. No strategic thinking…team and coaching. Playing tight and not to lose. Big East brand killer. Regressing. Can’t handle prosperity. Losing to less talented teams."

All of these phrases rush through my head (and many of my friends) when we watch Pitt football.

ENOUGH IS ENOUGH!

I want to see all of the Wanny apologists defend him now. Oh, that’s right, we’re all haters. We are blind to the progress. Look at the numbers. Look at the recruiting…

WE ARE NO BETTER THAN WALT WITH WANNY.

Say we limp into the BCS with eight wins to get mauled by Boise State. Have we really progressed sine we did the same thing in Walt’s final year?

"Disgusting." (www.pittblather.com, Nov. 12, 2010)

The only person to discourage the fire Wanny talk is actually not a fan, but a beat writer for the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette assigned to cover Pitt football. Paul Zeise's opening comments in his column aptly entitled "Ridiculous Choke Job" is the closest to a defense Wannstedt has after the UConn 30-28 debacle:

"Let me start by writing this—stop already with the e-mails about firing Wannstedt, putting in Pat Bostick, bringing in Bo Pelini or Paul Rhoads and all the other ridiculous, idiotic stuff that comes out from the lunatic fringe after every Pitt loss.

Teams, even the best ones, lose games, it happens and blowing games is not unique to Pitt—though the Panthers seem to have made an art form out of it." (www.post-gazette.com, Nov. 12, 2010).

Zeise gives Wannstedt a back-handed compliment that is more back-hand than anything else.

Can fans fire a coach? How is it done? It's a good bet that finding no one to defend a head coach after a horrible loss is a good start.