I'm not sure if Pittsburgh just didn't want anyone to realize that it had hired a new coach, but right around the opening kickoff of Monday night's BCS Championship Game, the university made it official: Todd Graham is the Panthers' new head coach, after four successful seasons at Tulsa. He'll be officially introduced at a 3:30 p.m. press conference this afternoon, and hopefully will make it at least three weeks on the job.The Golden Hurricane won 10 games, took at least a share of the Conference USA West title and went to a bowl game in three of Graham's four years as head coach, easily the best four-year run at Tulsa in 60 years, if not ever. The first two of those, though, were largely attributed to offensive coordinator Gus Malzahn, who oversaw the nation's No. 1 in 2007 and 2008 before moving on to greater fame, fortune and now championship glory at Auburn. Even without Malzahn, though, Graham's most recent team bounced back from a losing season in '09 with a return to the top 10 nationally in both total and scoring offense, an upset win at Notre Dame and a seven-game winning streak to close the year, capped by a 62-35 rout over heavily favored Hawaii in the Hawaii Bowl.
Graham's most glaring shortcoming at Tulsa: For a defensive coach, the Hurricane defense was routinely awful, topping out at 84th nationally in 2008; in 2010, it came in 111th. His teams were also 0-2 in the C-USA Championship Game, both with Malzahn in the fold in 2007-08.
Still, that's about as close as Pitt's come to a championship of any stripe itself in 35 years, unless you count the three-way tie atop the Big East that sent the Panthers on to a Fiesta Bowl beating in 2004. Dave Wannstedt took over a few weeks later, and 2010 was supposed to be the high point of his slow-developing tenure: The '09 team was only seconds away from a conference championship and ultimately turned in Pitt's first 10-win campaign since 1981, when Dan Marino finished fourth in Heisman voting. This team, with All-Americans Dion Lewis and Jonathan Baldwin back on offense, was poised to finish the job as the overwhelming preseason favorite to win the Big East.
Instead, it went down in flames in three high-profile non-conference games against Utah, Miami (a home blowout in front of a national audience on Thursday night) and Notre Dame, and blew a chance to take a wide open Big East race with losses to UConn (another Thursday night flop) and rival West Virginia. The icy win at Cincinnati in the regular season finale ensured the Panthers of another winning record at 7-5, and technically earned them a share of the conference title. But it couldn't cover up the obvious regression in a season that offered a golden opportunity to break back into the big time.
Graham won't even have the ingredients: Both Dion Lewis and Jonathan Baldwin officially declared for the draft on Monday, just before Graham was hired, despite mirroring the team's '10 decline with disappointing campaigns in their own right. All-Big East seniors Greg Romeus, Jabaal Sheard and Jason Pinkston are on their way out, too, leaving Graham to start essentially from scratch. Whatever comes of his efforts, at least he's going to own it.
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Matt Hinton is on Twitter: Follow him @DrSaturday.
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