PITTSBURGH — Last winter, removed from the worst season in his head coaching career, frustrated by his offense’s performance and steaming over his players’ attitudes, Pat Narduzzi addressed the problems in his typical manner: painfully direct and brutally honest.
Narduzzi fired nearly his entire offensive coaching staff, completely altered the distribution of NIL cash to his team, and, lastly, opened the exit door for a few players who were seeking more money when they had not necessarily earned it.
“I said, ‘S***, I have to clean house,’” Narduzzi said from his office Tuesday.
Eleven months after those house-cleaning decisions, the Pitt Panthers are in the midst of one of college football’s greatest turnarounds — from 3-9 last season to 7-0 this season.
They are off to the best start in the program in more than 40 years, have one of the nation’s highest-scoring offenses and have flashed their invincibility with a pair of double-digit, fourth-quarter comebacks. They are using a new-fangled offense brought from the FCS level, are playing a new quarterback they got from Alabama and have a rebuilt defense thriving despite the departure of a handful of starters.
But perhaps most interesting of all, the school’s NIL collective, in conjunction with Narduzzi, made the offseason decision to overhaul the distribution structure on the team — from paying each player in a tiered system to paying select players who earn it.
“We won three games and had a structure where everyone was getting paid and that didn’t work for us. So, we changed it,” said Chris Bickell, a tech entrepreneur and Pitt booster who not only founded the school’s collective, Alliance 412, but donated $20 million of his own money to the football program in 2021.
“You have to be hungry,” Bickell continued. “If you want sponsorships and want to be paid like a professional, you have to earn it. This team is hungry.”
In this age of escalating athlete compensation figures, the move is one of the more unique approaches in the industry — a public admission of scaling back, not up.
But for Pitt, it’s working, even the most veteran players say so.
“I don’t want to say that money had an impact, but the attitude about money did,” said Brandon George, Pitt’s starting sixth-year linebacker.
“Money doesn’t get you a championship,” Narduzzi told Yahoo Sports. “If it did, all these teams that have spent all this freaking money would be really good. Florida State. Michigan is spending a lot of money. I want hungry players.
“You talk about how did we go from 3-9? That’s how.”
There are other reasons, of course.
As the 18th-ranked Panthers (7-0, 3-0) prepare to travel to face 20th-ranked SMU (7-1, 4-0) on Saturday — an unexpected showdown of ACC unbeatens — Narduzzi’s club enters with an offense that is outpacing last year’s unit by double. Pitt holds the country’s sixth-best scoring offense (40 points a game) a year after ranking 116th (20 points a game).
Behind the improvement is a transfer quarterback from Alabama, Eli Holstein, and a first-year FBS offensive coordinator, Kade Bell. Bell brought with him from Western Carolina not just his uptempo, motion-filled scheme, but two coaches and two players, including all-purpose back Desmond Reid, a 5-foot-8, 175-pounder who’s burst onto the major college football scene with some electric performances (he became the only player in Pitt history to amass 100 yards rushing and receiving in a single game earlier this season).
Holstein and Reid are operating in a multiple-faceted offense with concepts pulled from the NFL (pro-style), Josh Heupel at Tennessee (hurry-up) and LSU’s 2019 national championship run (the RPO and vertical passing attack), said Pat Bostick, the former Pitt quarterback and color analyst for the team’s football broadcasts.
Holstein makes it go. He’s thrown 17 touchdowns and is the team’s second-leading rusher behind Reid. While his status for this week’s game against SMU remains uncertain — he exited in the second half last week — the undisclosed injury is not serious in nature, those here say.
How Holstein, a Louisiana native, ended up here involves a connection point with a Holstein family friend and a former Pitt football letterman, Mike McGlynn. He served as a conduit for school and player after Holstein entered the transfer portal following his true freshman season last year at Alabama.
Eleven months later, he’s leading an undefeated ACC squad. But not everything is perfect.
“I wish he’d run out of bounds a little bit more,” bemoaned a smiling Narduzzi.
Holstein is physically imposing at 6-4, 225 pounds. And he’s growing a scruffy goatee that Narduzzi often jokingly suggests he shave off.
“It gets the girls,” Holstein jokes back toward his coach.
Given his start to the season, maybe it’s best to keep it unshaved.
It’s been quite a wild ride so far. Holstein led back-to-back fourth-quarter comebacks. Against Cincinnati, the Panthers trailed 27-6 with 4:50 left in the third quarter before reeling off 22 unanswered. The very next week against West Virginia, Pitt trailed by 10 with five minutes left before Holstein led touchdown drives of 75 and 77 yards.
“The turning point was Cincinnati,” George said. “Defense got a stop and our offense scored. It was like, ‘OK. This isn’t last year’s offense.’”
No, it most certainly is not.
Narduzzi fired four offensive coaches, including coordinator Frank Cignetti, and a fifth offensive assistant left for an NFL assistant job. Two of those coaches, Tim Salem (tight ends) and Andre Powell (running backs and special teams), had been with the coach during his entire tenure at the school. The overhaul led to the arrival of younger coaches who, Bostick says, have re-energized the operation.
Personnel changed, too. Players like Holstein and Reid were added. Others were shown the exit door.
“They wanted more money,” Narduzzi said Tuesday from his office. “It made us better. We didn’t need those guys.”
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And then came the change to the collective’s NIL distribution structure.
“I sat down with (some of the) guys and told them, ‘You’re not getting paid,’” Narduzzi said. “I told them that the guy investing in you isn’t happy. I said, ‘If you were an investor putting your money down and you win three games, what would you do?’ Kids said, ‘Coach, I wouldn’t give it.’ That’s what he’s doing. You’ve got to go earn it.”
Those who earn it will get rewarded after the season, Bickell suggested.
“We are careful with our dollars,” he said. “There are guys on this team that are not getting paid tons and they are producing. We know we have high-value players in the market. We’re going to have teams interested in Dez Reid, right? No one knew he could play. We are leaving the negotiating to the end of the season.”
As a university, Pitt is in an interesting position in the transforming world of college athletics. While it resides in a population center within a football state — Pittsburgh has a metro area of about 2.5 million — the school isn’t often mentioned among ACC heavyweights like Clemson, Florida State and Miami. The program’s rich history — it is top 20 all-time in wins — is forgotten by some, lost to the sands of time.
A regular national championship contender in the 1950s, 70s and 80s, Pitt has advanced to just two major bowl games in the last 40 years. And yet, Narduzzi, in his 10th season, is on his way to bringing the program to heights it hasn’t seen in years. The Panthers are on their way to a third nine-win or better season in the last four years for the first time since the early 1980s.
As college sports inches closer to the athlete revenue-sharing era, the school is bracing for its impact by making significant changes. Pitt chancellor Joan Gabel, who arrived last summer, recently hired as new athletic director Allen Greene, who brings experience at SEC football brands like Auburn, Ole Miss and Tennessee.
Bickell has staffed the collective, Alliance 412, as an entity to thrive in a future revenue-sharing world and he expects to continue operating. The collective has an annual budget of around $6 million. He’s hired a talent evaluator, former Buffalo Bills general manager Doug Whaley, and an experienced fundraiser, John Pelusi, with deep and strategic corporate ties.
“Trust me,” Bickell said, “what we’re doing at Pitt, we are going to compete on the national level in the revenue sharing. I’ve been in those meetings.”
Despite the financial growth in gaps between the SEC and Big Ten and everyone else, Narduzzi is confident that Pitt can win its first national title since 1976. It can be done here, he says.
“There’s more parity than there’s ever been,” he adds.
“We’ve been operating Pitt football and basketball as a business,” Bickell said. “We see ourselves in a unique market. We aren’t a major market team. We are wedged between Penn State and Ohio. But we are in a massive, amazing city. This is the resurgence of Pittsburgh.”