It has been announced by the University of Pittsburgh that their next head football coach will be University of Wisconsin offensive coordinator Paul Chryst. There will be a formal news conference this afternoon at 3:00 to introduce the new coach. Chryst seems to have the background and the resume to make him more than qualified to earn the position, however, if we have learned anything from Pitt over the last 12 months, it is not to get too excited over a coaching hire. (In case you've lost track, Chryst will be Pitt's SIXTH head coach, counting interims, since last December.)
So, let us all wish the new coach good luck and much success with the Panthers. It is said that he is a low key guy and not a spell-binder when it comes to speaking. Chuck Noll was pretty dull, and Todd Graham was a veritable orator, and we know how both of those guys worked out.
I will also be very interested to see what kind of pre-season publicity campaign the Pitt Ministry of Sports Propaganda will pump out next spring and summer. I'm guessing that there will not be a special website as there was last year.
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Pitt is to be commended for moving quickly after the Graham debacle, hiring Chryst eight days after Graham slithered off into the desert. At the same time Penn State is now in its sixth week of trying to find a successor to Joe Paterno. There could be reasons for that, including that Penn State has become so toxic that no one wants the job, but I was struck by a quote from someone on the PSU coaching search committee to the effect that they do things differently at Penn State, and that they aren't going to rush into hiring a guy quickly just because every other school does. It seems that hubris is still a quality very much present at Happy Valley.
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