Todd Graham just fired Pitt | Page 3 | The Boneyard

Todd Graham just fired Pitt

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businesslawyer said:
The end of your season. Including bowl game if you're playing in one.
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And therein lies the first problem. Teams not making a bowl game and committed to making a coaching change are anxious to get the new guy on board ASAP. It's a big part of the "marketing" regarding the program's new direction, "new hope", new "breaktroughs" in recruiting efforts.

If the target of that affection is coaching at a program going to a bowl game, that slows the process for the school looking to make the hire. They stand to lose anywhere from 3-5 weeks of "recruiting", alumni contacts,etc. Understandibly they are reluctant to wait.

And then there's the program going to a bowl game, who is faced with losing its coach. Understandibly, they don't want the distraction of a coaching taking on a new job and they want their team coached by "one of their own".

The resultant? Either the new school/new coach announces early and disrupts the "just deserts" of the bowl bound "jilted lover". Or . . . you get the Randy Edsall, have your "cake and eat it to" approach and gladly suffer the "outrage and name calling" of your former fanbase.

Solution? One date for all schools - those bowl bound, those done at the end of their regular season. Have a set date (Jan 15th or some such date) when it is open season on coaching changes. Move the signing dates to a different time frame so the lateness in putting coaches in place doesn't handicap their recruiting.
 
TouchdownHusky said:
And therein lies the first problem. Teams not making a bowl game and committed to making a coaching change are anxious to get the new guy on board ASAP. It's a big part of the "marketing" regarding the program's new direction, "new hope", new "breaktroughs" in recruiting efforts.

If the target of that affection is coaching at a program going to a bowl game, that slows the process for the school looking to make the hire. They stand to lose anywhere from 3-5 weeks of "recruiting", alumni contacts,etc. Understandibly they are reluctant to wait.

And then there's the program going to a bowl game, who is faced with losing its coach. Understandibly, they don't want the distraction of a coaching taking on a new job and they want their team coached by "one of their own".

The resultant? Either the new school/new coach announces early and disrupts the "just deserts" of the bowl bound "jilted lover". Or . . . you get the Randy Edsall, have your "cake and eat it to" approach and gladly suffer the "outrage and name calling" of your former fanbase.

Solution? One date for all schools - those bowl bound, those done at the end of their regular season. Have a set date (Jan 15th or some such date) when it is open season on coaching changes. Move the signing dates to a different time frame so the lateness in putting coaches in place doesn't handicap their recruiting.
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No one at the NCAA will go for this. It makes sense.
 
Graham just got raked over the coals on Around The Horn. Funny bit at the end when Reali asked why this was any different than any other coach ever. Bomani Jones implied that it was worse: "No, this was Randy Edsall!"

(Too bad he mispronounced ED -sol)
 
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J187Money said:
Fair point. But you can't always control that.
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But Edsall and Graham could have. But they chose not to. They behaved as reprehensible men and deserve to be called out on the carpet for it.

They didn't leave for any once in a farking lifetime jobs. They left for Maryland and Arizona State.

duckk outta here.
 
zls44 said:
But Edsall and Graham could have. But they chose not to. They behaved as reprehensible men and deserve to be called out on the carpet for it.

They didn't leave for any once in a farking lifetime jobs. They left for Maryland and Arizona State.

duckk outta here.
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Probably. But we weren't in the room. We don't know what kind of pressure that might have been applied.

And of course it is more important to be good to your new employer than the old one.


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I am here: http://maps.google.com/maps?ll=41.046984,-73.541473
 
J187Money said:
Probably. But we weren't in the room. We don't know what kind of pressure that might have been applied.
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Were Todd Graham or Randy Edsall in any danger whatsoever of being fired from their current jobs? They had all the leverage.
 
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I personally think Graham made the right move, but not because ASU is that great a job. I think if he had another year like this one, he would be history at Pitt. Pitt was the wrong program for him, and he was not going to survive the transition from Pitt's pro-style offense and standard 4-3 defense to the spread and whatever the hell he called the pretend defense he was trying to implement. Wanny's game coaching problems were overstated, and he didn't have losses like the Iowa game this year.

If Graham didn't leave this year, he was never going to leave. I am sure ASU fans, or at least the semi-intelligent ones, are scratching their head as to why ASU fired a proven guy with a National Championship to bring in Todd Graham.
 
I don't think Edsall or Grahm would look any different in the court of public opinion if they had left for Maryland and Arizona State or Penn State and Ohio State. Only difference between the two of them (and it isn't much) is Edsall at least talked to his former team via phone.

zls44 said:
But Edsall and Graham could have. But they chose not to. They behaved as reprehensible men and deserve to be called out on the carpet for it.

They didn't leave for any once in a farking lifetime jobs. They left for Maryland and Arizona State.

duckk outta here.
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Edsall and Graham both left for what they perceived was a "career upgrade". Whether fans agree that Maryland and ASU qualify as "upgrades" is beside the point. The coaching carosal is as much a part of the game as BCS polls. This kind of stuff happens all over the country - in football & hoops.

So Randy didn't say goodbye to the UConn players first . . . boo, hoo. Get over it. This is major college football . . . players get a full scholarship (25K-50K per year) for 4-5 years. Just accept this is the nature of the business and get ready for the next season. How many kids have to bus tables at restaurants to help make ends meet. Wonder if they boo-hoo when the night manager leaves for a new franchise. Randy was quilty of a lot of coaching shortcomings, but leaving for Maryland, and the necessity of doing that the way it ultimately unfolded, was not one of them.
 
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TouchdownHusky said:
Edsall and Graham both left for what they perceived was a "career upgrade". Whether fans agree that Maryland and ASU qualify as "upgrades" is beside the point. The coaching carosal is as much a part of the game as BCS polls. This kind of stuff happens all over the country - in football & hoops.

So Randy didn't say goodbye to the UConn players first . . . boo, hoo. Get over it. This is major college football . . . players get a full scholarship (25K-50K per year) for 4-5 years. Just accept this is the nature of the business and get ready for the next season. How many kids have to bus tables at restaurants to help make ends meet. Wonder if they boo-hoo when the night manager leaves for a new franchise. Randy was quilty of a lot of coaching shortcomings, but leaving for Maryland, and the necessity of doing that the way it ultimately unfolded, was not one of them.
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Not to mention that a decent number of this " do the right thing" crowd wanted him fired and run out of town. As some do with coach p. Is that the right thing?


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I am here: http://maps.google.com/maps?ll=40.900532,-73.859002
 
J187Money said:
Not to mention that a decent number of this " do the right thing" crowd wanted him fired and run out of town. As some do with coach p. Is that the right thing?

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I am here: http://maps.google.com/maps?ll=40.900532,-73.859002
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Nature of the Beast. They probably don't have that same problem in the New England Small College Conference (or whatever it's called). The Trinity job, the Amherst job, the Williams job . . . probably not a whole lot of pressure to fire, opportunities to jump to BCS conferences with stronger recruiting platforms,
 
nelsonmuntz said:
I personally think Graham made the right move, but not because ASU is that great a job. I think if he had another year like this one, he would be history at Pitt. Pitt was the wrong program for him, and he was not going to survive the transition from Pitt's pro-style offense and standard 4-3 defense to the spread and whatever the hell he called the pretend defense he was trying to implement. Wanny's game coaching problems were overstated, and he didn't have losses like the Iowa game this year.

If Graham didn't leave this year, he was never going to leave. I am sure ASU fans, or at least the semi-intelligent ones, are scratching their head as to why ASU fired a proven guy with a National Championship to bring in Todd Graham.
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I actually think you're right about this. Sometimes there are coaches that are just bad fits in certain situations. Rich Rodriguez at Michigan comes to mind, and while I have no idea whether Graham is ultimately a good or bad head coach at the BCS level I absolutley have the feeling that he wouldn't be good at Pitt. He simply was the wrong fit and never would have been there in the first place if Pitt hadn't been absolutely desperate after firing Wanstadt.
 
Interesting article by Dodd at CBS Sportsline.

http://www.cbssports.com/collegefoo...-run-out-on-pitt-but-what-regular-guy-wouldnt

Basically confirms what a few people here were saying. I'm not excusing the way in which he left but it seems like the thought process was as follows:
1) I made a mistake coming to Pitt - the players aren't right for the system, I don't like the area, my wife is miserable, who knows
2) If I don't turn things around in a year I'm probably going to get fired and once you get fired as a head football coach, it's really tough to get another job like it (I'm sure there are selected examples to the contrary but I would assert that those are more the exception rather than the rule)
3) I need to get out now while I'm still marketable

This actually makes some sense to me. What I don't get is this. He basically blames the manner in which he left on his new employer, saying that they insisted he leave immediately to come interview and he was afraid of losing the opportunity. From my perspective, if you think a school wants to hire you, they can wait one day to let you do things the right way. If they didn't, you wouldn't want to end up there anyways.
 
jbdphi said:
Interesting article by Dodd at CBS Sportsline.

http://www.cbssports.com/collegefoo...-run-out-on-pitt-but-what-regular-guy-wouldnt

Basically confirms what a few people here were saying. I'm not excusing the way in which he left but it seems like the thought process was as follows:
1) I made a mistake coming to Pitt - the players aren't right for the system, I don't like the area, my wife is miserable, who knows
2) If I don't turn things around in a year I'm probably going to get fired and once you get fired as a head football coach, it's really tough to get another job like it (I'm sure there are selected examples to the contrary but I would assert that those are more the exception rather than the rule)
3) I need to get out now while I'm still marketable

This actually makes some sense to me. What I don't get is this. He basically blames the manner in which he left on his new employer, saying that they insisted he leave immediately to come interview and he was afraid of losing the opportunity. From my perspective, if you think a school wants to hire you, they can wait one day to let you do things the right way. If they didn't, you wouldn't want to end up there anyways.
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That just isn't the way it's done in D1/BCS College Football. These folks are serious about turning the program around. Once they offer they want you signed, sealed, delivered and recruiting immediately. Surprise that Maryland didn't push earlier - Fiesta Bowl be damned.
 
How did he get on ASU's radar screen? Was his people out shopping him? He's still a bum.
 
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Pitt fan here who is not remotely surprised or disappointed that Graham left. Knowing his history and his reputation I'm also unsurprised at the manner in which he left. I HATED his offense - not a fit for this area at all - and I hated his self aggrandizing personality. When everything went well he was quick to take credit for it and when things went south he was even quicker to blame the players.

I think Nelson is 100 percent right. Graham made the right move to leave because he was going to struggle next season - no QB in a QB centric O - and the Pitt fan base was not taking to him or his bullschitt system at all.
HE would have been fired by 2013 and he read the writing on the wall so he hig-tailed it to the desert as fast as he could and in the end I believe that EVERYONE will be better off for it. Now we get to play real football again and he is in a place where self aggradizement is seen as salesmanship, and not a detriment.
 
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