This is a long post but since there isn’t a PITT basketball game for a few days it’s something for us to read,listen to and discuss.
At first I wasn’t that excited about listening to the interview but once I realized how in-depth Paul Zeise was getting I re-started the interview and took four full pages of notes. I had to paraphrase some of the info below but these are Paul Zeise’s thoughts (not mine). I added some background and italicized some of the more interesting info.
Linked below is a interesting and detailed interview with the P-G’s Paul Zeise conducted by the Wisconsin Football Blog Buckaround.com which is much like The PITT Blather is to PITT football. The interview is Episode 63 titled “Paul Chryst: PITT Head Coach with Paul Zeise” The podcast is about 50 minutes long and I urge all of us PITT fans to take the time to listen to it. Zeise doesn’t pull any punches when discussing the recent history of PITT football and has some very interesting ‘inside info’ .
It is a pretty hard hitting and very insightful discussion by someone who was right in the middle of everything as a PITT beat writer working with PITT’s football program from 2014 on back. With the recent, welcomed changes in the football program and how the administration is unfolding and the fruits of that happening, it is inevitable that when discussing PITT football we’ll cast back to the last three HCs we had before Narduzzi and their impacts on the program.
Something to remember about Paul Zeise is that just because he was taken off the P-G PITT football beat prior last season he still was very involved and privy to the inner-working of the football program, especially with his family’s’ experience with the recruiting process, but he wasn’t writing about it due to a conflict of interest.
Keep an open mind to what Zeise says and reflect back to what we heard, watched, listened to and especially what we read in the media and on The Blather from the 2009 season up until last month.
Here are some of the main pieces of info on what he saw and knew, some is obvious to us fans and some is not, but when discussing the last three HCs and now Pat Narduzzi, you have to look at how recruiting and personnel decisions impacted the team and the program. So – here are Zeise’s thoughts:
2009 – 2010
In 2009 DW had landed the best recruiting class (2010’s) in the Big East after some previous good recruiting years but still went out and lost the BE title by a score of 45 to 44 to Cincinnati in a spectacular fashion as we all remember. That loss helped to set up the decisions the administration made about DW the next year. In 2010 he had the UCONN loss, again blowing a BE title, by not stopping a 4th and long play that would have given us the win, and that was the icing on the cake. Those losses, combined with all the negative issues surrounding the program under DW, led PITT to ask for his resignation directly after the UCONN game on November 11th.
That is new info for us fans but Zeise states that PITT asked DW to put in his resignation letter three weeks earlier then his firing. Because he wouldn’t do it they had to force his hand and fired him on Dec 7th. What is eyeopening about that is they had asked him to resign while we still had three more game to play in the regular season.
Even then, the administration allowed DW’s Dec 7th press conference where he stated publicly that resigned on his own when he was actually formally fired. PITT never contradicted that in public even though everyone pretty much knew the true circumstances.
We know what our 2011 recruiting class was like prior to DW’s firing, it could have been rated as high as 16th nationally, but it was demolished by committed recruits backing out after the firing. But here is something that we wrote about happening then on the Blather but PITT fans didn’t want to hear or believe it… Wannstedt personally called every recruit and told them not to go to PITT, and literally told them to de-commit. He followed that by asking his remaining staff to call the players they recruited again and tell them the same thing.
He was doing this the whole time he was also ‘jerking PITT around’ as to whether he would coach in the bowl game as the “Assistant AD”. Of course we know what happened, DW backed out on January 3rd in another press conference held the day before the players flew out for the January 7 game. Phil Bennett was then interim HC and the kids, who really loved DW, dedicated the game to him and then went out and won a convincing victory over Kentucky. (Good for the team!)
Todd Graham
We know what the impact of Graham was on the program on the whole, but what he did in terms of recruitment really hurt the program also. Graham inherited that blown up 2011 recruiting class and had to scramble around to fill scholarships left open by DW’s firing. Here is a Rivals.com quote made at the time about the players who left:
“A dozen of the players who had made pledges to Pitt have since decommitted, including New Jersey receiver Bill Belton, Bishop McDevitt running back Jameel Poteat, Pottsgrove cornerback Terrell Chestnut, New Jersey defensive tackle Marquise Wright and East Stroudsburg safety Kyshoen Jarrett. Even New Jersey linebacker Quinton Alston, who once was trying to persuade other prospect to consider Pitt, has bolted; in fact, all five Pitt commits from New Jersey reopened their recruitments when secondary coach Jeff Hafley left to go to Rutgers.
None of them are expected to end up at Pitt. The Panthers enter this weekend with just 10 players for a class that could have accepted more than 20.
“It’s unprecedented,” Peak said. “They’re (Graham’s staff) trying to put together a class in three weeks when other coaches have had two years to build relationships.“
Here is an interesting fact about that mass exodus. In that final 2011 recruiting class only four recruits remained who committed to PITT prior to DW’s firing: 4* DL Mosley- Smith; 3* RB Bryson; 3* C Rowell and 3* TE Collura. Two out of those four produced for PITT later on.
Graham then had to basically beg players to come to PITT and from his hire until LOI Day he recruited “vagabonds and problem children” (Zeise) with one 4*, seven 3*s and nine 2* players committing. Basically it was crap with a few future starters thrown in.
There is an interesting juxtaposition in regards to our HC departures. When DW was fired the players dedicated the rest of the season to him and busted ass in the bowl win. That is how much they liked him as a coach. When Graham left and his staff had to take over the preps for the bowl game the attitude among the players was so negative some players left during pre-bowl practice sessions and some didn’t show up at practices at all.
We had written on the Blather about the the kids being pissed but I didn’t realize the magnitude of distrust and dislike towards Graham and his staff from the players themselves. Former Graham DC Keith Patterson had a tough go of it after the Evil One left and it showed in that horrible loss to SMU, 27-6 where it was obvious that the PITT players didn’t care, didn’t give a full effort and wanted out of there as soon as possible.
After Graham quit he left the 2012 recruiting class hanging in limbo as he had only eight (out of a final 16) recruits committed to PITT. It wasn’t a bad half class though with 4*s Bisnowaty, Voytik and Shell included in it. Chryst then gets hired on Dec 22nd and, again, a PITT HC has to scramble around to salvage a recruiting class (as will Narduzzi three years later!) However, PITT and Paul Chryst instituted a strong recruiting standard following the “Wisconsin Model of Recruiting”. That is looking for and weighing equally three different aspects when scouting prospects; strong character, high academic success and solid football skills. The idea was to build a football family as opposed to only a football roster.
That seemed to work pretty well while Chryst was at PITT in that the number of arrests plummeted, certainly among players he recruited himself. That, coupled with stringent academic and behavioral standards the players had to meet, and quick suspensions when those standards were violated helped PITT to regain the good reputation we had prior to 2010-2011 fiascoes.
Paul Chryst inherited two lame recruiting classes and a roster full of DW recruits who were now disillusioned and angry about the changes the coaching staffs went through with DW’s firing and Graham’s quitting. Faced with that, and the need to straighten things out by overhauling the program, Chryst ‘ran off’ 34 “bad apples and malcontents”, mostly upper classmen, over his first two years as HC.
Zeise noted that Chryst’s purge actually left PITT with less scholarship players on the roster than PSU had at the same time while they were in the midst of NCAA sanctioned recruiting limits. That is why a year later, in 2013, we had the youngest roster in D1 football.
Note: So that is Zeise’s history of the coaching changes leading up to Narduzzi accepting the PITT job. We’ll see if better coaching gets the players to be more productive, especially on defense as that had sucked last season. Offensively Chryst leaves a fully stocked OL, RB and TE and talent at the WR position. He never seemed to be able to land that good QB recruit although he had Freebeck on the hook – and Zeise believes that Chryst was responsible for Voytik finally signing with PITT, but who knows?
Zeise hit on a lot of other issues and are some of them:
He said that he thinks that to properly evaluate Chryst’s time here it would be better to be able to see the team in action during the 2015 season. He thinks Chryst would have fired his buddy Matt House, who was a terrible DC, even thought that would be hard for Chryst to do. He said that Chryst used the last three years to recruit and set PITT up for success going forward..He also said that it wasn’t just House but other staff members weren’t qualified to fill the positions Chryst gave them either.
Chryst got the very best possible play out of the three QBs he had to work with over the last three years and we have seen that to be true. His work with Sunseri, who had three different HCs, four different OCs and three QB coaches, was done by simplifying Sunseri’s game plan and limiting him to what he could actually accomplish on the field. That was a big difference from the High Octane offense QB Graham tried to make Sunseri into and then screamed at him when it didn’t work. Chryst didn’t ask his QBs to try passes that he knew they couldn’t constantly make (Sunseri & Voytik’s deep balls and Savage’s short game)
From Rivals on that subject:
“Graham’s public comments about Sunseri were mostly broad and general in nature; over the last half of the season, he rarely even referred to Sunseri by name. But there was never any doubt about who Graham held responsible for an offense that was supposed to be explosive and high scoring but ended up outside the top 65 in virtually every statistical category nationally. And while media and fans outside the program took Graham to task for his handling of Sunseri, the players on the team weren’t oblivious to what was happening. “That’s tough, just because Coach Graham was very hard on him,” redshirt junior receiver Mike Shanahan said this week. “And Tino, you know, he’s Tino, so sometimes they kind of clashed a little bit. That’s with any coach and any player, but I guess it’s more publicized when it’s the quarterback and the head coach.
(Seriously, how great is it that we are now two HCs removed from that piece of garbage.)
Zeise says that when he covered PITT during the bad old 1990s when they lost 72-0 against OSU he never saw the players checkout of the team and the games and play so halfheartedly as they did with Graham’s staff in the bowl game. That says a lot considering all those two and three wins years.
He contrasts that with how this year’s team went all out and gave 100% for the bowl game and would have won except for the DC’s very poor handling of the defense.
House’s ‘bend but don’t break’ defense didn’t work because he couldn’t get enough pressure on the QB with his DL personnel. DW’s defenses could play well that way because he always had four good DL on the field. Narduzzi’s strength is an aggressive defense and will do well.
One of DW’s problems was that he gave his players too many ‘2nd chances’ after arrests & discipline problems and it affected the team and the program in the end. That and his not winning the BE title were the grounds for firing. (the four violent incidents before the 2010 led to that also).
PC wasn’t like DW in that he didn’t hang out with boosters and HS coaches; had much more of a work-life balance. Local people didn’t really understand that.
Recruiting
Zeise discussed PC’s recruiting in general and specifically his families experience in having their son, Elijah (WR) recruited by and signing with PITT. He and his wife (important person in recruiting!) really appreciated PC’s honesty and it was refreshing after some other schools’ shady approaches.
Zeise said that the stereotype that Chryst was too ‘laid back’ in recruiting isn’t necessarily true. He was very aggressive in his own style and was on Elijah (Zeise’s son) as soon as possible and personally stayed involve and ‘on top’ of everything with him. Elijah had 11 offers, some Ivy league schools, and Chryst made a point to ensure that Elijah and the other recruits & families met with the teaching staffs in the actual academic departments themselves to discuss the the players and parent’s academic goals and not just take them see the football tutoring crew as other schools did with Elijah.
Some school’s coaching staffs didn’t mentioned academics at all during their in-house visits until the subject was brought up by the the Zeises. Evident that Chryst really meant the three pronged approach to recruiting (character, academics and football).
Joe Rudolph was PC’s main recruiter (recruited Elijah) and was very good at it. Rudolph was very smart, genuine and good ‘behind the scenes’ with the program. He and Bobby Ingram were the ‘go to’ recruiters for PC. Gallagher really tried very hard to keep Rudolph on staff at PITT but the Wisconsin pull was too much.
Chryst and staff were very organized in their recruiting plans and offered those players who met the criteria but who also fit into their plans for the team. Stars didn’t matter at all and they wouldn’t offer a kid based on that alone.
Chryst’s players really loved him (like with DW) and they were understanding and happy that he got the chance to go back as HC to his alma mater – 180 degrees different than with TG. Graham was making calls and looking for a new job three weeks after he signed his PITT contract (Holy Hell!!)
Zeise thinks PC will be a very successful HC at Wisconsin because he has the ‘vision’ of what he wants to do there. Said that PC had the same strong vision at PITT and was recruiting toward it (OL & offense especially). Also that Chryst had been planning to stay at PITT for a long time, Wisconsin was the only job he’d take at that point in time, and that Narduzzi is inheriting that recruited talent on the roster.
That’s a overview of the extensive interview and you can see that Zeise had some pretty interesting insights that he talked publicly about for the first time. He verified some rumors that had been floating around and, I think, was very forthright about his thoughts and opinions.
Really, are we to believe that PITT was all fine and good for the recruits right up until Dec 7th but then once DW got his walking papers it wasn’t the school recruits should go to? How in the world can anyone accept that but what it was at face value. If DW actually felt that way it is the height of hypocrisy and arrogance because he was the only thing that changed and it leaves a rotten smell no matter how you cut it.
As I was writing this piece I said to myself that it is the last article I write about DW and TG. Now it is almost four full years removed and I truly think we have better days ahead. We certainly have a ton of questions that need to be answered regarding Narduzzi and his staff, his recruits and his HC ability – so we have a LOT to talk about with that.
Hank the Tank – maybe that was true but I doubt because anyone with any connection at all to the program knew that the Chancellor and the AD made it clear there were going to be changes made in the freedom the HC would have to make 100% of the program’s decision. As to Sunseri being mandated to play I doubt it very much – Mark Myers was the only QB available that was even a long shot to get playing time – he had checked out of the team by then and didn’t really even bother to study Graham’s playbook, let alone try to execute it. He was never going to play QB at PITT in 2011 no matter who the HC was.
Also, in all my time writing and commenting (10+) years om the football program I have never heard any talk about the administration requiring a certain player had to be given playing time.
As to Narduzzi’s recruiting – I really didn’t expect a slew of top shelf kids signing on all of a sudden anyway. As we saw with Graham and Chryst it is very hard to completely salvage a fracture recruiting class. I like Brightwell, McKee and Stocker especially at on defense since we are thin there. The rest are, IMO, just regular recruits that every school gets to fill out the scholarship needing to be used. That doesn’t mean they won’t do well in college, just that at this point they aren’t that special.
I also like that Narduzzi is apparently holding back some scholarships to use for the 2016 class. I’ve a feeling he’ll take our talent, and I do believe there is some good solid players on the roster, even on Defense, and will have a successful 2015 season. With that established PN will be able to pick and choose his offers and accept better recruits much more then he has been able to do at this late date for the ’15 class.
Terrific job encapsulating a great reporter in Zeise.
I grew up ith Dave Wannstedt. I knew him for the first 30 years of his life and spoke with him while he was at Pitt. Having fired and been fired, there is no easy way to do it or accept it. I knew that he called recruits because I was placing high school
Basketball players at the time. Because I know Dave, I never said a word. I’ve seen bad reactions to being fired up close and personal including one of my best friends throwing himself in front of an Amtrak Acela train. Dave wears his heart on his shirt sleeve. Please remember he was dealing with maybe the biggest asshole who ever ran Pitt Athletics, SP, and in whom Nordy worshipped. If you’ve ever been let go from a job, remember your reaction.
Not defending Dave…just adding perspective.
Very strange blog. Researched all of their blogs going back to 2013 season.
They must have very little to none, visitors.
As there are about a grand total of 10 comments on about 24-30 articles written since 2013.
Seems a very strange place for Zeise to tell his story.
When I’m quite positive, Cook, Rossi, Collier, Smizik, DiPaulo, etc….would have eaten this up at the PG & Trib ragsheets.
Since they were all DW bashers as well.
I try to put stuff out on here and talk about some issues even if I don’t necessarily like it but news is news and that interview is very interesting news for fans to hear coming from an inside source.
Zeise has very solid contact with the program, staff and the administration than any Blogger will ever have. As I said I was surprised that he was being so open about things that were never formally written about at the time.
You can believe it or not but I tend to think he wouldn’t state such controversial things unless he was damn sure he could back it up. This interview was a public as it gets. Zeise didn’t just spin this stuff out of thin air – almost everything he talks about I had heard from others in one form or another – just not in the same detail shared with the interviewers.
Again, to NOT discuss something like this would would be a disservice to the Blather readers – I sincerely believe that. If someone in the administration or elsewhere disputes what Zeise is saying I’ll write about that also. It certainly could happen.
Just when we’re all really behind and united behind Nard Dog and excited for the first time in a long time over the prospects of Pitt football.
All this does is fractionalize and splinter us into different groups. And makes our enemies stronger.
Not a fan of doing this, just to prove a point.
Some things are better left un-aired (if indeed they are true) for the sake of the family. In this case the Pitt family.
Dan – I understand completely that DW was upset and hurt – PITT is alma mater and he obviously feels very strongly about PITT football. Which is why I think that what he did was so newsworthy and, again personally, not that hard to believe as he was such an emotional guy. But we saw his anger three years removed on national TV and I think he has no governor on his emotional motor.
Comparing that none visited site, with 10 comments by readers since 2013 to The Blather…is a joke Reed.
One thread in the Blather has more comments then the Total comments on that website in it’s entire history of being a website.
Where on earth did you learn about it Reed ?
Since it isn’t a well known Badger blog.
I don’t deny at all that calls were made but it’s the exact content of the message I would like to know. Saying bad things about Pitt is one thing; saying bad things about the AD is another.
But what I really would want to know is that if he and his staff did make these calls, why was he asked to stay around in an admin job instead of hustled the hell out of there ASAP?
Zeise is far from not being beyond reproach.
As I posted above, he was certainly always telling us how great Tino was in practice.
Also there is something strange about the whole way this was released. To me at least.
Nothing in print. So he can’t be held liable.
1) Cornhole should have not accepted the bowl bid then, which would again show his incompetence.
2) Sunseri had little to no leadership qualities.
If Wanny was discouraging committed recruits from staying committed.
Why on earth would they, dangle Associate AD or whatever title, in front of him,,,,AFTER the fact (of discouraging recruits) ?
That part of Zeise’s tale (among others) makes no sense at all.
Well….needless to say this was taken with great vigor and acceptance.
Cornhole might be using some of that Pitt payola.
As they say…something smells in Denmark.
Again why would Zeise do an interview with a website nobody visits.
And such an extensive interview to boot.
Best 3 years in Pitt football from 2008-2010, since Marino years.
Highest final rank at Pitt in 2009 at #15 since #9 in Marino’s senior year in 1982-83.
Again…lol
Which would have resulted in 2 of Pitt’s biggest blunders.
1) Mike Heywood
2) Toad Graham
And all the wasted years of 2011-2014
Maybe some of these so-called Pitt posters enjoyed Pitt being a laughing stock post Wanny.
ha
Why in the world would Paul Zeise, who is a career employee of the biggest newspaper in Western PA and who is still engaged as a writer/reporter covering PITT athletics, lie through his teeth as you infer that he’s doing. What could he possibly gain by doing so?
If you truly do believe this I strongly urge you to contact John Block, the owner, publisher and editor-in-Chief of the Post Gazette and personally let him know that they have an employee who is blatantly fabricating information regarding PITT football for some dark and nebulous reason. Block’s phone number and email are listed in the P-G’s website. Seriously, the allegations you are making about Zeise spinning yarns out of thin air or bending facts to fit a personal agenda are about as serious as it gets in journalism and no media outlet of any repute would keep someone on staff who does something that.
That is to say nothing of what Zeise could possibly lose by doing it. You’ll have to show me some reasonable explanation for so drastic an action on his part.
Honest to God, I think I’ve heard everything now. Really, the thought that Steve Pederson gets others to put their career and personal and professional reputations on the line to strike back at Wannstedt for him. If you believe that then perhaps Zeise has such hatred toward DW that he’s willing to ruin his own life giving speaking in that interview? Remember, Zeise wasn’t putting forth his opinions, he was stating facts as he knew them. Please….
Wbb – I saw the link in a thread on the Rivals.com pay site. Why, did you think SP called me up and said “Hey Reed, check this out!”
Emel – it isn’t that far of a stretch that Sunseri had no leadership sway over the team. It certainly isn’t unbelievable that some players threw in the towel after Graham slinked off – we all discussed just that issue on here for days after that bowl game.
We ended up with 34 kids leaving the program? WOW!
Let me get this straight, Pederson fires Wannstedt in early Nov. Since he won’t leave, Wannstedt continues to coach and RECRUIT for 3 additional weeks? Then he is finally kicked out on Dec 7th. They kept him for 3 weeks doing the things a head coach is supposed to do!?
Now the best new coaching candidate the admin could find with this additional 3 weeks WAS HAYWOOD? Did they not bother doing a personal background investigation?
What a F—–up administration. Nordenberg doesn’t get enough blame. Pederson needed to be fired on the spot.
This is our University. Alot of,especially young, graduates rely on the status/reputation of the University to get that job or entrance to the graduate school of choice.
Nordenberg/Pederson were employees who failed to earn their salaries.
Where did Zeise hear this info regarding DW ?
As in who…told him ?
Is PSU really bragging about flipping this kid? It’s not like they stole away some 5-star recruit. I get that he’s a PA native, but let’s keep some perspective here. What did they really get? What did they really lose?
I’m much more proud of Narduzzi for landing kids who had offers from SEC schools and Oklahoma, etc.
apparently DW held such sway and they held him in such regard, that they were coming to Pitt because of DW not Pitt. If we’re to believe this story.
All the more reason to have kept DW.
I do not know Paul Zeise, but he does have a kid at Pitt now. On a free ride. And yes at $30k per year that is over $120k. People have done much more for much less. Just sayin.
Heck they were bragging about beating BC by 1 point on a botched XP in the Pinhead Bowl. Pitt won handily over BC at BC.
Desperate lot up in Creepy Valley.
Reed, also, are you joking when you said you got a call from “SP” regarding Zeise’s remarks?
As I said above, Wannstedt did the right thing redirecting the recruits to a better future.(If true) Look what happened the last 4 years?
Different story now. We have a bright future!
Sources, everything Zeise said regarding Dave Wannstedt calling recruits and encouraging them to not to come to Pitt is true.
As angry as I have been at Pitt for 30 years of F ing up
All things Pitt Football and as much as I loathed Pederson
For all he did to harm my University, I would have gone to
My grave with that info. If you read my post earlier, you will see
Why I have great empathy for people who have been fired
I was furious with Wanny from the first loss he coached ND to the Kickoff to Cinncys best returner which killed Pitt.
You never saw a post from me pushing Wanny for Ad. He
didn’t just burn a bridge, he blew it up !!
Even with that I thought Wanny deserved a break for bad behavior after his firing because behind the scenes SP
Orchestrated it to show Wanny who was really boss. No one ever wins in a bigger dick contest.
But Zeise’s sources are right on.
Who are Zeise’s sources ?
(Now I’m going to repeat myself.)
If true, Wannstedt did right by all those recruits suggesting looking elsewhere.
Look what happened at Pitt the next 4 years. He was looking out for the welfare of the young men. More power to Wannstedt.
Old Pitt Grad .. Sorry to bore you
I still feel Wannstedt did right in turning away those kids. Case closed as far as I’m concerned. Pitt was no place to be and play football the last 4 years.
Are you kidding me! The whole interview is a Paul Chryst PR campaign; nothing more. The statements Zeise is making could be 100% bull just to make the Wisky fans feel good about getting Chryst as their head coach. I’m glad they got him.
Come on Reed you know better than that!
Also, of course I was joking About SP calling me, he doesn’t know me from a hill of beans, nor I him and I have had no desire to have any sort of a relationship of any kind with him. BTW, Zeise said that Pitt asked DW to RESIGN three weeks before he was fired, not that they fired him three weeks earlier then they did.
Emel, are you seriously suggesting that a major newspaper’s sportswriter is taking a bribe from a well-respected university to bad mouth a past employee in return for a football scholarship for his child? Please tell me that isn’t what you are saying because that is patently ridiclous and would be a major scandal worthy of national news. Plus I really don’t believe for one second Pitt would do anything like that unless we joined the SEC all of a sudden.
Please, please tell me you don’really think that happened.
Look, the bottom line here is that a well connected sportswriter was interviewed and stated some very interesting information as he knew it… no illegal nor unethical transactions took place between Pitt and the guy being interviewed, but things were said that some fans feel are hard to believe. That’s it in a nutshell.
No one slipped that interview to me in the dead of night nor did anyone do anything worthy of the CIA to discredit DW.
Now, time to turn to the LOIs we hope will come flying in from those kids Pitt recruited. Will post tomorrow about what the coaches say about the kids.
If those kids stay and excel as football players then the next four years are most likely markedly different. DW was no seer, he was bitter and full of scorn. If what Zeise says is true he is more responsible for this current dark age than the former AD.
Thank God I didn’t have a grandson in the program with the coaching carousal going on.
The 34 kids that left the program were all treated well, right? Everyone of them must have been a problem, right?
Then there was the kid, who asked to come back, a 19 year old who was realizing he made a mistake. The big fat ego guy who thinks he is a D-1 coach decides he is God and says NO!
Sorry, I don’t want my family around people like that.
Nothing really shocks me. Journalists are certainly not above reproach and yes they have taken bribes to write articles with certain ‘spin’s on them for decades. Right there in Pittsburgh.
Didn’t you know.
Zeise likes Chryst and the fact his son has a scholarship. Didi young Zeise get a 4year one or the normal year to year as most schools give?
spiritofsection22, you are one tough mother! Please consider this, the more one is further away from our beloved school, the more differently is the view. May I say more realistically.
DW, allegedly, severly hampered our flow of respectable recruits which in turn caused us to be unsuccesful on the field and in turn created a negative atmosphere. To me damaging our talent pool and rep is a way bigger transgression than some dude looking too smug or whatever the hell people’s complaints were.
Was he just trying to build up Paulie since he was on a Wisconsin radio show, which was all about justifying hiring a coach at one of the premiere programs in the Big Joke, after going only 19-19 ?
I don’t believe Zeise would have been invited on that show, unless he was going to spin things that put Paulie in a good light. Do you ?
I don’t know what went down, and neither really does Zeise. As neither one of us were on the phone calls. We all criticized Graham for not contacting anyone when he bolted. So DW called them, they might have asked him some questions and he answered them honestly.
DW’s players were surely 100% behind him. And that’s good enough for me.
The other crap is hearsay as far as I’m concerned.
Call me a skeptic.
Allegedly…is the key word.
The fact is that Cornhole fired him with no plan whatsoever in who to hire. Then proceeded to hire a jerk…who had some problems in his past…that were exactly what popped up almost immediately after his hiring.
Firing DW was what started the events, that led to two for certain fiasco’s.
1) Mike Haywood
2) Toad Graham
And those events/fiascos are on Cornhole.
You really need to listen to that interview again – Zeise talks extensively about the Matt House hire as a huge mistake and then goes on to say that ‘Chryst made other mistakes in hiring more ‘buddies’ as his staff coaches instead of trying to get the best people he could from elsewhere. As a matter of fact, that issue is what Zeise criticized Chryst the most on.
Emel – I went to the LOI Day event last night and had numerous conversations about Zeise’s interview and those DW phone calls with people WHO CAME UP TO ME to discuss Zeise’s interview and I heard at least four people tell me they already knew about DW making those calls from back when he did it in 2010.
It happened regardless of if you like it or not.
Reed — what were you wearing at the LOI event? I saw a few guys who were tallish with brown hair but they did not seem “Reed-like” to me 🙂
We all know that was total bunk.