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Tuesday, November 09, 1999
As the Pitt program struggles mightily to regain a place of prominence in college football, it's kind of fun to wonder how much further along the Panthers would be if former Chancellor J. Dennis O'Connor had not intervened in the workings of the athletic department earlier this decade.
After Paul Hackett had run the program into the ground with a three-year record of 12-21-1 and was fired after the 1992 season, there was a move within the athletic department to bring back Jackie Sherrill. Although Sherrill was in the employ of Mississippi State at the time, it was believed he might be receptive to such an offer.
But O'Connor wouldn't have it. There had been NCAA violations at Texas A&M while Sherrill ran the program, and that was too much baggage for O'Connor. No matter that Sherrill had run a spotless and fabulously successful program at Pitt from 1977 through 1981 while compiling a 50-9-1 record. No matter that Sherrill had brought in a caliber of student-athletes that Pitt has not since seen and a caliber of football that few college programs ever had.
O'Connor wouldn't have him. Which became Mississippi State's monumental gain and Pitt's enormous loss.
While Johnny Majors, who was hired instead of Sherrill, and incumbent Walt Harris have had immense difficulty raising Pitt up from near the bottom of the lightweight Big East Conference, Sherrill has lifted Mississippi State off the bottom of the mighty Southeastern Conference. And not only to respectability, but also to the top.
Mississippi State is 8-0 and ranked eighth in the country. Pitt is 4-5 and unranked. Sherrill's rebuilding job was every bit as formidable as the one at Pitt. When Sherrill took over Mississippi State in 1991, the Bulldogs were as bad as Pitt was when Majors took over in 1993. They had won only four conference games in the previous four seasons.
In Sherrill's first season they won four SEC games. In nine seasons, Sherrill has six winning records. He has won seven games three times and eight games three times. Pitt has never won more than six games this decade, and then only twice, and has had only one winning season.
Sherrill isn't pining away about missed opportunities. He's making a success at his third program in three decades and maintains that Mississippi State "will be my last coaching job."
Mississippi State has three games remaining, with Alabama (which it has defeated three years in a row), Arkansas and Mississippi. If it wins those three, it plays in the SEC title game, probably against Florida.
Sherrill is a master recruiter and evaluator of talent. His 1977 Pitt class has to rank as one of the greatest in college history. It included Hugh Green, Rickey Jackson, Mark May and Russ Grimm. He dominated Western Pennsylvania, virtually shutting out Penn State as such players as Dan Marino, Jimbo Covert, Bill Fralic and Dwight Collins matriculated at Pitt.
He also was not afraid to have the best on his coaching staff. He hired Jimmy Johnson as his defensive coordinator in 1977, gave Dave Wannstadt his first job, hired Bob Davie when was an unknown, pulled Joe Moore out of Upper St. Clair High, brought back Foge Fazio and hired Wally English to tutor Marino.
If O'Connor was worried about what Sherrill might have done to the Pitt program, he should have talked to some of the players. Tim Lewis, the highly respected defensive backfield coach of the Steelers, was a first-round draft choice out of Pitt in 1982. When a neck injury ended Lewis' NFL career, Sherrill hired him at Texas A&M.
"As a player, he was like a father to me," said Lewis, after the Steelers win over San Francisco Sunday. "As a coach, he gave me my start. I have unbelievably fond memories of Jackie, and I'm so proud of him and so happy for him that he's doing such a great job this year."
Asked about irregularities as Pitt, Lewis said, "What a joke that would be. I never knew of any improprieties. There was never anything illegal ever mentioned to me.
"As a freshman I told my recruiting coach Joe Moore that I wanted to go home for a visit. He told me to get a bus schedule and call my mother."
Sherrill won't talk about what might be ahead for the Bulldogs. "We don't do that," he said. "We're just trying to win our next football game."
That's something Jackie Sherrill is awfully good at doing.
What would it have been like if J. Dennis O'Connor had stayed out of the athletic department's business in 1992?
Bob Smizik can be reached at bsmizik@post-gazette.com.
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