Editorial: Graham, football team had successful season

It’s been a tumultuous season for the Pitt football team. It’s been a tumultuous season for the Pitt football team.

Last Saturday, the Panthers won at home against Syracuse, earning a chance to play in the BBVA Compass Bowl for the second year in a row. The bowl game has a payout of nearly $2 million.

Finishing the regular season with a .500 record didn’t meet many fans’ hopes, considering Pitt’s marketing campaign and costly attainment of head coach Todd Graham. This season was billed as being a championship season, and it didn’t live up to expectations. But we would hardly consider it a failure.

Graham is one of just two coaches in the past 25 years who managed to take his team to a bowl game in his first season — so his freshman year is not as much of a bust as it’s been made out to be. But USA Today reports that not all coaches stay around for long.

Now more than ever, schools are expected to perform well on the football field. And it’s becoming a trend that universities are letting go coaches of underperforming teams after their sophomore seasons.

There are a couple of things wrong with this type of thinking. First of all, it’s not financially savvy to buy out one coach’s contract while enacting a new one. This also doesn’t allow for a coach to assimilate himself into his new school’s culture, leading into a costly and time-consuming cycle of finding the “right man for the job.”

Secondly, a coach needs four years at a school in order to compile a team fully composed of his recruits. Thus, we think any fair judgment would have to wait until a coach can run his team the way he wants to run it — with his own players.

Graham’s explosive, no-huddle offense just doesn’t mesh well with the kinds of players with whom he entered the season. Considering the team’s offensive struggles, it’s clear that pro-style quarterback Tino Sunseri isn’t the type of player designed for Graham’s “high-octane” offense.

And before we blame Graham’s offense, let’s remember that it’s been proven to work. In 2005, Rice University’s football team went 1-10, and just a year later, then-head coach Graham led his team to a 7-5 record.

That being said, this season could be considered lackluster in comparison to fans’ expectations, but it has been anything but a failure. And we think Graham has certainly earned the chance to make it past the second-year chopping block that many schools are resorting to.

Even if Pitt doesn’t hold to its five-year deal with Graham, we think he at least deserves four years to further prove himself. And by clinching a bowl berth in his first season, he also clinched one last game for his 17 seniors and a chance for the team to finish with a winning season.

Some fans might bemoan the fact that the team is going to the same bowl game as last year or express disappointment in its final record, but we think this season was a success — largely because of Graham’s coaching.

We’re excited to bring in the new year with one last Pitt football game. But we’re also excited to see how Graham fares in his second season —  hopefully with more to come.