Pederson man behind turning of the Panthers' athletic fortunes
Steve Pederson found out just how far away the athletic department at the University of Pittsburgh was from respectability let alone prosperity days after being named Pitt's 10th athletic director in October of 1996.
"We played Boston College on national TV and Pitt Stadium was just empty," Pederson said. "It was embarrassing."
Pederson gained an appreciation for how far the Panthers have come in their collective resurrection, when he looked back from his seat at Rupp Arena in Lexington, Ky., and saw thousands of Pitt basketball fans going wild while watching the Panthers battle Kent State in the Sweet 16 on March 21.
"I thought, 'Boy, these people deserve this,'" Pederson said. "They've been through some tough times. They've fought the hard fight and now they're getting to enjoy it.
"That's been one of the most satisfying things for me, to see our fans enjoy themselves. That's one of the great feelings in the world, when our kids are excited and our fans are enjoying themselves."
There has been much to enjoy in Pederson's kingdom of late, much to get excited about. The football team under coach Walt Harris won the Tangerine Bowl in December in Orlando, Fla., and put on a clinic while dominating North Carolina State in the process. And coach Ben Howland's basketball team reached the Sweet 16 for just the second time in school history.
Better still, the dramatic improvement Pitt has enjoyed on the field and in the arena has been surpassed only by the upgrading of the fields and arenas on which and in which the Panthers perform. Outdated, inaccessible Pitt Stadium has been reduced to a memory. The Panthers now play their football games in spectacular Heinz Field and practice at a plush South Side facility that, like Heinz, they share with the NFL's Steelers. And the Pitt basketball team will move into the brand new Petersen Events Center next season after finally closing ancient Fitzgerald Field House, a facility the program had long ago outgrown, this year.
"Our facilities are nearing being among the top in the country," Pederson said. "Certainly in football and basketball they are at the top of the country.
"Everybody else (the non-revenue producing sports on campus) benefits from those changes, so their facilities can get better, too."
At a university where the football team was a woeful 2-9 as recently as 1998 and the basketball team a disappointing 13-15 in 1999-2000, such a rapid resurgence might suggest a bow is in order.
But the AD isn't interested in taking one just yet.
"We're not stopping to spike the ball," Pederson said. "We're going as hard and fast as we can. Our expectations continue to rise.
"I don't ever want us to be satisfied. We really are making progress but we have a lot of work to do. I don't ever want to lose sight of that."
WORSE THAN INITIALLY ANTICIPATED
Pederson, 44, came to Pitt having learned the ropes of athletic administration by rising through the ranks as a recruiting coordinator, a director of football operations and an associate athletic director at places such as Ohio State, Tennessee and Nebraska.
He knew Pitt's program lagged behind those institutions when he was announced as Oval Jaynes' successor Oct. 28, 1996. But Pederson had no idea how far behind until immersing himself into the chaos that was Pitt athletics at the time.
Addressing the matters of under-funded programs and under-achieving teams was one thing. Convincing the parties involved that a renaissance was even possible was another.
"My biggest concern probably two months in was that nobody thought we could win, nobody believed we could win internally," Pederson said. "The first thing I had to do was change our internal attitude.
"Organizations rot from the inside out, not the outside in. We had to change the psyche and belief and attitudes internally before we could convince anybody on the outside. And then I got into the stage where I went out publicly to speak and be around and so forth, and I got to the point where I thought maybe our fans had lost hope. And that was the scariest part of all. I thought, 'Boy, if our fans have lost hope we don't have a chance.'"
To change the mindset of the Panthers' athletic staff, Pederson issued an edict: "Anybody who doesn't believe Pitt can win and will win will not be around very long."
Not long thereafter, in April of 1997, Pederson eliminated seven positions within the athletic department and allowed another long-time staff member to retire.
The reorganization and the building of an "infrastructure" Pederson considered critical to Pitt's long-term success was well under way.
"The people who weren't stuck in a rut believed," said Ron Wahl, who was Pitt's sports information director at the time and currently is the Steelers' communications coordinator. "There were other people there, probably among (Pederson's) casualties, that didn't believe it. They were probably just putting in their hours and catching a paycheck."
That changed in a hurry.
As it did, Pederson insisted to anyone who would listen that Pitt was on its way back. He also went about the process of making a lot of "hard decisions, decisions that we didn't necessarily know that people were going to understand."
The elimination of jobs was one such decision, but far from the only high profile, high-impact change Pederson enacted.
Most prominent among those are Pederson's decisions to:
"Certainly changing the stadium was the major issue," Pederson said.
Harris — who had been hired by Pederson, not on the recommendation of a search committee after John Majors resigned — provided an invaluable jolt of credibility and inspiration amid the controversy by leading his first Pitt football team to a 6-5 finish and a berth in the Liberty Bowl in 1997. The highlight was a Thursday night upset of Miami broadcast to the nation by ESPN almost 11 months after Pederson's nightmare experience with the empty stadium against BC.
"We had about 40,000 and the place erupted and I said at that point 'nobody's lost hope,'" Pederson said. "I was wrong; they hadn't lost hope, they just needed a little something to get them to believe that we could do it again.
"I remember after we beat Virginia Tech (two months after the Miami game), we were 5-5 and on our way to play West Virginia (with a bowl game at stake). I looked at Tami, my wife, and said, 'Have you ever seen people so excited to win five games in your life?' I was spoiled. I had come from Nebraska and Ohio State and Tennessee. I said, 'These people are the greatest. They have stuck with this team and they absolutely want to win and are behind us. All we have to do is show them we have a plan and we're going to get it done and they're going to be fine.'
"That was really when I knew we were OK."
Whenever he's asked, Pederson will insist the outlook at Pitt is much brighter than that, no matter the circumstances. The tone he sets in that regard cannot be silenced.
He's called Howland the "best (basketball) coach in the country." Pederson also said the exact same thing about Howland's predecessor, Ralph Willard.
The rhetoric knows no bounds.
Still, there's a method to such excess.
"If I don't believe that, then I need to make a change," Pederson said. "If I don't believe that, then we have big problems.
"Sometimes I've felt like I was pounding my head against the wall a little bit because everybody was telling me 'no, no, no.' But no matter what they tell us, we still believe."
THE 'GENIUS' OF LEADERSHIP
Part of Pederson is as corny as North Platte, Neb., the heartland in which he was raised. He's seemingly never without the "gee wiz" smile that's come to be recognized as his most identifying characteristic. And he speaks at times in slogans and sayings — "You can't set a new course doing the same, old thing," and "I believe when you believe good things will happen they will," are two of Pederson's favorites.
But those who know him insist this is not a man who should be under-estimated.
"He's a driven guy. That brain is going 24 hours a day," said Bill Hillgrove, the longtime radio voice of Panthers football and basketball. "To get him to back out of that mode is next to impossible. This is not a guy who will say, 'Let's go have a beer,' because he's not about to waste time like that.
"He has vision and an ability to look beyond the obvious. People who achieve great things can see something that's five years down the road taking shape already, and that's Steve. I haven't met too many geniuses in my life, but he's probably one."
Buffalo Bills general manager Tom Donahoe, the former director of football operations for the Steelers who worked closely with Pederson to make the Heinz Field/South Side cooperative efforts a reality, is likewise impressed.
"I think Steve is one of the top sports administrators in the country," Donahoe said. "He's also one of the top individuals I've ever been associated with. He's a first-class person, he's creative, he has a lot of innovative ideas and he doesn't care what the critics say. If he believes it's right, he has the courage to do it.
"You can't get a better person than Steve Pederson."
Donahoe added that he still relies on Pederson for advice in areas such as marketing and merchandising.
"I call Steve up to bounce things off him, just to get his input," Donahoe said. "He's a leader, a decision maker, somebody who isn't afraid to go against what the masses feel if he has a good feeling that something will work. Pitt couldn't be in better hands."
Steelers vice president and general counsel Art Rooney II calls Pederson "a very astute guy, one of those people that understands what he needs to accomplish and how to go about it. He has a can-do attitude, a whatever-it-takes attitude. I think that's why he's successful."
Seemingly every challenge Pederson has faced at Pitt has been met with success. He's headed off suitors for Harris and Howland with contract extensions (Pederson also has extended the contract of women's basketball coach Traci Waites). He's ruffled the feathers of those who donate to the athletic program — significantly, some say — and at the same time still managed to step up Pitt's fund-raising efforts (from about $900,000 annually when he arrived to a little over $2.1 million last year, Pederson said). He's given the program a new look, a new image, new facilities, and a new outlook.
So what does Pederson do for an encore?
What can he do with his new venues and the renewed enthusiasm that's been generated for Pitt athletics?
"Fill them and succeed," Pederson said.
Such an undertaking appeared all but impossible to everyone but Pederson some five-and-a-half years ago.
Pitt's come far enough since then that it suddenly seems within reach.
