Immediate help

Throughout the summer, Taysir Mack saw other transfers in FBS receiving immediate eligibility from the NCAA and, inevitably, he wondered why he hadn’t received the same waiver.

On Thursday, Mack got it.

Calling it a “great day,” Pitt head coach Pat Narduzzi announced on Friday that Mack will be eligible to play for the Panthers in 2018. He joined Pitt as a transfer from Indiana this offseason and will be a redshirt sophomore in the fall.

“At 3:10 yesterday I got just one of the best text messages you can get in a year that Taysir is immediately eligible to play for the University of Pittsburgh,” Narduzzi said before practice on Friday. “It’s a great thing. Last night I told our football team and they erupted a little bit, a little enthusiasm in the team room, so we had a little action going on.”

After Mack was one of the standouts in spring camp for Pitt, the consensus seemed to be that he was not going to receive a waiver from the NCAA. But as the governing body granted immediate eligibility to multiple players in similar situations over the summer, Mack’s optimism grew.

“Every time I saw someone was eligible, I would text Coach like, ‘Alright cool, this is looking good for us.’ He kept telling me, ‘This is good news, this is good news, more people getting eligible.’ So I was like, ‘Alright, just be patient, stay down, relax, it’s going to happen.’ And it did.”

Mack has provided a boost to Pitt’s receiving corps since he arrived on campus in January. In 2017, he played in 12 games for Indiana and finished on a high note, catching seven passes for 132 yards and a touchdown in the season finale against Purdue.

Throughout spring camp, he was regularly mentioned by the coaches as one of the top playmakers at receiver, including the Blue-Gold Game when he led all players with 62 receiving yards on three catches.

“We’re not going to anoint anybody, any starting jobs; he’s got a lot of work to do,” Narduzzi said. “It just gives us another weapon. It makes us a little bit different. If you go back to spring ball and look at what he was there, he was really our go-to guy, so we expect to get to that in the next couple weeks.”

Mack’s fate wasn’t decided until Thursday, but the Pitt coaches made sure to keep him involved. He worked with quarterbacks Kenny Pickett and Ricky Town through the summer, and while he wasn’t necessarily one of the top targets in the first two weeks of camp, Narduzzi is confident that “he’ll be ready” for an increased role in the offense.

“I just wanted to be more mentally sharp for the game. I was always told, ‘Be ready so you don’t have to get ready when the opportunity comes,’” Mack said of his mindset entering training camp.

“Something that they always remind me everyday: ‘All you need is a little bit of hope.’ That’s why I carried it over to my work ethic. I have a bunch of friends around me, a bunch of coaches around me that support me, day in and day out; regardless if I could play or not, they were with me as a person and they cared for me individually. That took me a long way.”

Narduzzi made a point of giving credit to Pitt senior associate athletic director for compliance and sport services Dustin Gray and associate athletic director for football administration Chris LaSala for leading the work on Mack’s waiver. He also said that Indiana head coach Tom Allen played a key role in the process.

“[Allen] really helped out with the situation. When you talk about caring for kids, my hat goes off to that guy for doing the right thing and helping out.

“We’re not going to get into specifics about why, what - it doesn’t matter. Nothing matters. The important thing is that he’s able to play right now and we’re excited. It gives us one more extra weapon to help us get it done.”