Sunday, January 2, 2011

Pitt Gets Second Chance to Hire Head Coach

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By Justin Worsley,

The University of Pittsburgh made a mistake three weeks ago when they announced that Mike Haywood would replace Dave Wannstedt as their head coach. And now they have a chance to redeem themselves.

Haywood was arrested on Friday for a domestic battery charge against an unnamed woman who is the mother of his child in South Bend, Indiana. On Saturday, Pitt fired Haywood was their head coach.

Pitt alumni, players and fans never had a warm reaction to the hiring of Haywood and he never did anything to impress them either. In Haywood's introduction speech, he never once mentioned winning, but instead how he planned to discipline players and to mandate that they attended classes.

While students are in college for their education, Haywood failed to realize he took a coaching job in the Big East, not the MAC, where teams compete for a BCS Bowl and winning is more important. The MAC has the highest graduation rate among the BCS conferences.

It also was apparent that Pitt did not spend much time in the search for a head coach. Haywood spent the last two seasons as head coach at Miami of Ohio. In his first season, the RedHawks went 1-11 and had a turnaround season in 2010, going 9-4 and surprisingly winning the MAC title over Northern Illinois.

The MAC, however, was a much weaker conference this season compared to last year. The bottom three teams in the East Division, which Miami plays in, went a combined 5-35. The RedHawks were also an embarrassment outside of conference play. The defeated Colorado State 31-10, but they went 3-9. Florida, Missouri and Cincinnati romped the RedHawks by an average score of 43.3-9.3 Division rival Ohio also pounded Miami 34-13. In fact, the only two teams who had a winning record that Miami beat was Temple and Northern Illinois in the conference championship game.

Out of the 18 recruits slated to play for the Panthers in 2011, at least half of them are reconsidering their choices and looking at other schools. If Pitt wants to maintain these recruits, which includes four-star athlete Terrell Chestnut and defensive tackle Khaynin Mosley-Smith, they will need to reach out and find a coach with a winning attitude. Former Texas Tech coach Mike Leach is still available as well as recently fired coach Ralph Friedgen. Athletic director Scott Pederson also has ties with Kansas head coach Turner Gill. Gill was the quarterback coach at Nebraska when Pederson was the athletic director.

Whoever Pitt does decide to hire, it needs to happen within the next three days. January is the busiest month for coaches because National Signing Day is a month away. When a program enters a new regime, it is a rough transition year as recruits look elsewhere and new coaches have to sell people on a system which hasn't been played yet.

Pitt did fire Haywood at the right time though. Haywood has yet to hold a practice, recruit any players or even hold a team meeting. He hasn't even moved into Wannstedt's office. Basically, Haywood has done nothing in the three weeks in which he was at the helm of Pittsburgh's football program.

The Panthers play in a prestigious NFL football town and if they want their program to be on that level, they need to make a correct hire now.

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