Pat Narduzzi talked all about recruiting after Pitt's practice on Thursday. Here's the full rundown of what he said.
Narduzzi: Number 12 today. We’ve got one more week left. We’ve got next Tuesday in pads, Thursday in spiders and scrimmage on Saturday. I really like where we are after 12. This was a tough practice today. It was probably three live periods, physical. We had a lot of recruits here and the recruits were like, ‘Coach, that was cranked up.’
We’ve probably had more offered players here this spring than I’ve seen since I got here. I mean, we’ve surpassed everything as far as the numbers go, as far as just guys that we’ve offered and guys that have been here. It’s always a good sign when they’re here and they keep coming back and love watching our practices.
I was going to actually ask you about that. You obviously can’t get into specifics, but this spring seems like one of your most successful springs in terms of visitors, commitments. Why do you feel like it’s rolling right now?
Narduzzi: You know, I don’t know. It’s hard to say. I was driving in thinking about it like, ‘God, all these guys I have to meet with this afternoon.’ The list goes on.
Is it 20 wins in two seasons? Is it Pro Day? Is it draft? I don’t know what it is. But I keep telling our coaches, ‘Great job getting them on campus.’ Because if we get them here unofficially, we’ve got a heck of a lot better chance to get them to commit someday. It’s hard to get those guys that didn’t take the time to pay their own way to come visit Pitt, and these guys - you know, we’ve got guys from Florida, Texas, all over the place, Illinois today. We’ve got guys from everywhere.
I was reading about Hugh Freeze’s proposal about, instead of having a spring game, you play an FCS team in-state. Would you like to play a game?
Narduzzi: I would love to do that. I think I said that a couple years ago. I’d like to do it for players’ health and safety. Saturday when we went, when I say we got 130 plays, you know, it’s 22 players going each snap. You’re risking an injury every snap you go out there, so when you talk 130 plays and you times that every one of those plays times - you know, 130 times 22, your chance of injury increases. But when you have just 11 guys out there going against another opponent in a spring scrimmage, I think spring games would be a lot more fun. Just make it a spring game. You get to go play a team on your spring game, set it up and do it.
At Michigan State, we did it in the summer. We’re not allowed to set it up, but in the summer, we used to get Grand Valley and Michigan State used to do seven-on-seven. As long as we didn’t set it up as coaches, the two quarterbacks got together and said, ‘Hey, come on over, hey next week, we’ll come to you.’ So we’ve done something like that. Kirk Cousins used to set that up with the quarterback over there. It’s good stuff.
Is there enough support among guys like you to do that?
Narduzzi: I have no idea. I haven’t thought about it. I’m just trying to see if we can get a first down, see if we can get off the field on third down and see if we can get someone to come to Pitt.
You know, they don’t listen to us anyway, so it doesn’t matter. They do stuff - some of the new recruiting rules out there, you know, unlimited calls and contacts now with underclassmen. There’s not enough time in the day to do all that stuff. Phone calls can now start, it sounds like, in June. Like we have nothing else to do in June; we’re going to be calling 2025 guys. I don’t know where we’re going to find the time.
Why do you think that process has sped up so much?
Narduzzi: The recruiting process? The reason that it’s speeding up and that they’re speeding it up even more, overall, the ACC coaches have had enough. I’m not a proponent of it, but we took a vote as ACC coaches and we said, ‘Just speed it up because everybody’s cheating anyway, they’re making the phone calls anyway.’ So now we might as well make it legal. If we’re going to do things the right way and they’re going to cheat, then what are you going to do?
We’re getting controversial here. I probably should shut up.
When it comes to - you talked about the flux of how many recruits you’ve had throughout the spring, how much of a factor do you think - now that we’re fully out of the pandemic and the restrictions are starting to be lifted and more people are maybe more adept to go travel, how much do you think that plays a factor into it?
Narduzzi: I hope it doesn’t, restrictions and all of that. Jerry hasn’t worn a mask for two years. I think we were out of the office for two weeks or two months maybe, maybe a month and a half, and then we were back. So that’s been long gone for us here down in the South Side. So I don’t know. I don’t think that had anything to do with it.
Just looking at the guys - and I know you’re not allowed to talk about them - but half of your verbal commitments are from the state of Pennsylvania. Do you feel like your program’s success in the last two or three years maybe gained a lot of attraction back in this state?
Narduzzi: I think so. I don’t think there’s any doubt about it. I think it gains attraction in-state and out-of-state as well. I think nationally people start to go, ‘Whoa, look what they’re doing,’ so I think there’s no question about that.
Is the administration putting more emphasis on recruiting since you’ve been here? Have they given you more resources since 2015?
Narduzzi: I don’t know what our recruiting budget is. We just do what we need to do, you know what I’m saying?
You don’t know what your budget is?
Narduzzi: No. I don’t look at the budget. We just keep doing what we need to do.
What if you go over?
Narduzzi: They have never said, ‘You went over; sorry, there’s no more visits this weekend.’ So when you talk about the administration, Heather has been awesome, the chancellor has been awesome and I’m sure we stay under budget but I’m conscious of what we’re doing and not wasting stuff, doing what we need to do. No one’s made a push, ‘Hey, let’s start recruiting harder.’ No, we’ve been doing whatever we need to do.
Does the increase of Pennsylvania guys, especially with your recent success, does that change any strategies as far as how you divvy up recruiting and the targets you guys go after?
Narduzzi: Not really, because we’ve got different coaches in different areas of the state of Pennsylvania, but then we position-recruit. So if it’s a linebacker and Manalac is not in the state of Pennsylvania, he’s now in the state of Pennsylvania. We’ll go from area recruiting to positional recruiting and then the coordinator’s obviously involved, so it’s multiple relationships with all of these kids. And again, success in the state of Pennsylvania all depends on how many there are. We’re not going to just take as many as we can from PA; they have to be good enough to help us win a championship.
How’s Frank been as far as recruiting help?
Narduzzi: Coach Cignetti? He’s been awesome. He’s been awesome. We’ve gotten some guys out of the East Coast, Massachusetts, he’s got Jersey ties. He’s been good.
Offensive coordinators aren’t always known as active recruiters. Sometimes they’ll just get quarterbacks and that’s it or they’ll just stand back, but it seems like Frank’s a little more active, a little more aggressive.
Narduzzi: Hopefully all of our guys are. Bates is aggressive. I think, to be a college football coach and be a coordinator, you better be active recruiting. Anybody that doesn’t have an active guy on the road recruiting - maybe we didn’t have one in the past - but we’ve got guys that are active on the road recruiting, and if they’re not, we’re going to push them and push them to be as active as we can get them, depending on their age and all of that stuff. But you have to be active.
When I was a coordinator for 11 years with Dantonio, we started off my first year in 2004 and he said, ‘I don’t want you to have an area; I just want you see all the top players.’ I said, ‘Coach, I need one area.’ So he gave me northeast Ohio, so I recruited northeast Ohio my first year at Cincinnati. The next year I had northeast Ohio and the whole state of New Jersey. Then I had the whole state of New Jersey and Maryland and D.C. Then I had the whole space coast and that was my recruiting area the last, whatever, probably eight years, nine years. You have to have a coordinator recruit.
Do you have to have dedicated people to watch the transfer portal for guys who aren’t necessarily in it yet, but you’re like, ‘Hey, we need to watch and see if certain guys might come available?’
Narduzzi: It’d be nice if you guys could keep an ear to the ground and find out who those guys are. But that’s almost like tampering, and that’s a violation. We’re not doing that. It’d be nice to have 10 guys and say, ‘Hey, call a high school coach and see if that guy’s interested.’ But that’s crazy. It’s not the right way to do things. When the portal opens up, when a kid goes in the portal, then we’ll know about him. We have resources to do that. But we don’t have a whole office attributed to, ‘Hey, let’s check out the FCS rosters, find out where the All-American kids are.’ There’s some people doing that, which is, it’s not good.
Do you have more employees working in recruiting than you had in 2015?
Narduzzi: And speaking of this recruiting, and talking about the question about spring games against an FCS opponent. Imagine if we played Duquesne and all of a sudden they have a great wideout, right? Think about that. All of a sudden we’re like, ‘Ooh, let’s take that guy after this game.’ That’s not good, you know? There’s some things that we’ve messed up in college football that would probably make a lot of coaches go, ‘We aren’t doing that. You’re not going to see my guys. I’d like to get through the year with them before you see them.’ Make sense?
Have you noticed the balance between recruiting and all of those preparation work you’re doing throughout the spring - have you noticed that become more skewed one way or the other or more evened out? How do you figure that balance comes into play?
Narduzzi: The balance is messing me up. That’s probably why I said it’s a long day. The first couple years, I’d have a couple recruits to talk to after practice and then get in and watch the tape with the offense and defense. But Graham is bugging the heck out of me; that’s why he’s hovering around to make sure he’s got me working, so he’s keeping me working, which means I don’t get to watch as much tape with the offense and defense and I have to do it on my own afterwards.
About a week and some change away from the spring game, what are you looking for from your team in these final few practices?
Narduzzi: Stay healthy. I feel good with where we are right now. We may change the spring game. I don’t know if there will be a draft or not. We’re thinking about changing it up a little bit, just to change it up. Obviously it will be on TV and all of that stuff, so we’re debating on that. But I want to stay healthy and continue to try to get better everyday. That’s what we do. The guys that need more work, get them work; the guys that don’t need as much work - you know, there really is one more good practice and then the spring game.
Did you say no scrimmage this Saturday?
Narduzzi: No scrimmage. It’s Easter. Happy Easter. We give the guys off. There’s a lot of people practicing around the country on Saturday. As a matter of fact, a couple guys said they have scrimmages they have to work this weekend. I’m like, ‘What? You have to work a scrimmage the Saturday before Easter?’ Our guys know they’re off today after this practice. They have Friday, Saturday, Sunday off and they’ll try to enjoy the holiday. Life’s too short.
