Without an athletics director, program suffers

In true Pitt bureaucratic fashion, the athletics department has been dragging its feet,… In true Pitt bureaucratic fashion, the athletics department has been dragging its feet, directly to its own detriment.

Since athletics director Steve Pederson left for the greener pastures of his home state of Nebraska in December 2002, Pitt has interviewed exactly one candidate to replace Pederson: executive associate athletics director Marc Boehm, former second-in-command and the current interim athletics director.

After that interview, Pitt formed a committee to seek out other potential candidates. So far, they’ve come up with exactly zero others.

The term “interim” implies a temporary situation, and Boehm’s been acting in a less-than-temporary fashion, firing the women’s soccer and basketball coaches and hiring a new women’s soccer coach.

In past situations like this, Pitt eventually stops attaching the “interim” to a title and the public accepts the “unofficial-official” hiring without benefit of a press conference or any particular official announcement, as in the case of Pitt police Chief Tim Delaney and Vice Provost for Undergraduate Studies and Dean of Students Jack Daniel.

It seems likely this will be the case with Boehm. If so, his position as athletics director needs to be solidified as soon as possible, because the lack of such an individual has to be impeding our efforts at finding a new basketball coach to replace Ben Howland after his move to UCLA. The Panthers are poised to go further than ever, but we need a coach. Soon.

Why would any potential new coach want to join a program with no permanent athletics director? Without a director, our department appears to lack stability and cohesion, two crucial components to a winning team. Few potential employees, be they at a first-rate basketball program or Taco Bell, would accept a job without knowing who the boss would be.

The two current candidates for basketball coach are Jamie Dixon, Pitt’s associate head coach, and Skip Prosser, Wake Forest’s head coach.

Neither they nor any other potential new coaches should, or likely will, accept the job of leading our Panthers to victory without an actual, bona fide athletics director firmly in place.