Jared Shanker, ESPN Staff Writer 9y

How Pitt landed its top coaching target without an AD

As one of the most sought-after assistant coaches the last few seasons, it didn’t take long for then-Michigan State defensive coordinator Pat Narduzzi to become Randy Juhl’s top target after the coaching carousel swept through Pittsburgh yet again.

“Pat quickly rose to the top,” Juhl said.

Juhl was only Pitt’s interim athletic director, though. Steve Pederson was relieved of his athletic director duties in December after Paul Chryst left for Wisconsin, marking the fourth coaching change since Pederson arrived at Pitt in 2007.

With the athletic director often the one tasked with hiring a coach, how would the administrative opening affect the interest of Narduzzi, a hot coaching commodity each winter?

It’s not unusual to read of fractured relationships between a coach and an athletic director who wasn’t involved in the hiring of the current staff. A new athletic director could be quicker to make a change in lean years and bring in a coach of his own.

“It’d be hard for me as a coach to go somewhere and not know who my boss is,” said Barry Alvarez, who has played both roles after spending four decades as a coach and is now Wisconsin’s athletic director. “But if the president is the boss and you answer to the president, you can live with it.”

Pitt’s lack of stability at athletic director was discussed, Narduzzi said, but those conversations were short thanks in large part to the presence of new chancellor Pat Gallagher.

“I really felt good with [Gallagher],” Narduzzi told ESPN.com. “Myself and [men’s basketball] Coach [Jamie] Dixon, we’re going to have a say on who that next guy is going to be. We’ll end up interviewing them when they get on campus. We’ll have some input in what’s going on in that job.”

Gallagher was named Pittsburgh’s chancellor in February 2014, leaving a position with U.S. Department of Commerce and as Director of the National Institute of Standards and Technology. Gallagher had not been involved in a coaching hire before, but Juhl said Gallagher was present for meetings with Narduzzi.

He even played a role in shoring up Narduzzi's first recruiting class as the first-year coach had to scramble a month before signing day. Narduzzi said he was at a prospect's home when Gallagher sent him a text message. He got on the phone with Gallagher and even had the prospect speak to the new chancellor. Did it help?

"Makes all the difference in the world," Narduzzi said. "ADs are important, but when you’ve got the big man up, you’re going to have the next guy in line with you as well."

Juhl, who recently announced his intention to retire, said he hopes to have a new athletic director in place by the spring. He said Pitt will hire “somebody that Pat Narduzzi wants to hire” and that the interest in the position has been significant.

Juhl said there were not any concerns as to whether Pitt could make a splash coaching hire without an athletic director in place.

“Your colleagues in the press brought it up, and that’s where we thought about it the most,” he said.

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