In so many ways across so many lines.

I don’t care if you thought this hire was a mistake or not. Or if you thought this would end poorly for Pitt, this was never expected. And no one should think that this will be good for Pitt in the short or even medium-term. So any triumphalism should be tempered by the complete FUBAR-edness of the matter.

The history of replacing a coach so quickly after a firing and hiring in college football is a small sample size. George O’Leary at ND and Mike Price at Alabama are the only ones to come to mind in recent years. In both cases, the next guy hired (Tyrone Willingham and Mike Shula, respectively) ended up lasting four years or less,  and not working out well.

The knee jerk reaction is that Haywood and AD Pederson need to go immediately. I admit that I can’t really argue against it based on the present situation, and what we know.

Here’s what we know:

Mike Haywood got into a verbal dispute with the mother of his son over visitation issues Friday, early in the afternoon.

It is alleged by the woman that the dispute escalated to physical actions.

At 2:26 p.m., county police received a 911 call from a woman with whom Haywood has a 21-month-old son. The woman said Haywood became angry when she tried to leave with the boy, and put her in a choke-hold, then pushed her, police said.

Police responded to Haywood’s home, located in Northwood Hills, an upscale subdivision off of Portage Road, just south of the Indiana-Michigan line.

After county police officer Diana Landry interviewed the woman and observed red marks on her neck, back and arms, she arrested Haywood on suspicion of misdemeanor domestic violence battery.

Haywood was held without bond Friday night in the county jail. In domestic violence cases, the defendant must remain in jail without bond until an arraignment before a judge.

[Emphasis added.]

This is not about guilt or innocence right now. This is about the perception and standards expected of the man.

The University of Pittsburgh issued the following statement after being inundated for a comment.

“The University of Pittsburgh is aware of an alleged incident involving head football coach Michael Haywood today in South Bend, Indiana,” the school said in an e-mailed statement. “The University expects the highest standards of conduct from its employees, including its coaches, and any breach of those standards is a very serious matter. The University will decline further comment until more complete information is available.”

It is next to impossible to see Haywood surviving this and actually coaching Pitt football. When he was hired, the press conference was so much more about Haywood’s character. About bringing discipline and accountability to the football program. By implication, suggesting that those issues had been found lacking by the end of Wannstedt’s tenure.

You will pardon the cynicism but if this happened a year or two into his tenure and Haywood was winning at Pitt, then he would survive this. If Haywood had been a big name hire, with a notable track record or a lot of juice behind him; then maybe he makes it out of this with a chance to redeem himself by winning on the field.

Whether his contract has a behavior clause. Whether he actually has a signed contract or simply a memorandum of understanding at this point is merely a matter of determining how much it will cost to make him go away.

The immediate issues are what to do with AD Steve Pederson and finding a new coach.

Forget the 2011 recruiting class. Safe to say at this point that the class is shot. No hiring at this point should even concern itself with salvaging the class.

Here are the problems. AD Pederson is effectively crippled as the leader of the athletic department. The hiring of the football coach has blown up in his face — again. In both Nebraska and at Pitt, there was support for the firing of the coach. Ignore the revisionism from Nebraska, the overwhelming fan support was that Solich was not going to get the job done — even if they liked the guy personally (Hmm. Sounds familiar).

Smizik pointed out that Pederson hasn’t made a good coaching hire since Ben Howland. You can bet if he is remaining AD, this next hire is done with minimal input from him. It is hard to see him lasting too long after this debacle. So how do you let him make the call on the next hire? And almost certainly, he will not last too long. Pederson is too proud (arrogant) to hang around as a castrated figure.

If Pederson is fired immediately then Pitt is going to be looking for a new coach without an AD in place. That is extremely difficult — just look to Oregon’s extended quest for a new basketball coach last spring. Besides the rather absurd wishlist, the fact that they spent the majority of the search without having an AD — Mike Belotti resigned in the spring — was hamstrung as quality coaches (like Jamie Dixon) were not going to be interested in a situation where they worked for a guy who did not hire them — no matter how much Nike money was being waived at them.

Or think back to Pitt’s attempts to woo Skip Prosser from Wake Forest. One of the sticking points to Prosser was the lack of stability in the athletic department. Pederson had left months earlier, and Pitt still operated with an interim AD.

You can’t hire an interim coach, though, not unless you want to guarantee failure. How could any coach recruit for 2012 as an interim? He would have to be coaching without regards for any long-term plan (Redshirts? Never heard of them). So, I respectfully disagree with Dokish on this.

So right now, the options for hiring a guy are limited. Pitt isn’t going to get a quality, name head coach. Not even someone like Kevin Sumlin from Houston. They are going to take one look at the mess and run the other way.

A hot assistant like Paul Chryst of Wisconsin, Bryan Harsin from Boise State (on the OC side); or DCs like Kirby Smart from Alabama would be very wary of the situation.

That limits the pool severely. Tom Bradley the PSU DC and Frank Cignetti, still Pitt’s OC suddenly become very realistic targets.

Welcome to 2011. Choose the best of the bad choices.