Narduzzi and Lyke discuss the contract extension

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Pat Narduzzi and Pitt Athletic Director Heather Lyke met the media Friday to discuss Narduzzi’s contract extension, and here’s the full rundown of what they said.

Lyke: Welcome everybody. We’re really glad to have you here and I’m honored to be here today with our head football coach, Pat Narduzzi. We’re teammates, you know, and I have profound respect for him. He’s a leader and he’s a difference-maker, and as our football coach, we’re thrilled to have him here.

Speaking of leaders, I’ll just say that neither Coach nor I would be here today without the leadership of our Chancellor, Pat Gallagher. His support and appreciation for how athletics can unite our University and engage our community is unwavering. We’re grateful for the alignment of leadership we have with our Chancellor and our Board of Trustees. So I want to thank Chancellor Gallagher and our Board for the decisions they have made to put us in position to succeed.

I first met Coach on March 13 during my interview process. For many years, I had watched Coach from the other side of the sideline, and I knew his background and I knew his style, but I really had never met him personally and gotten to know him. I was fortunate to do that during the interview process and start to build a relationship. I’ll just say that Coach Narduzzi is, obviously, incredibly competent, incredibly genuine; I don’t know that there’s a stronger word to describe him as far as his genuineness. He’s detail-oriented, he loves to work hard and he has great expectations. I believe that he coaches for all the right reasons. The relationships he has with his student-athletes and the impact he can have on their lives is why he does what he does, and for an athletic director, there’s no better person that I would want to be working side-by-side with.

We believe that together we can build a team, a football program that competes for ACC championships and national championships.

We believe that decisions determine destiny. And the decision we’re discussing today is the decision to enter into a long-term agreement with Coach Narduzzi. And in addition, a significant investment will be made into our football program, an investment that not only helps determine our destiny but establishes Pitt as a destination.

We want great leadership here. We want continuity of great leadership. We want difference-makers here at Pitt. And when you become a destination place, success can be sustained.

I’ll just say that when you study successful organizations and teams and universities, it starts with finding difference-makers who are the leaders of those organizations and maintaining continuity of the leadership. In our own city, obviously, the Steelers are a great example of that: in 48 years, they’ve had three head coaches. In those same 48 years, we’ve had 12.

Coach Narduzzi is a difference-maker, he’s the perfect fit for Pitt. His confidence and belief is often contagious. And every once in a while he’ll profess that in a halftime interview, which isn’t a bad thing. But you have to believe before it’s going to happen. I think that’s what we both share in common is the belief that we can build it here at Pitt. So I want to thank Coach Narduzzi for leading and building our football program, and we will surround him with the absolute best assistant coaches and the most talented athletic department staff possible - people who are striving to make this place better every day and want to compete at the highest level.

Coach Narduzzi and his family, Donna and his kids, all belong in Pittsburgh, and we are thrilled to have him here coaching our team for the long term.

Narduzzi: Thanks Heather. It’s a humbling opportunity that Heather, the Chancellor have given me and my family, and really the University of Pittsburgh and this Pitt football team. I was obviously thrilled so I thank everybody. I thank Donna up there, Donna Sanft - you had something to do with it a long time ago bringing me here.

I said this a long time ago: it starts with leadership. Ever since Heather got here - obviously I was involved in the interview process, as she’s talked about - she’s been incredible. This conversation - I don’t know if she mentioned it in the past - but it really happened before the season. She said, ‘Hey, after the season, we’re redoing this whole deal.’ It started back then. And then, you talk about a short period of time where, in New York City on Monday, we were able to ink it up and emails - incredible how fast it happened, but it didn’t take long to get the deal done. Because I want to be here. I want to be at Pittsburgh. I know there’s been issues in the past, but it’s all about the people, and I love the Chancellor, I love the AD, and when you’re happy where you are and you’re happy with the people you’re involved with and you can walk in the office every day, pick up the phone and call these people, text message back and forth, that means everything.

That’s what it’s all about. It’s not about the money, the years; it’s about the people you’re working with. So it was easy to make a deal, a long-term deal at Pitt. I couldn’t be more excited.

Heather, Pat mentioned that you were going in this direction before the season started. What were your expectations going into this season and what did you expect from the program this year?
Lyke: To continue to get better, in every aspect of the program. The reality is, you have to evaluate the team every year. We had a young team and I knew that they had to rebuild in a number of ways. We had a couple questionable key positions that I knew Coach was going to work through. But you have to trust your coaches; that’s their job. I’m here to provide them the resources and the tools necessary to have success, and then you entrust that program into your head coach.

What I knew was, he was a guy that - full of integrity, here coaching for the right reasons and wanting to be here. So stability is something that we have never had at Pitt with the right people, so why wouldn’t you consider that? That’s really the thought process I had early on.

Heather, the program has had a lot of head coaches since 2010; why do you feel stability at the top, given the current situation, is so important?
Lyke: I think you look at successful organizations and successful teams, and when you have the right people in place - I mean, you win with people. Facilities - football fields are all 100 yards long. The difference when you talk to recruits and you evaluate programs is the people in them. Who do our recruits want to be coached by every day and who are they going to live and learn by every day? It starts at the top.

As far as the contract is concerned, why seven years?
Lyke: It’s long enough to make a significant commitment, and I think Coach has earned it and his staff has earned it. We want to send a strong message that we want long-term commitment and continuity. Transition is really difficult. The football operation - any team is complex, but football is highly complex; there’s a lot of moving parts. So continuity is important to us.

Narduzzi: Lucky number seven. How about that? Understand that it was four years already, so I’m shocked and, like I said, honored. It was already four so they added three to it. It wasn’t like I felt unstable. There has been support from the top since I got here and it just keeps getting better every year. I think, when you look at ‘Why?’ There’s belief from the top that we’re getting it done the right way. Do you see it in wins all the time? To go back to the question of what was the expectation for this season - my expectation was to win an ACC championship. I don’t care how young we were; we still went in with the same expectation. Whether you did it or not, a play here, a play there, an inch here, an inch there - the expectations were that. And they’re still that. I think we’ll be a lot better going forward.

How important was it for you, Heather, to capitalize on the timing of the victory over Miami? And also to give Pat that kind of ammunition with the extension and long-term security for recruiting sake?
Lyke: I think timing was important, but we were going to do this regardless of the outcome of the Miami game and regardless of whether we won an ACC championship. There’s no question that the expectations are not going to change. It was just fortuitous that, obviously, that we won and there’s a lot of positive momentum. I think if you were at that game, you felt it and you saw it and you witnessed it, and it’s obviously an incredibly bright future. So I think it timed up really nicely.

Pat, how do you feel this impacts recruiting?
Narduzzi: For the last couple years, I’ve sat in homes, and obviously for the first two years, two and a half years, it never got asked. It was asked, really, not after this whole deal was done but in the middle when emails were going back and forth, phone calls, text messages, phone calls from the Chancellor. I had a nice voicemail from the Chancellor that - I’m sitting in a home, I won’t tell you whose home, but the mom asked a question and I was able to say, ‘Let me let you listen to this voicemail; this might answer everything.’

Intelligent people are going to ask intelligent questions, and it was a great question. Even without that voicemail - that just made it even better - but even without that, you had four years that I’m going to see their son get through. So like I said, I’ve never had to worry about years. For most of my career, you worked off of one-year contracts. Years don’t matter to me. It’s nice that that support’s there and that faith is there, but to me, I’ve never worried about that and never will have to.

In these last couple days, have you noticed any kind of a difference when talking to recruits and what they perceive of you and the program as a whole?
Narduzzi: Not really. No, to be honest with you. You don’t see it when you’re talking with recruits. Recruits want to know how many carries they’re going to get, how many tackles, where are you going to play me, what color are your uniforms. Those types of things.

Pitt has only had two coaches in its history last 10 years. Why should Pitt fans think this will be different?
Narduzzi: Do you want me to answer that?

Both of you, if you don’t mind.
Narduzzi: I’ll start off. I’ve never been looking for a job. I don’t have an agent; I have a lawyer. So I’m not a guy that goes out looking for jobs. Jerry, you’ve got those big eyes like you don’t believe me. You’re shocked.

I believe everything you say.
Narduzzi: That’s good. I like that. Sometimes I lie because I have to; I can’t tell you about the depth chart until Saturday.

But I’ve not been a guy that looks for jobs. I like stability. I don’t like moving around. I walk into so many high schools and ask coaches how they like their jobs and all that. They’ve got a great thing going in high schools. Those high school coaches always want to jump up to the next level; it’s like, ‘You guys don’t understand how good you have it sitting in high schools, having stability; maybe you’re not the coach next year but you’re still a teacher there.’

That means a lot to me. With four kids and my youngest being a tenth-grader, it’s important to her. If you asked her if she wanted to move, she’d tell you no. I can promise you that. She’s happy up in North Allegheny.

Loyalty means a lot to me and loyalty is a two-way street: loyalty to the University of Pittsburgh and Pittsburgh being loyalty to me. That’s what it comes down to. 10 years would be a dream to be here and I intend to be here for 10 years. I don’t have the desire to go anywhere else.

What do you want to do? I want to build this program. If you walk around this building from three years ago when I sat on this side at a press conference and you guys are sitting in chairs and this is a flat room and what this place looked like - to me, I love to build, and we’re building a championship university here and we expect to win them. This whole building has changed and that’s fun; we have our mark on it. Heather’s putting her mark on the future with all the things she’s talking about doing. There are great things happening in Pittsburgh and I’m excited about it. That’s what gets me going.

Lyke: I would just echo. Obviously, the belief in the people and the opportunity to make an impact and a difference here is why - there’s just a confidence that you know that you have the right leader and he’s going to build it the right way and you’re doing it together. You strategize on things and you plan on things and you build a vision, and we’re going to make it happen.

You said this involves also increased investment in the football program. What were some of the changes that you saw as someone who came in from outside the program and you thought needed investment, and what were some of the things that Pat asked for?
Lyke: The first thing that he wants is to take care of his assistant coaches. It’s not about Coach, and that’s indicative of his personality and who he is. So we obviously want to invest in our assistant coaching pool, which we have. And if a coach doesn’t have a plan and a wish list and a, ‘Here are the things we can do that make us better, here are the things that cost money, here are the things that don’t cost money’ - if they don’t have their thoughts put together, then I’m concerned. Coach has a very detailed plan.

So we’ve gone through that. We’ve identified some additional facility projects to do here, ways that, again, we want to put our fingerprints and make an impact here on our student-athletes’ lives. I say a lot, but the decisions we make impact the lives of other people’s kids. That’s how we approach this: how do we better impact our student-athletes’ lives while they’re here? Whether it’s a training facility, an expansion of the weight room, those types of things to enhance the program. But we’ve got a list and we’re going to knock it out.

Narduzzi: We have a list and it doesn’t have to be in a contract. Those lists - it’s a trust thing that we’re working to get better. Whether it happens in six months, in two years, whatever it is, there’s a trust. It’s not like, ‘Hey let’s make a deal, if you do this, we’ll sign this.’ It works like that in some places, but it gets done when it gets done. Whatever they can do, we’ll take it and run.

She mentioned a couple things; what do you see as the next project?
Narduzzi: I don’t even know if we’d get into it. We’ll see when we get there. I don’t want to give you a project and then you say, ‘Hey, what happened here?’ We’ve got ideas and she mentioned one of them: we want to expand the weight room. We’ll leave it right at that. But there are - put it this way: I think this facility’s incredible. The size of it, I think is bigger than maybe every facility I’ve been in. The quality of it is the same way.

When we bring kids on campus for these recruiting weekends, they love it. The partnership we have with the Pittsburgh Steelers is incredible. This whole facility is top-notch. When you walk up and down, every year, there’s something changing and we’re going to continue to change and make things better, not only for recruiting purposes for the student-athletes.

On the topic of increased investments, Heather, you said it was increased investment in Pat as well as the program; are you guys going to release the full terms of the contract? And for Pat, with that increased investment, do you plan on making any staff changes this offseason?
Narduzzi: You know what? Staff changes inevitably happen. And I think with the tenth coach, you’re going to see a lot of stuff happen across the country. Everybody’s going to add another coach. So, people are going to be stealing from everybody, so I’m just going to stay patient, see what happens, see who gets stolen, because it’s going to happen. We’ll just kind of wait around and see what happens in that respect.

Lyke: And we don’t intend to release any further details about Coach’s contract.

Pat, as far as you are concerned, your staff will remain intact?
Narduzzi: No doubt about it. No one’s left yet.

Heather, when you look at what’s going around the country in the coaching carousel, how important was it to lock up Pat long-term in the sense of making sure that he wasn’t one of the dominoes involved in all of this?
Lyke: Obviously there’s a lot of volatility and transition in the profession, but it was more about, what’s best for Pitt? As we discussed, early on I knew that this was an important commitment that we needed to enhance and improve and make a statement well before a lot of the transition happened. I think that was just the nature of the business but it really didn’t impact what we were going to do all along.

I know you said you wouldn’t release the financial details of the contract, but relatively speaking, where among ACC schools does this stack up?
Lyke: I’ll just say it’s better than it was, right? It’s very competitive.

Narduzzi: Which, again, it is very competitive, and it only matters if it makes the head coach happy. Wherever that is. This is a big-time place here. We’re in the ACC conference. We’re competing. That’s probably all you need to know.

After you got your extension two years ago, you said you were surprised it came so soon; were you surprised this time around?
Narduzzi: I’m always surprised, because I’m just a football coach, you know? I want to go coach, recruit, have relationships with our players. I’m always surprised and Heather will tell you I was surprised; I was like, really? She was talking with the Chancellor, going back and forth, and I’m like, ‘Come on, now, that’s too much.’ It’s just like, I just want to coach football. I’m not into all that stuff. I’m not into a new job, I’m not into a raise; I just want to coach our football team and win a championship.

So I’m always surprised when things like that happen.

Heather, you beat the number-two team in the country two years in a row; even though Pat says he’s not looking for another job, sometimes other schools are looking for a coach. Did anybody inquire about Pat? Was there anybody that expedited this whole thing and made you say, ‘Let’s get this done’?
Lyke: No.

Narduzzi: No. There you go. That’s two nos.

As your program approaches 2024, what’s your vision of the program from a national standpoint?
Narduzzi: The vision is to win an ACC championship. Is that what you want to hear me say again? That’s the vision. I look in our Coastal Division, the champions we’ve had: this year it’s Miami, last year it’s Virginia Tech, the year before it’s North Carolina, before that it’s Georgia Tech, it’s Duke. It hasn’t been the same team, okay? Guess what: there’s only so many teams in the division. It’s going to come around and we’re going to win a championship.

I like the pieces we have coming back and we’re going to compete. The first two years, we were only a game away from really being in that conference championship game, and that’s where we want to go. We want to win an ACC championship. If you get in the ACC championship game, you’ve got a chance to move on and be in the final four. You look at those nine national championship crystal balls out there, that’s where we want to go. We want to put a tenth one out there. That’s the goal. And I don’t think anybody would come here if we didn’t have that goal.

With where we are in this division - and I think the Coastal is probably the most competitive division in college football from top to bottom, but it’s not as dominant as the Atlantic Division where it’s going to be Florida State or Clemson every year. That’s why I love this job, that’s why I think we can be in that conversation and we have the ability to be in that conference championship game. And then I hope it’s the number-two team in the country that we face in there, because we’re probably going to beat them, right? There you go.