Dennis Franchione knows what it's like to become the face of a proud college football program blushing because of a coaching scandal, so he can sympathize with whoever signs on to be Pitt's next coach.
Now an ESPN Radio college football analyst, Franchione walked into a firestorm at Alabama in 2001 when he replaced Mike DuBose amid recruiting violations that brought NCAA sanctions of a two-year bowl ban, a loss of 21 scholarships over three years and five years of probation.
Despite Dave Wannstedt resigning under pressure and his successor, Mike Haywood, getting fired Saturday after an arrest for domestic battery, Franchione believes Pitt still has a shot at finding a quality candidate.
"Most people are going to look at this and say, 'Pitt made a mistake.' I don't think coaches are going to shy away at all," Franchione said. "The biggest problem you've got to deal with is you only have two or three weeks to go out and recruit. I'm sure they lost some of their recruits, but the right guy can come in and get some of those back.
"People right now want a face and a name, an accountable guy that they can believe in to wrap their arms around and love right now. The people who love Pitt Panther football are going to be very anxious until there's a face of the program again. Then you can start to put that behind you."
Other college football and recruiting analysts aren't as optimistic.
From the disingenuous description of Wannstedt's decision to resign by athletic director Steve Pederson to the inconceivable incarceration of Haywood on New Year's Eve, Pitt has suffered one public setback after another. And that could convince attractive candidates to reconsider.
"There's a lot of history and a lot of talent on hand, but my sense is that people aren't lining up to interview for it," SI.com national college football writer Stewart Mandel said of the Pitt job. "It's not Pitt of the Tony Dorsett era. I don't think it's going to be a huge name (who gets hired), and if it is you have to be concerned that it's somebody who will use it as a steppingstone.
"I'm sure circumstances are going to scare away some candidates. Some strange things happened there for the past three weeks. The Big East, to look at its coaching ranks, six of the eight schools have changed coaches in the past two years. It's going to be hard to find somebody who views Pittsburgh as a destination job and not as a place where you go as a springboard and, as soon as you have success, you move onto something else."
Dennis Dodd of CBSSports.com believes Pitt's chances of hiring another current head coach have been severely damaged by the debacle and suggested Penn State defensive coordinator Tom Bradley as a possible solution.
"They're going to get an assistant," Dodd said, "and Tom Bradley is sitting there in their lap."
Rivals.com national recruiting analyst Mike Farrell is amazed at how quickly Pitt's recruiting class dissolved after Wannstedt's firing and Haywood's hiring, and wonders whether the Panthers can recover.
"I've never seen anything like this -- never -- in more than a decade," Farrell said. "Usually it's very predictable: A coach leaves, a few recruits look around; the new coach comes in, saves a couple guys, and you have a huge spike the next year. There's a vision to sell, and you take it from there. This has gone downhill, continued to go downhill and hasn't stopped.
"They did it the wrong way. They got rid of Wannstedt, but they didn't keep any of his assistants. Everything they did to bungle this, if there was a 'Screw Up Your Program for Dummies' book, they would follow this step by step. It's going to take a long time to recover from this."
Additional Information:Pick a name
Names that have been connected to Pitt's coaching search:
Name/School/team Position
Teryl Austin/Florida/defensive coordinator
Tom Bradley/Penn State/defensive coordinator
Todd Graham/Tulsa/head coach
Brady Hoke/San Diego State/head coach
K.C. Keeler/Delaware/head coach
Marvin Lewis/Cincinnati Bengals/head coach
Kevin Sumlin/Houston/head coach
