Pat Narduzzi and Shawn Watson will stand on opposite sidelines Saturday at Acrisure Stadium, rival coaches for the three-plus hours it will take Pitt and Wofford to play their 2023 season opener.

But it won’t be the first time college football has brought them together. Once, it even tore them apart.

Watson was an assistant at Miami (Ohio) from 1990-93 when Narduzzi joined that staff as a graduate assistant and later as wide receivers coach.

“If you can imagine that,” Watson said over the phone last week from Spartanburg, S.C.

Then, there were those two seasons at Pitt (2017-18) when Watson replaced Matt Canada as Narduzzi’s offensive coordinator and helped him win the ACC Coastal Division in ’18 with sophomore quarterback Kenny Pickett.

“Pat and I, we go way, way back. He’s very dear to me,” Watson said. “We spent more time with each other, got him his first job as a wide receivers coach.”

And how did Narduzzi, the future star defensive coordinator, do coaching pass catchers in the early 1990s?

“He was pretty awesome because he was as passionate about that job, learning that job, doing that job and being the detailed coach, even though that wasn’t his arena,” Watson said. “I knew that he was going to be a great coach because he had great work ethic and he had a great relationship with the kids.”

But their reunion ended after the ’18 season when Narduzzi, who has had five offensive coordinators in nine seasons, fired Watson and hired Mark Whipple.

“Disappointed? Yeah. You totally get it,” Watson said. “You just put your big-boy pants on, you dust your behind off and get back up and get going. It’s just part of the business and part of the situation that you have to manage and handle. Just the way it was.

“We had some unique circumstances that folks on the outside don’t see. We had to manage through all that stuff. It took everybody in the building.”

He said claiming the Coastal championship at the end of the ’18 season became “one of the great experiences you are afforded in the business, to be honest with you.”

“It helps you today,” he added.

Watson went from Pitt to Georgia, where he was offensive quality control coach in 2019 before landing at Northern Iowa and, finally, Wofford.

In one of those twists of fate that sometimes surface in coaching:, Watson was named offensive coordinator at Wofford in 2022 under coach Josh Conklin. Watson and Conklin had been offensive and defensive coordinators at Pitt in 2017.

Then, when Conklin resigned Oct. 6 last season in the midst of an 0-5 start and 15-game losing streak, Watson was named the interim coach before guiding the Terriers to a 3-3 finish and accepting the top job.

Wofford hit rough times during the covid-19 pandemic — the 2020 season was postponed until the spring — but the Terriers won Southern Conference championships as recently as 2018 and 2019. Conklin was SoCon Coach of the Year in 2019.

Watson, 63, said Wofford is “transitioning” this season.

“We’re building our culture,” he said. “This is a place that has had great tradition. Reminds me a lot of Northwestern (where he previously coached). Academic excellence is very important. (It’s a) school that really embraces being really good at both. It really fit me for this time in my life.”

In four decades of coaching, Watson coached against a Narduzzi defense only in practice at Pitt in those two seasons.

“Pat, I’ve always felt, is one of the best ‘D’ coordinators in our business. That’s why he’s the head coach at Pitt,” Watson said. “The signature of his program is his defense over the years. They are uniquely different in a lot of different ways. Very detailed in their base defense. They are well-coached.”

How will he prepare his offense for Pitt?

“It’s going to be tight coverage. They can cause all kinds of havoc,” Watson said. “They can play out of their base look, and their havoc package out of it is one of the things you have to be prepared for as an opponent. It’s starts out looking like it’s base, and then it changes quickly.”

No matter what happens, Watson considers himself blessed to still be coaching into the third decade of the 21st century after starting his career as a graduate assistant at Southern Illinois, his alma mater, in 1982.

“For all of us, it’s the love of the game of football. To stay in it and to get through the highs and lows of the coaching profession, you have to really have a ‘why,’ ” he said. “That why can’t be about what’s on your shirt. It can’t be about what you’re getting paid. It has to be about the kids.”

Watson said he learned a long time ago the reason for coaching — the why — is what helps a person survive the profession.

“Any time you’re in the entertainment business, you sign on for (the potential for hard times),” he said. “But here’s the thing: That’s why your ‘why’ has got to be bigger than all that other stuff. If your why’s right, you keep your feet on the ground. God’s got a purpose for everything that happens. You take hard times, and you turn them into great times.

“If your ‘why’ is not right, you won’t last long in this business. It’s too hard.”

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