Pitt winning the BBVA Compass Bowl on Saturday over the SEC’s worst bowl-eligible team, Kentucky, hardly negates the fact that this year was a disastrous one for the Panthers football team. In fact, “fiasco” might be a better word.
With the whole Michael Haywood chaos, multiple player arrests, five losses on national television and the crazy coaching search, it would be easy to dwell on Pitt’s mistakes and point fingers (cough, Steve Pederson, cough).
But in the spirit of the new year, I’m going to look ahead for my first Top 10 of 2011. This week, I bring you the top 10 things I want in Pitt’s new coach Todd Graham.
10. Assistant coaches. The first step to rebuilding the Pitt program after this coaching explosion is building the rest of the coaching staff. Haywood was slated to bring two assistant
coaches with him, but they are currently floating in limbo.
9. Recruits. Pitt started with 17 recruits for the 2011 class. It is now down to six. The new coach needs to bring at least a few recruits to fill the player vacancies. Both Bradley and Graham would likely add to the recruiting class if hired.
8. More liberal offense. One popular criticism of former head coach Dave Wannstedt was that his play-calling was too conservative. Too many times on third and long, the Panthers would run a short pass to the outside that had little chance of picking up the first down. The new coach needs to be willing to try something new.
7. Balance between coach and friend. A head coach needs to be respected — and maybe even feared a little bit — by his players. But he also needs to be a friend and mentor. Wannstedt, perhaps, was too much like a friend and not enough like a coach. Evidence of this could be the fact that Wannstedt is still advising his players on whether or not to enter the NFL Draft.
The new coach needs to find a better balance between mentoring the players and coaching them.
6. An open quarterback competition. Tino Sunseri didn’t have a horrible year as the Panthers’ quarterback. Although he didn’t make many disastrous mistakes, he didn’t complete many spectacular passes, either. Part of this was because there wasn’t a true competition between Sunseri and Pat Bostick for the starting job in training camp.
Sunseri was billed as the starter since the spring camp last April. A healthy competition could have helped him develop his skills even further if the stakes at practice were higher. The new coach needs to bring a competitive mentality to training camp.
5. Discipline. This is an obvious one. Not only should the coach himself be disciplined and stay out of trouble, but he needs to discipline his players and keep them out of trouble.
4. Realistic ambitions. In training camp last August, the players had one goal — a National Championship. That’s certainly a worthy goal, but perhaps it was too ingrained in their heads. When the Panthers lost at Utah in the season opener, it deflated most hopes for a national title.
The 2011 Panthers probably aren’t going to win the BCS National Championship game. The new coach needs to realize this and set the team’s sights on the Big East Championship and a BCS Bowl win.
3. Pitt Pride. For all of Wannstedt’s criticisms, there’s no denying that he was a Pitt guy. He is from Pittsburgh, he went to Pitt and he bleeds blue and gold. Sure, it’s going to be tough to find someone with that much Pitt Pride.
But it’s not too much to ask of a coach to take pride in his job and the school that he represents, no matter where he comes from.
2. Excitement. Pitt has eight home games next season, which means the Panthers have a lot of seats to fill at Heinz Field. None of Pitt’s six games this year were sellouts. So the new coach will have to bring a lot of excitement and stir up the fan base to try to fill those ugly yellow seats.
1. Wins. In the end, winning is all that matters. No matter how well a coach recruits, how much excitement he generates or how much Pitt Pride he has, nobody will be satisfied until the Panthers win a big game, such as a Big East Championship and a BCS Bowl.