Pitt's Pat Narduzzi looks at the changes in college football and declares, 'This is crazy'

The boy who used to wait eagerly at the kitchen table for his father to come home from practice so they could talk college football now wonders what’s happened to the game he loves.

That boy grew up to be Pitt coach Pat Narduzzi.

The 55-year-old son of a coach can barely believe his eyes when he sees players in his game — and other sports, too — getting paid for retweets under relaxed name, image and likeness rules. Meanwhile, others transfer at a maddening rate when things get difficult on campus.

“Some day in 50 years, people will say, ‘Who was coaching at Pitt? Or, who was coaching at Clemson when all this went down? Oh my God, this is crazy,’ ” Narduzzi said Wednesday, speaking to the Tribune-Review from Charlotte, N.C., where he was attending ACC Football Kickoff Media Day.

“It’s absolutely nuts what’s going on. My dad (Bill Narduzzi, who coached at Youngstown State) is rolling over, saying, ‘What’s going on here? What are they doing? How is this good for college football?’

“It’s good for our kids. There are opportunities that have arisen that will help them, but it’s been done and laid out carelessly.”

Narduzzi has taken advantage of the NCAA transfer portal that allows unhappy college athletes to become free agents, not too dissimilar to their professional colleagues. When Pitt reports to summer camp Aug. 5, there will be transfers atop the depth chart; Narduzzi needs them.

But he added, with a touch of pride, “Personally (at Pitt), we have not been hit hard (by the portal). We’ve actually been blessed.”

Narduzzi questions why the NCAA and its conferences have made the process of transferring so easy. No longer are players expected to sit out their first year at a new school. (Help defeat Pitt one year; join the Panthers the next.)

“When I grew up,” Narduzzi said, “my dad always talked about, ‘When you start something — you want to play soccer, you want to play football, you want to play basketball — you’re not going to quit.

“I was taught you quit in high school sports, English class, whatever it may be, you’re going to end up quitting on your wife, quitting on your kids and quitting on your job later on. I truly believe that.

“To me, it becomes a habit. What we’re doing to our young kids nowadays is teaching them how to quit.

“There’s a time to transfer and a time not to. You have to find out why a guy’s going to transfer before I really want a guy like that on our team. It’s just the easy way out.”

Narduzzi said it appears the NCAA got tired of ruling on so many contested transfers.

“The easy way out is just to say, ‘Let someone else deal with this. Just let it open up.’”

On the matter of name, image and likeness legislation, Narduzzi does not begrudge players making money off their reputations under recently enacted rules. But he proposes another idea.

“An easy way to get these kids paid without having all the chaos: Let’s increase cost of attendance by $10,000,” he said. “That’s their salary. Let’s pay these kids like they deserve. Because they do deserve it.

“Now, it’s going to be lopsided. There’s no legislation to it. It needs to be curtailed. It needs to be organized. It needs to be fair. One quarterback’s making $1 million and another quarterback’s making zero. The guy making a million better win a national championship and the guy making zero shouldn’t win many games. That’s not the fun of college football.”

Following his father’s directive articulated so many years ago at the family’s kitchen table in Youngstown, Ohio, Narduzzi wants to be part of a solution.

He’s only 55 and has a contract with Pitt through 2024. He loves coaching more than he hates what’s going on around it. He said he wants to coach “as long as I can continue to make an impact on these kids and it doesn’t get too chaotic.”

“I truly believe we’re going to ride the storm out and, hopefully, it gets better,” he said. “Hopefully, the powers to be are making the right decisions. Maybe we’re all wrong or we’re right. But let’s hope it takes it in the right direction, not the wrong direction. Because it can’t get worse. It must get better.”

Perhaps he was only half-kidding when he said, “Let’s just call it semi-pro.”