MAC Raided Again

Fans of Pittsburgh football must have been a bit anxious this month as the program looked for a successor to coach Dave Wannstedt. Would athletic director Steve Pederson make the right call or do something boneheaded like choose the equivalent of Bill Callahan, as he did at Nebraska? It did not look good at first as Pederson--and how does he keep getting big jobs?--did not seem ready to replace Wannstedt, despite the buzzards circling around his coach since the team started the season 2-3 with wins over New Hampshire and FIU and losses to Utah, Miami and Notre Dame. Once West Virginia routed the Panthers 35-10 on Thanksgiving Friday, the ability for Wannstedt to save his job was long gone. But Pederson was not ready to pounce on both Al Golden, the head coach at Temple, and Dana Holgorsen, the offensive coordinator at Oklahoma State, who were rumored to be Pitt's top two choices as soon as Wannstedt resigned in early December. Worse still, West Virginia lured Holgorsen to Morgantown and Pederson had better hope that the Mountaineers do not hit a home run with that choice.

And so Pitt turned to Miami of Ohio head man Mike Haywood and gave him a five year deal. Now Haywood is a much different hire than Callahan as he does not have an NFL background and will not install an offense totally ill-suited to the talent at Pitt. He is an excellent recruiter, who has ties to Texas, and will install discipline to the Panthers program. Which is all well and good but I do not know if his two years at Miami were enough for him to establish Pitt as a Big East power. While Haywood's RedHawks impressively won their last five games, including three straight on the road and a huge showdown with Golden's Temple before upsetting Northern Illinois in the MAC title game, his record out-of-conference leaves something to be desired. Yes they hung with Florida early and even beat a lousy Colorado State team, but routs at Missouri and especially Cincinnati were rough. The Bearcats are a big rival of Miami and only finished 4-8 this year, but one of those wins was a 45-3 shellacking of Miami in mid-season.

That is only one game and hopefully Haywood will have the Panthers playing good ball from day one. With Notre Dame, Iowa and Utah on the schedule next year, he'd better be the best man for this job.