Despite long days, nights of game-planning, Pitt's Pat Narduzzi knows how to avoid burnout

When Saturday night football away from home doesn’t interfere — as it’s done three times this season — Pat Narduzzi likes to attend Mass on Sunday mornings.

Perhaps it’s a calming respite from the stress of the previous day’s Pitt game and the long work days ahead preparing for the next one.

Save him a seat in a pew the next two Sundays, though. Pitt’s games start at noon Saturday at Virginia and again at noon Nov. 19 when the Panthers return to Acrisure Stadium to meet Duke for their final home game.

Of course, the games compose only a fraction of a coach’s week, whether he’s running a team in the Power 5 or the NFL.

Pat Narduzzi, on the demands of coaching in the Power 5 pic.twitter.com/suG3f4l76i

— Jerry DiPaola (@JDiPaola_Trib) November 11, 2022

In his Thursday afternoon chat with reporters — a time when much of the prep for Virginia was finished — Narduzzi was asked about the amount of time he and his staff devote to the job during the season. In approximate time, it’s usually 12 to 16 hours, Sunday through Thursday. Friday nights are spent at a hotel, home or away.

He said coaches are in by 11 a.m. Sunday — some much earlier — meeting with players and beginning to prepare the gameplan. If they’re lucky, they’re home by 11 p.m., perhaps in time to catch the fourth quarter of the NFL night game.

“That’s your easy day,” he said.

Mondays and Tuesdays, coaches are — in Narduzzi’s words — “rolling heavily” from 6 a.m. to 11 p.m. They often get home a few hours earlier Wednesday.

“That’s an early day,” he said. “You don’t get home for dinner. We still eat dinner here for all those days. Wife doesn’t have to cook.”

The cafeteria in Pitt’s practice facility serves meals around the clock.

Narduzzi said he goes home on Wednesdays at the conclusion of his radio show.

“I get everything I need to get done at home,” he said. “Thursdays, we’re in at 6:30 again, and our coaches kind of have the afternoon off. I’ll be here until 5 or 6, but everybody can work on their own.

“We don’t get paid by the hour. We don’t punch clocks.”

He added that the outcome of the previous game doesn’t affect the amount of work that’s required.

“You spend what you need to, and we spend a lot of hours, period,” he said. “There are only so many hours in the day. You can’t spend much more than we do.”

Former Virginia coach Bronco Mendenhall abruptly resigned after last season after he said he developed a “sense of clarity that (he) needed to step back from college football.”

“I’ve been a head coach for 17 years in a row,” he said. “I was an assistant 11 before then. And I was a graduate assistant two years before then. And that’s 31 years straight of football. And my wife and I will have been married 25 years in March. All we’ve known together is the rhythm of a football season.”

Narduzzi competed with Mendenhall in the ACC and has known him for a long time. He said he didn’t know for sure why Mendenhall resigned, but he predicted he will be back.

“You know, Bronco’s a great guy, a great football coach, a great person,” Narduzzi said. “The profession’s changing a lot, I think. You’re seeing more and more people step away.

“Why are they stepping away? Obviously, there are a lot of pressures that go into the Power 5 coaches and what you deal with every day, the kids you deal with. You know, it’s a different ball game. There’s a lot of different issues going on in college sports, and I think that’s part of the reason. I think you’ll start to see more and more of it.

“Everybody’s got their reasons, and I could see Bronco getting back in it this year.”

How does Narduzzi prevent his own burnout?

“It’s just, you’re so used to it. You don’t get burned out,” he said.

The key, he said: He wakes up every morning at 4:30 and works out at home.

“That helps me, I think. Get a workout in and cruise in. Get ready to work. So if you guys are struggling with energy during the day, get a workout in the morning, and it fuels you for the rest of the day. To me, that’s the key.”

He said he sleeps about five or six hours every night.

Perhaps the workout helps avoid physical burnout. But what does he do about mental burnout?

“Nothing. Just coaching what you love to coach,” he said. “Getting around the kids, I think, is key. It’s not a stressful day. It really isn’t. We’ve got good kids.”