Pitt Chancellor Nordenberg Confuses Maximum With Minimum Expectations

The silence instigates a deep sense of resignation. The West Virginia debacle is nearly 96 hours old and the Pitt chancellor and athletic director have taken a pass.  No need to address an angry fan base. No need to talk about stopping the Wannstedt death spiral.

Disrespect of this magnitude on the street often results in violence. Disrespect to Pitt fans will result in loss of revenue—it's just about the only thing that remains. National respect and prestige flew the coop on Sept. 28 when Miami came to town. Conference respect ended Friday.

Steve Pederson has post-termination stress disorder. He is hiding behind Mark Nordenberg, unwilling to put his job and lifestyle at risk to remedy what he knows in his heart is wrong. The firing of Frank Solich at Nebraska was wrong, too, but at least Pederson did it with greater success for Nebraska football in mind, as illogical as that might have been.

Creating the inertia hovering over the Pitt football program is Nordenberg's friendship with Wannstedt. Nordenberg seems to have such a deep "man crush" on Wannstedt he has allowed emotion to rule his judgment.

It's a dysfunctional friendship that diminishes the potential for Pitt football.

Pederson is staying away from that one.

Perhaps Nordenberg tells himself all is well because he thinks Wannstedt is such a damn good guy. Pitt football beat writer Paul Zeise sums it up best today:

"He sees a program that is run clean and free of scandal...has won more games than it loses...has stressed academics...that has at least been in some big games in recent years...is competitive...wins more games than it loses...with a coach who is an excellent role model for his players, who cares deeply about his players and who cares deeply about the university and stands for the right things." (Zeise, post-gazette.com, November 29, 2010).

Wouldn't any ethical leader of a major university want those qualities in their coaches?

Looks like Nordenberg is more interested in supervising a study hall than being a chancellor of a BCS university which excels in academics and expects excellence in all of its athletic programs.

Nordenberg sees Wannsedt through rose-colored glasses. Coaching intelligence, overcoming adversity, and focusing to achieve goals are also components of a successful role model/coach. Wannstedt is deficient in those.

How much value does Nordenberg place on winning? Isn't personal and academic growth of players the foundation and winning the whole picture?

Nordenberg obviously spends too much time thinking about the Pete Carroll/Rich Rodriguez type of college coaches.  He doesn't believe he can find a man with the morals, drive, respect for academics, and excellent teaching and motivating skills to lead Pitt football to conference championships and regular Top Ten rankings.

We can only conjecture as Nordenberg and Pederson remain silent. .

Perhaps they will claim they have been too busy with Big East expansion to address the current state of Pitt football and to articulate the program's goals.  That excuse would be lame since Reverend John I. Jenkins of Notre Dame presided over the news conference in Fort Worth today.

Or maybe they have meeting somewhere far from reporters and fans to plot the next move. A rumor has already begun in the blogs about a news conference at Pitt on Wednesday afternoon at 1 pm.

The last big rumor about the Pitt program surfaced around the end of January: "Pitt schedules a February 4 news conference to announce move to Big Ten," proclaimed the Michigan and Ohio State blogs.

That one was a dud. Wannstedt has given an interview to Brian Bennett of espn.com where he seems a little out of sorts, like he knows something we don't, while offering his usual lists of alibis.

Either way, Nordenberg and Pederson owe their restless football fans a clear, precise statement of the Pitt football program's goals and an action plan to reach them.