Mixed Feelings on Wannstedt Dismissal

On Tuesday, some buddies and I were having our normal email exchange debating things happening around the sports world, mostly dealing with the baseball offseason, when the topic turned to Dave Wannstedt and whether he should be fired at Pitt or not. Some great points were made debating both the pros and cons of such a move and I was a little bit undecided on where I stood. For the most part, I thought Wannstedt deserved the chance to come back for reasons that I will soon get into. At roughly 4pm or so the news broke that Wannstedt would be let go. My initial reaction was “wow, we just wasted a whole day debating this”. In all seriousness, I had mixed feelings on the dismissal. After giving it a day to maul over and reading many of the countless reports, mostly agreeing with Wannstedt’s removal, I came to the conclusion that I am still not sure it was the right move, but I certainly understood it.

I have long been a critic, probably even before most others realized his deficiencies, of Dave Wannstedt’s in-game coaching and strategy. Wannstedt comes from a very defensive-minded, NFL approach to coaching that I can sum up very simply: he coaches not to lose instead of to win. That philosophy works OK in the NFL where the parity and talent distribution is pretty even.

(Although the man that everyone would agree is the greatest football coach in the world right now, Bill Belichick, would disagree and it is partly why he is the best coach in football right now. Belichick will often go against conventional thinking or as I like to call that line of thinking: “wrong”. Belichick routinely puts his team in the best position to win time and time again by playing with the percentages, not with the afraid to be criticized approach. I could go on all day about this, but I will not digress any further.)

That philosophy can work in the NFL but not in college where there is usually some and often times a large talent discrepancy between teams. When you have the talent advantage, you need to be aggressive and put inferior teams away. When you are the team at a disadvantage, you need to take risks and make big plays to make up for this lack of talent. In his six years as the head man at Pitt, this was the one thing that Wannstedt failed to realize.

I could go on about the many reasons Wannstedt was dismissed Tuesday, from his inability to win big games to his failure to make even one BCS Bowl Game despite playing in a sub-par Big East Conference with major advantages over his conference opponents. We know all of those reasons, you can read those in many different places today and they are certainly true. Firing Wannstedt was more than justifiable, but there are many reasons that not only could have been used to keep Wannstedt on board, but that may end up making this one of the biggest mistakes in Pitt football history.

Over the past three years Pitt has accumulated the most talent in the Big East and was showing a discernible advantage going forward. This showed not only in the recruiting rankings where Pitt was finishing on top of the Big East for a few years now, but from the product on the field. Part of the reason Wannstedt is being let go is that it was so apparent that his teams were underachieving. Pitt had a legitimate chance to win the Big East in each of the past three years and came up empty. It was obvious, however, that the Panthers were probably the most talented team in the conference in each of those years, or at the very least comparable with the other top teams. Somehow Pitt never managed to come out on top and that is what ultimately cost Wannstedt his job.

Pitt has an advantage over the rest of the Big East with its tradition, its location and its reputation. Dave Wannstedt seemed to recognize this and was able to tap into these resources and advantages but he never was able to get the program completely over the top. Talent usually wins in the end and I feel eventually that the talent discrepancy would get Wannstedt over that hump and once that happened this thing could really start rolling. I also believed that once Pitt had this program rolling along, a new coach could come in when Wannstedt moved along or retired and really take it to new heights, just the way that Jamie Dixon is doing with the basketball program.

Instead, Pitt decided to go in a new direction and I cannot say that I blame them. They made the decision that Dave Wannstedt would not be able to get this team over that hump and that they needed to bring in a new guy to get there. Let’s just hope that the new guy builds on what Dave Wannstedt has established and not returns the program to where it was when Wannstedt arrived. If that happens, Steve Pederson and the Pitt administration could have made one big mistake. Like I said in the beginning, I have mixed feelings on Dave Wannstedt’s firing.



Thursday Night Pick
Indianapolis (-3) over TENNESSEE