Collier: Wannstedt better prepared for coaching Panthers
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Dave Wannstedt quite simply has zero time for reflection, as coaching college football in a major conference in the 21st century takes every last synapse any brain can fire outside of the standard sleep cycles.
Only this week, trying to reinforce the tenets of personal responsibility in one of his younger Pitt Panthers, Wannstedt chastised the player for not calling him at a prescribed time.
Why hadn't he called, Wannstedt wanted to know.
"I couldn't, coach," went the other end of this conversation. "I left my cell phone somewhere."
So the head coach suggested the player might have used a pay phone, which he knows is the equivalent of asking a 19-year-old where you can buy a decent buggy whip.
But there's so much more to deal with than merely the inevitable technological fallout of 30-plus years in coaching. In that span, Wannstedt has coached Cowboys and Trojans, Hurricanes and Bears, Dolphins and Panthers, but it was a Big Cat, in fact, who struck the blow that ultimately led to the current gig coaching big cats.
"Big Cat Williams," he remembered one day this week. "He got me with a head slap the night before an exhibition game in Miami. We were running a lot of pass protection drills. Woke up with a lump on my neck the size of an egg."
A 15th-round draft pick out of Pitt by the Green Bay Packers that summer, Wannstedt absorbed the Big Cat Big Slap that sent him out of the NFL and into coaching Aug. 29, 1974.
"It was funny; I had read all of Jerry Kramer's books about the NFL and the Packers, and he used to talk about going to St. Mary's Hospital up there and about this Dr. Brendan or Brennan, say it was Brennan," Wannstedt said. "Kramer wrote that no matter what it was, Brennan would pretty much just sew it up and send you back out there.
"So here I am suddenly at St. Mary's and this guy comes in and says, 'Hi Dave, I'm Dr. Brennan.' "
The Packers wound up cutting Wannstedt, and his playing options seemed reduced to Canada when Johnny Majors offered him a spot on Pitt's staff just about the time the Steelers were winning Super Bowls.
What comes around comes around.
"That's something we sell to our recruits," he said, dispelling the notion that the team Pitt shares a South Side building with is merely a perpetual obstacle to any Panthers inroad regarding attention and publicity. "We show them pictures of the Super Bowl parade. We sell the mentality of the people here. It was named the No. 1 football city by USA Today."
When Wannstedt returned to Pitt before last season, he had been out of college coaching for 16 years, out of Pittsburgh for 26, and relearning both instantaneously represented a challenge with which he essentially went 1 for 2.
"The easiest things were recruiting and connecting with the community," he said, "although I might not have been able to say that had I come from Oregon or Texas. But I had a hard time adjusting to the restrictions.
"Football hours for these guys are only 20. Twenty hours a week. I remember with the Dolphins, Zach Thomas would spend 20 hours in a day sometimes getting ready for a game. As a coach, you have so many things pulling on you in college. I could spend a month doing nothing but fund-raising. A month doing nothing but recruiting.
"But this year, I feel a lot better about what I need to spend time on."
Even if he didn't, within two weeks, it'll be pretty clear.
He's still coaching a running offense without a back who gained even 450 yards. LaRod Stephens-Howling, then a true freshman, led Wannstedt's first team with 434, 101 of them against 1-10 Syracuse. Pitt's top returning receiver, for that matter, Derek Kinder, accounted for but 374 yards.
"I makes no difference what I know, and it's the same with [senior quarterback] Tyler [Palko]; it makes no difference what he knows because it will all come down to what's going on around him," Wannstedt said. "We fell into a trap last year where at times we were running the ball just to keep from going backwards."
Pitt's offensive line provided so little protection for Palko and so few running lanes for its undistinguished backs that it was hard to tell sometimes what the head coach wanted. With that offensive line returning essentially intact, you might not see a robust improvement, but at least the head coach will know better how to go about getting it.
You should probably hope they don't face too many defenders in the mold of Clarence "Big Cat" Williams.
Matt Freed, Post-GazetteNow that he's been through one year as a college coach, Dave Wannstedt says he has a better grip on what it means to be one.
First Published July 30, 2006 12:00 am
