In the interest of clarity and honesty, let's start designating all college athletic positions with the adjective "interim."
Pitt was just getting over losing offensive coordinator Matt Canada to LSU when the news broke that athletic director Scott Barnes was being courted by Oregon State.
Canada was here for one season. LSU offered him the same job, but a lot more money.
Little wonder. Canada had Pitt's offense scoring like a pinball machine.
By comparison, Barnes is a veteran. He's been at Pitt for 20 months. That means mail is probably still catching up to him from his previous stop, Utah State.
Barnes issued a statement through Pitt indicating a report saying he had taken the Oregon State job was not true. He didn't say whether that might change soon.
Job hopping is an epidemic in college sports, and has been for a while. That's why schools write contracts with hefty buyout provisions. If they can't keep their people, at least they can bank some money when they leave.
Pitt has plenty of experience with this practice. Johnny Majors left the football program after the 1976 season because Tennessee called him home. His successor, Jackie Sherrill, took off in early 1982 after Texas A & M showed up with bushels of money.
Pitt has had two football coaches who would have been willing to stay as long as the university wanted them -- Foge Fazio and Dave Wannstedt. Of course, Pitt fired both of them.
It remains to be seen what happens with Barnes. The football program has been vexing for some time because those bright yellow seats at Heinz Field show up so well when nobody is in them.
Now there's a similar problem with basketball. There's suddenly a lot of elbow room at the Petersen Events Center.
Perhaps Barnes would be happy to bequeath those issues to someone else.
We'll see. A couple of conclusions can be drawn from the carousel, which is gearing up for another football off season ride:
1. When a hire is made, don't delete the file of other candidates. There's a good chance that list will be relevant again. Perhaps soon.
2. Don't ever believe that someone's stay at a college it etched in stone. Hey, the commitments are almost in invisible ink.
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--BACK TO SCHOOL
Sometimes you get lost in the details and miss the bigger picture, so here's a reminder.
The job hopping that goes in college athletics isn't promulgated by rogue sports leagues who are ethically bereft.
This all happens under the auspices of institutions of higher learning.
That ship may have gone off course a while ago, but these are still universities with a stated mission to function as educational institutions.
And don't you just love it when universities nickel-and-dime on issues like adjunct professors, yet spend almost $2 million for an offensive coordinator?
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--QUICK FIX
Theo Epstein is as smart a baseball executive as there is, having worked miracles with the Boston Red Sox and Chicago Cubs.
A new Sports Illustrated profile of him unnecessarily burnishes his reputation.
Epstein is given credit for thoroughly vetting reliever Aroldis Chapman before the Cubs acquired him for the New York Yankees in July. Chapman features a 100-mile per hour fastball and a reputation for unsavory behavior away from the field.
SI says that Epstein and owner Tom Ricketts insisted on a conference call with Chapman to determine if his behavior would meet the Cubs' standards.
Chapman helped the Cubs, but they acquired him purely as a temp, a hired gun to get them through the postseason. Chapman has since returned to the Yankees as a free agent.
His stay with the Cubs wasn't long enough to cause much trouble.
Interesting, though, that Chapman has since complained that the Cubs didn't use him properly.
Oh well. The $86 million he got from the Yankees should soothe his bruised feelings.
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