Pitt Football: No Coach for Bowl Game, Recruits Fleeing, Player Unrest

Judging from the events of the past month, an observer might think the Pitt football program had no leadership or very inexperienced leadership.

Wrong.

The University of Pittsburgh is led by a chancellor credited for keeping the Big East together in the border wars of 2003. Chancellor Nordenberg worked hand-in-hand with former Big East commissioner Mike Tranghese to add Cincinnati, South Florida and Louisville to replace Miami, Virginia Tech and Boston College.

The chancellor is regarded by many as a brilliant man, and he certainly led Pitt to a Big Ten-like academic status.

How then could he sit back and watch the freak show of a football program that's been taking place since the day his athletic director and friend, Steve Pederson, announced coach Wannstedt was "resigning"?

Right, that was some resignation. When Wannstedt marched his team into the press conference, waved some papers in the air, then stormed out, the resignation ruse fell apart in front of the television cameras.

And shouldn't Wannstedt, who was fired from Chicago and pressured to resign in Miami, have known the routine and acted with a much higher degree of dignity? The Pitt termination was not his first.

Pederson then proceeded to conduct a bizarre search for a head coach, turning down some heavy hitters like Kevin Sumlin of Houston and Todd Graham of Tulsa before choosing a little-known MAC coach to lead the program.

Being fired, or almost being fired, is usually a great teacher. In Pederson's case, he learned nothing from his experience in Nebraska.

If he had, he would not have continued to lie to the press about Wannstedt's "resignation" which was actually a termination while Wannstedt was pleading with the chancellor to keep his job.

Certainly Nordenberg and Pederson had to be aware of the potential fallout when players, extremely loyal to Wannstedt, used all means of social media to convey their displeasure with the university's decision.

If Pederson had any intuition or good judgment he would have realized he was fast becoming the perpetrator of an ugly crime in the mind of the players.

If Pederson had learned anything from his tenure at Nebraska he should have known he could not leave the vetting process to an outsourced firm - a firm, by the way, that's done an excellent job of hiding through their recommended coach's hire, arrest, and termination.

That search firm should be publicly excoriated. A 21-month-old infant is difficult to miss.

Wannstedt is now acting childish (Pederson serves as a good role model for that) and refuses to say if he is coaching the Panthers in the BBVA Compass Bowl less than a week away.

His players are continuing to tweet that no one is in charge of Pitt football, they don't know what to do, and Pederson sucks.

The parents of the current players are getting angrier by the day and seeking out the press to talk about things like "this is not what we signed on for..."

Seven recruits are supposedly still in the fold but they are in the throes of bailing. Seriously, why would they stick around? A train wreck is interesting to look at but no one wants to actually be caught up in one.

Nordenberg and Pederson are looking for a coach in earnest. If they hire a guy who generates some enthusiasm, all the better. Screw the next hire up and both men could be looking for gainful employment elsewhere.

Well, maybe not the chancellor who had delegated the termination of Wannstedt and the search for his replacement to Pederson.

Don't you wonder what kind of debriefing Nordenberg conducted with Pederson about the reasons for his Nebraska termination and how he planned to avoid making the same mistakes at Pitt?

Apparently, that debriefing just took place, three years a little too late.