Happy Friday – here are some articles written about our favorite subjects for your reading pleasureduring your lunch hour.
My favorite coach of all-time, Dave Wannstedt, decides to finally say yes to Pitt:
“I don’t think a national championship is anything to be unrealistic about,” Wannstedt said. “You win the Big East and you have a chance, if things fall right, to compete for the championship.”
Wannstedt is replacing Walt Harris, who will leave for Stanford after coaching the Panthers (8-3) against Utah (11-0) in the Fiesta Bowl on Jan. 1. Harris had a 53-42 record in eight seasons, but his job was tenuous. Pitt lost to Connecticut and needed late comebacks to defeat Temple and Furman.
Early this season, Harris’s agent, Bob LaMonte, chastised the university’s administration for not extending Harris’s contract.
Ahhh, the good old days. Back When Dave W. could mention winning the Big East without everyone around him falling out with laughter.
As to Coach Harris; well, Mr. LaMonte – if you could have convinced ol’ Walt to keep zipped up that wouldn’t have been a problem.
And here’s a little something about Danny Marino in one of his best performances in a Pitt uniform.
PITT WINS BY 42-28; MARINO SETS RECORD
COLUMBIA, S.C., Oct. 3— Dan Marino threw six touchdown passes, a Pittsburgh single-game record, as he led the undefeated Panthers to a 42-28 victory over South Carolina today.
Marino, a junior quarterback who was born and raised in Pittsburgh, threw five of the passes before the Gamecocks scored. He did such a good job that he played Pittsburgh right off television. ABC Sports, which was televising the contest regionally, switched to the more competitive Mississippi State-Missouri game for Northeast viewers.
Pittsburgh, ranked fourth by both wire-service polls, gained its third victory before a crowd of 56,495 in Carolina Stadium. Marino gave the finest performance of his career at Pitt as he completed 24 of 39 passes for 346 yards, 41 short of the school record set by Matt Cavanaugh in the 1977 Gator Bowl. The 24 completions were a high for Marino.
I love reading these detailed articles about old games. The sad thing is that this is a NY Times article and is more accurate and delves into the weeds of the game more than hometown coverage did back then.
If we remember 1981 was the year Marino blew up and had 37 TDs on the year…
Here are a few more:
https://athlonsports.com/college-football/ranking-accs-college-football-coaches-2017
pittpov.com 
On another note – the Penguin game last night is in my top 10 of all time.
LikeLike
frank – the puck handling in both OT’s by the Pens last night was some of the best I have ever seen. Crisp, accurate, fast paced passing. I could not believe how well the Ottawa goalie played in those OT’s.
Classic!
LikeLike
Yes indeed. Last nights Pen’s game is what sports are all about. The kind of game that makes you feel like opening the backdoor and yelling at your obnoxious neighbors. GO PEN’S!!
LikeLike
Wait a second here Reed, are you playing a joke on me? Dave Wannsteadt your favorite coach? You kid us, right?
If Wanny had at that time, the administration that PITT has in place now, imo, the state of PITT football would be way ahead of where it was a few years ago. Turns out that PITT has payed it’s debt to society for firing Dave and the football Gaad’s on smiling down on PITT football once again. < How’s that for drama?
Here’s some things that have been bothering me:
First of all, if that piece of crap school in central PA doesn’t feel that it’s in everyone’s best interest to play PITT year in and year out then I’m ready to just let it go all together. paterno once said that psu could not afford to play PITT on a home and home basis but would need two home games to PITT’s one. A few years later he scheduled Syracuse on a home and home basis. Those A-Holes can go pound sand up their collective asses.
The proposed changes in freshman eligibility has me perplexed as to who the rule change is suppose to help. The athletes, the coaches, or certain schools?… or all the above?
This new rule seems to me to go hand in hand with the proposed new early signing period rule. I’m thinking a talented high school senior that wants to play big time football but may not be the elite athlete as some, would more strongly consider going to a school if he figured he could actually play in four games his first year, bowl game included, without loses one year of eligibility .
The new rule could also benefit a school like PITT that doesn’t have the type of depth that the super schools have. Hamlin is a good point to consider.
It just seems like there is a hidden reason for this rule I can’t put my finger on.. or maybe it’s just a good rule all the way around?? ike
LikeLike
Disagree on Pitt Penn State. I wouldn’t at all be opposed to getting the legislature involved, as they have been in other states (Ohio, for instance, has required OSU to play at least one intrastate opponent on their schedule). Frankly, the pettiness of one school should not destroy the premier showcase of local football talent in Pennsylvania.
LikeLike
Thanks Read for the good Reed! (wakawaka). Really enjoyed the Wannstedt video – great history for a proud Pitt man! I remember how excited I was when he came to Pitt because Dave was such a lover of everything U of Pittsburgh.
LikeLike
….also, the copper fish in Marino’s kitchen now sits in my kitchen! :>)
LikeLike
Great article!
LikeLike
Conner pulled hamstring
LikeLike
Wanny wasn’t the greatest coach but he was the lowest paid in the Big East … that’s the Big East, not the ACC. And he likely had one the lower recruiting budgets also. Like it or not, he may have been one of the greatest bargains.
LikeLike
“Ahhh, the good old days. Back When Dave W. could mention winning the Big East without everyone around him falling out with laughter” ??? In his last 2 years, he was 1 point short of winning the conference in 09, and 2 points of winning it outright in 010 …. as it was, Pitt was tied for 1st in the BE in 2010. Then he got fired.
LikeLike
After listening to all 3 parts of the Wannstedt interview I did not learn anything new about the man… He’s exactly who I thought he was all along. I great PITT man who accepts the fate he was given, the good with the bad.
I’m the first to say DW didn’t have much of a clue about being a college head football coach at the beginning. Yet he did what he always did. Kept his head down, his mouth shut, and his ears and eyes wide open and became a student once again. He learned how to be a head football coach in college at PITT.. Big missed opportunity by letting this man go…. imo ………….. ike
LikeLike
Wanny got the last laugh with the only 10-win season since 1981 then all the 6-6 records that came after his firing. Pitt never would have fallen to those 6-6 records if he stuck around, plus those were poor schedules to boot. Dave might have been the only coach in the last 50 years of college football to offer to pay for the carpet to be replaced in a locker room because Nordy and Smiley puckered their a-holes when it came to having to spend money.
LikeLike
Wanny was all heart when it came to Pitt but sorry to say his was not a great sideline coach IMO. The polar opposite of a Bill Belachek IMO.
LikeLike
……….and I agree that DW was not a great sideline coach at first……. BUT………… he also was learning to delegate to those who were. His learning curve was nearing the finish line and the dividends were about to come to fruition when “the steve” bumped him off like the sick narcissistic ass he was. Nordy was just a bump on a log with leaches surrounding him. It was a bad scene men.
LikeLike
I always thought Wanny’s reputation had much to do with how conservative he was. Otherwise, I took notice that his two successors wasted as many time outs, punted on the plus side of the field and seemed to almost lose as many as close games.
LikeLike
How very true – and even before him with Walt Harris.
LikeLike
Living in central PA, I would like to see the series with PSUCKS abandoned.
409 and WE ARE BECAUSE HE WAS stickers are ubiquitous
JayPa on the BOT,
Other BOT members referring to the kids as ‘supposed victims.’
Puhleeze!
I’ve had enough. Time to bid adieu.
There was a time I hated them for their arrogance.
Now, they just make me sick.
LikeLike
Ditto Gasman, their arrogance in the midst of all their scandals makes me sick. Na na na hey hey goodbye.
Wandstadt would Iindeed have been better served by an administration that cared at all about Pitt football. Though IMO he was too conservative ie NFL, for the college game. Ironic that Walt was on the hot seat, in part, for the U Conn game which is also what Wanny blew when he let up the gas. What is past is past. On to the future. HAIL TO PITT
LikeLike
I am done with PSU too.
Walk away with head held high.
F them
LikeLike
Great point rkb, although it’s better to let up on the gas then never having your foot on it in the first place…..
Continuity, continuity continuity! I coined this years ago…… Variety may be the spice of life, yet it’s continuity that holds that very life together.
LikeLike
Wannstedt wasn’t as conservative as he’s made out to be. These coaches get branded conservative and it sticks with them forever. Being aggressive only sounds cool when you win. Plenty of aggressive coaches have blown leads, too.
So Dave liked to run the football when ahead, so do I. Melting the clock is important also. Wannstedt’s offense did OK with Palko, Stull and Tino. It takes more to win with those kind of quarterbacks and that’s where it becomes a Pitt problem and not all of it on the head coach.
LikeLike
Wanny was way to conservative for college ball in his first year or two – then he loosened up some as he saw his way didn’t work. One good example was him punting on manageable 3rd downs when Pitt was on the opponents 38 yard line – drove me crazy… He did it for a while, then stopped doing it.
— On the Pens, that’s one tough bunch. Sid Crosby consistently plays harder than any other athlete in Pittsburgh. The guy is relentless in his effort even when he’s being mugged and slashed.
Go Pitt.
LikeLike
Wanny
A true yinzerforlife, I really love his stand up comedy on Fox.
After the record setting game Marino did not play the next week versus WVU, he was hurt at the end of the South Carolina game.
LikeLike
Ike – catching up from yesterday. Yep, I”m a yinzer & proud of it. Knew I had a deep voice but southerns say I have a yankee accent & yankees say I speak like a southern accent. Me. I’m tone deaf and unless you have a strong accent (southern nasal twang (Gomer Pyle) or a bronx accent, etc.), I have no clue where someone is from.
Well unless Reid moves to Tuesday, Pens wednesday game will put a damper on round table discussion. Wife hates hockey but is making me watch Gamecock tournament SEC game going on right now. Can’t stand college baseball. Lack of beer at games.
LikeLike
Wbb – Wanny’s legacy isn’t determined by one or two points away from a championship – it is that he couldn’t win a championship outright in 6 full seasons.
2005 West Virginia Mountaineers football team
2006 Louisville Cardinals football team
2007 Connecticut Huskies football team
2007 West Virginia Mountaineers football team
2008 Cincinnati Bearcats football team
2009 Cincinnati Bearcats football team
2010 Connecticut Huskies football team
2010 Pittsburgh Panthers football team
2010 West Virginia Mountaineers football team
C’mon – UCONN (x2) and Louisville (before UL was even that good) managed to win championships and we couldn’t – in a crappy conference.
We had some great years in recruiting and couldn’t do it.
We had some of the best RBs in Pitt’s history and couldn’t do it.
It was poor head coaching and poor staff coaching (HC’s purview) that kept us out of BCS games – not anything else; not Nordenberg or Pederson or the athletic trainer assistant who picks up the jock straps – that is all on the HC.
Can we stop pointing fingers in every direction but DW for what he did while at Pitt – both on and off the field? He did some good things but the bottom line is that he ran his course and wasn’t cut out to be a college HC where you actually have to show leadership to young men and not defer to NFL players and the players union.
Pitt should hire him as an ass’t fund raiser and let the Old Boys club donate money to athletics since nothing else seems to be working.
LikeLike
1) My posting above was a direct response to your column above when you said about ‘laughing out loud’ at the mention of a BE championship under Wanny. Your typical putdown of DW …. yet, as I pointed out, it wasn’t such an outrageous concept.
2) In 2010, UConn HC Edsall made substantially more than Wanny … look it up. In 2010, UConn hosted weeknight games against both Pitt and WVU … look iit up.. In 2010, UConn had 17 returning starters, Pitt had 11 … look it up.
3) In Pitt’s only BCS bowl appearance, in 04, they won a 4-team tiebreaker in a 7-team league. That year, they lost to UConn on a weeknight game, in UConn’s first year in the BE. That was Walt Harris’s 8th season at the helm.
4) during Wanny’s stay at Pitt …. WVU had their best 4 year run EVER (05-08) .. look it up. Rutgers had its best 4 yea run EVER … look it up. Louisville had its best 3-year run EVER .. look it up, Cincy had its best 3 year run EVER (07-09) .. averaging 11 wins .. look it up.
LikeLike
… and Pitt had its best 3-year run in nearly 30 years (08-010) … look it up
LikeLike
Reed, The fact of the matter is that Pitt FB has been pretty much a &(&) storm since the Hackett era, yet you seem to measure Wanny against the the teams of the late 70s while giving all other coaches a pass. At least under DW, Pitt again had its best 3 year run …. not only in wins but also attendance..
And again, that was when he was the lowest paid HC in the league
LikeLike
Hey PITT-cocks, that wasn’t me that commented on your yinzer accent. (it was BigB that enjoyed it) Me having the Pittsburgheese accent I would have never noticed. My voice was made for the newspaper.
I laid out the Pen’s schedule and hopefully Reed makes the appropriate adjustments. he can be a little dense at times……. 🙂
BTW Reed, did I tell you I received my POV door magnet? The wife nearly had a heart attack. It may take awhile to bring her around. She already thinks I’m nuts with all this rigamarole.
LikeLike
Ike,
No wonder your wife is upset. The big POV door magnet is for the car door – NOT the refrigerator door!
LikeLike
Sports business tells us that everyone has a price. If Wanny was that great of a coach someone else, NFL or NCAA would have hired him, especially given what he was making here. If he couldn’t win a Big East championship, he surely wouldn’t compete in the ACC. It was a tortuous road to get here but I like where we are now with Narduzzi over where we were in 2010
LikeLike
wbb – you make every excuse in the world for Dave Wannstedt but the bottom line is that we had more talented teams during those 2008-10 years than we have had since the Marino days and we couldn’t win a championship.
Yeah those other schools were good – that is how you win championships, but they weren’t Alabama or OSU – they were UCONN and UL.
And, if we had a coach who could get the job done, we would have been in that group but we weren’t because we didn’t. That is the bottom line. Pitt hired DW to win a conference championship and get into a BCS game in one of the easiest conferences there was and it never happened.
2008 – lost to champs Cincy end up 5-2 in conference (would have won it with 6-1)
2009 – lost to champs Cincy end up 5-2 in conference (would have won it with 6-1)
2010 – lost to champs UCONN end up 5-2 in conference (would have won it with 6-1)
We can look back and think well – we were only a play or two away all we want – but the bold fact is that he failed in six straight years.
He inherited an 8-4 BCS team and it took him three full years to get a winning record. It took Gottfried two years; Chryst two years and Narduzzi one year (in a much harder conference)…
If there is any time Pitt fans indulge in revisionist history it is the DW years and what went on in the football program.
LikeLike
DW certainly had his shortcomings that have been well documented. His main positives were his recruiting and the fact that he was blindly loyal to Pitt. Had he stayed we may have never won a conference championship or maybe, eventually, he would have hired the right people to overcome his shortcomings. We’ll never know.
DW would have never left Pitt. (I know Reed would say no one would have ever wanted him). Can we say the same about any coach since him? I like PN, just be realistic. When the right opportunity comes, he is gone and we start all over again.
LikeLike
i have repeatedly been pretty much in Reed’s corner of the DW years. I was excited when he was hired, thought he improved recruiting, was a decent defense prep coach but a lousy game day coach. His last year for me was the final straw for continually coming up short in the Big East playing turtle on U Conn . the Cincy game was exciting but a loss. The big offense game passed him by and he just couldnt get out to the pro mentality that you just want to make the playoffs. For me, and I realize it was an over reaction to pedo and corny not putting forth the effort, the last years team ran amok. He lost control of the team by letting it run amok just because the two stooges wanted the opposite. The 1/2 game suspension of Sheard for throwing a person through a plate glass window – it could have killed the person,was a joke of epic proportions, it makes Nard look like Ming the Merciless on Boyd and Blair which IMO hit it correctly. That set the tone, act as you want. Let’s not forget the SSide DUI player yelled “Dont arrest me I play for Pitt football’ It became a national embarrassment. The coup d gras was letting the team pull a walkout but most of all calling Pitt recruits and telling them not to come to Pitt. I don’t care how bad pedo and nordy were wrong on supporting the pitt football team – DW turned on his own beloved alma mater. He could have kept discipline on the team, exited gracefully then given a full blown story to the lack of support from the administration but all that would take brains he didn’t have. I appreciate his efforts but good riddance after calling off recruits.
By the way I enjoyed the Marino clip – guy could flick the ball faster and farther than any Pitt QB ever, even that little fella who finished a couple yards behind his all time total and is hailed by one as the all time greatest. :).
LikeLike
So here is ultimately what it comes down to….your girlfriend (DW)who is a 7/10 will stay with you, but are you going to be satisfied with her?
LikeLike
Sheard didn’t have any game time suspension at all and that was a major problem for DW.
wbb – I have never compared DW to Pitt’s ’70s teams. I compared his first three years to our last three HCs and he comes up short.
Let’s be honest here – if Wannstedt wasn’t a Pitt football alumni fans would have been calling for his head in 2007 and wouldn’t be excuse making for him now. Only Pitt fans think a 10 win season covers up all the other crap that went on during his tenure.
LikeLike
It was proven and well documented that Sheard was breaking up the fight and the police officer caused both of them to go through the door while it was in fact, NOT OPEN!….
Thus, no suspension…. and most charges dropped. Why the revision history starting to pop up all over the POV?
Let’s be honest here. Narduzzi’s team is starting to rack up similar law offenses, is this type of stuff on the coaches though? steve made it about the coaches and not the players. steve was a cut-throat idiot.
LikeLike
Sheard didn’t deserve any game time suspension. Let me ask you this …. why did he get off with no jail time, and just have to pay for court fees and summary expenses for throwing a guy through a glass door in the presence of 2 police officers?
Think about it
LikeLike
and in fact … Sheard was voted team captain by his teammates about a month or so after the incident
LikeLike
Ike,
Did you take the POV magnet off of the fridge yet and place it on your car to please your wife yet?
LikeLike
You’re too funny Jimbo. Actually I think she may prefer it on the fridge then the car. Wait until we roll onto the north shore with it proudly displayed.
I would put it on the passenger side door when she goes out shopping but I’m afraid someone will steal it. It’s one of my prized collector items…
Go PITT — Go Pens!
H2P!
LikeLike
If Pitt wants excellence, it must pay for it and play in the shades of gray.
LikeLike
Ike,
Maybe she would like to see the sign stuck on the ceiling over the bed in the master bedroom suite!
It maybe could even inspire you buddy!
:>)
LikeLike
It’s not me that needs inspiring Pittman. Maybe a picture of someone who isn’t me on the ceiling?? I kid, my wife is a good wife, if you know what I mean?
LikeLike