Goodbye Paul, Hello Pat →
Reed, at Pitt Blather, says goodbye to Pitt head coach Paul Chryst.
The last three seasons are riddled with examples of poor game day management and head scratching decision making by Chryst. He had multiple brain freezes when it came to clock management and made some strange red zone calls. He made good decisions also but those just don’t stick out like his bad ones do.
We won some nice games over the past three years beating ranked schools such as ND, VT and Rutgers and our last game, a win over Miami was satisfying also. But in all honesty those don’t offset the bad feelings we had with the losses to YSU and Syracuse in ’12, then a poor Navy team and North Carolina last year and then the real kick in our collective asses being the loss to Akron this season.
He just never got us to the level of ‘beating the teams we should’ and that left a lousy taste in the mouth which wasn’t offset by the better winning games he did have. Always left us wanting a little bit more Paul did. I don’t really begrudge a 19-19 record as I think he really did have to rebuild the team and the roster.
Good luck with that Wisconsin. The Badgers have to hope that he doesn't have the same issues there that he did at Pitt.
Reed also has a nice note about the difference between being a college and NFL head coach.
Yes, Wannstedt was a NFL head coach but to me that is a very different animal than being a college head coach in that he didn’t have to answer to an Athletic Director or to the Chancellor, Donors, Boosters and Player Alumni. That is a huge drain of energy for a college HC. On top of all that the HC has to steer and corral 100+ young men into positive behaviors and academic actions. Not an easy thing to do consistently, effectively and well.
NFL head coaches don’t really have to deal with amount of personnel problems on the level that college head coaches do. So there is a lot more autonomy and less overall responsibility in the NFL than there is at a university where the football tail doesn’t wag the university’s body.
This entry was tagged. University of Pittsburgh