Has playing football off-campus helped Pitt Football?

https://johnbaranowski.wordpress.co...ing-football-off-campus-helped-pitt-football/

 

No, but if you know Oakland and the scarcity of available land
for such a proposition plus the costs involved in purchasing this
totally seems unworkable at this time.

 

I believe what team you field and what field the team plays on are completely independent of one another. Pitt has attracted some amazing WRs, RBs and various D players but decent QBs has perennially been the issue. Pickett had essentially one good year. Palko was good for Fitzgerald but after that, the list is so very weak. Similar results with Pitt hoops where they have a great campus arena but often bad teams.

 

My neighbor is a graduate of Monesson (sp) HS from the mod 60's. He played college football in div 2, coached HS for years, did scouting for some different colleges. We talked about the number of Div 1 players that came out of that HS in the 60's and 70's. and the huge number that came from Beaver Falls and other wpial schools, and western and central PA in general. At one time the region was a hotbed for HS athletes, not that HS is about 1/10 the size it was 60 years ago. Pitt was formidable a long while ago, went dormant, then came to life again in 72 when Johnny Magors was hires, had about a decade (more or less) of national prominence, in the decade since has had some years, but mostly struggles to even be mediocre.

My point in all that is the funding to build and maintain and build the facilities needed to draw the talent is massive, and the competition for local recruits, while it may help, you still have to deal with PSU, WVU, Maryland and other Div 1 programs. It may indeed help, but the transfer portal and NIL currently taking place I just do not think the money is there to entice, let alone keep top flight talent, wherever they play.

 

When Jaime Dixon left they dropped the ball with the hire, while I agree it has taken Jeff Capel longer than I thought.
I also think when Pitt moved to ACC that hurt the program, they could recruit big east players, acc players is a harder sell,
Capel is slowly recruiting capable players they were in the tournament last year, still need to be better. Transfer portal very important for a team like Pitt.

 

And then you get OSU, Bama, Notre Dame and you have problems, they come in and have played in important games for last 20 years.
Tough for us to compete for top Local talent, we get some but not enough. I agree the Western Pa area doesn't seem to be producing
division 1 football/basketball talent like they did from 1970- 2000. football doesn't seem that important to local kids anymore? PSU cleaned up in the state again this past year. Narduzzi gets 2-3 star PSU gets the 4-5 star players.

 

Now the hotspots are Fl, TX, other areas of the south. Of course you can find talent anywhere, but with the decades, populations has shifted. With that in mind it brings to mind Joe PA, He had some very good teams late 60's/early 70's but just could not get to the top. They scheduled a 2 game series with Alabama to get exposure in that neck of the woods and one thing he noticed was the team speed Alabama had, and said to get to the top they had to move in that direction.

In another example, Johnny Magors who had come to Pitt from Iowa (forget), but was from the south recruited that area as well. They were looking at tape of a forgotten RB (who came to Pitt), but noticed a guy from the other school always being in the backfield, that guy was Hugh Green. Yes indeed Pitt had some talent.

 

They had some of the best college talent ever assembled, then Jackie Sherrill left for A&M and Johnny left for Tenn. We were stuck with Foge