On the eve of one of the biggest home games in recent Pitt history, the Redshirt Diaries wanted to do something a little bit different so we decided to bring to you a Q&A we had with Pitt athletic director Steve Pederson about several subjects including the “turn it blue” promotion (fans encouraged to wear blue to the game Saturday), a ninth football member for the Big East, the state of the football program and of course, kick-off times for games.
Pederson is approaching two years on the job now (well two years since he returned after a rough tenure at Nebraska) and whether you like everything he does or you don’t there are a few things which are undeniable about his approach to this job –
1) Few people love their job more than this guy does and frankly, few people -- outside of perhaps Chancellor Nordenberg and Sports Information Director E.J. Borghetti -- are a more perfect fit for his or her job over there at Pitt given what the college needs at this point in time.
2) He cares deeply about Pitt fans and about Pitt – and I say that knowing that the “Script or bust” crowd will never forgive him.
3) He has pushed a lot of the right buttons and has really pushed his staff to work extremely hard to improve the atmosphere at Heinz Field and it has paid off. This year has had the best game-day atmosphere of any since I’ve covered the team in 2002 – and that includes in 2002, 2003 and 2004 when Pitt was filling up the stadium and winning big games. If you walk around the stadium before the game it actually feels like a college football atmosphere and there is a lot going on both in and outside of the stadium.
Pederson may not be the best athletic director in the country – I don’t know how you could quantify that anyway – but I can honestly say that in my two years of observing his act up close and personal, he’s the right guy for this job because Pitt has so many special and unique challenges that a lot of other schools don’t face and he understands them and is trying to take them on one at a time.
And know this – while he gets a lot of credit for his work, he’s got a great staff working for him as well. And while we here at the Redshirt Diaries like to poke fun at Pitt's marketing gurus, their minions and Marcus Bowman (hey we’ve tried hard to work him into one of these entries and haven’t been able too yet, so why not), the truth is it is hard to argue with the success they’ve had in boosting ticket sales and making Heinz Field a better place to watch football games for the fans.
And so, without further adieu, here is what Steve Pederson had to say earlier this week on a day when it wasn’t perfectly Pittsburgh or sun-splashed nor did he have to walk with a certain briskness to prove to us he was a man on the move …….
RSD: You are encouraging all fans to wear blue this Saturday for the South Florida game at Heinz Field, but we understand this was an idea that actually came to you from the students. You’ve often said your motto is to put Pitt fans first so can you expand on your feelings on these fan initiatives and why they are so important to you and your staff?
PEDERSON: Our fans have made great suggestions. And when it comes to these fan initiatives – think about it, these are people that come to the games, they know what is going on, they have great ideas and a lot of the ideas they have given us we’ve been able to implement and often times, it is something we haven’t thought of or, for instance, we don’t park in a certain parking lot so we don’t know what’s going on or what’s needed. And with the students there were just certain things that we just didn’t know that they would prefer and they were pretty easy to fix to some extent. Some were a little harder than others but I’ve always thought that if we don’t listen to the people who are most important to us, which is our fans, we are making a big mistake. That doesn’t mean we can do everything people suggest but we have gotten great suggestions that we’ve been able to implement and this [turn it blue promotion] is case in point something that was sort of a fun thing to do.
RSD: So what about this initiative, as opposed to others which have been suggested, made it something you wanted to pursue?
PEDERSON: I thought this [Turn it Blue promotion] was a neat idea. We’ve listened to the student initiatives on a lot of things and I thought when some of the students said let’s do this, I said ‘it is a good idea, let’s do it’ so I think people will respond to it and participate in it.
RSD: You are going to hand out blue Pitt T-shirts to all of the students who come to the game – what else will you do to down at Heinz Field and on campus in order to try and add to the atmosphere in keeping with the theme of the day?
PEDERSON: We decided that we’d do T-shirts for the students and make it fun for them and then just ask everyone else who is coming to wear whatever they have which is blue. We’re going to do some things across campus too – we are going to do as many places as we can around campus. We’re asking merchants to make things blue, we’re doing some things blue on campus and Justin Acierno and a bunch of our marketing people are implementing a lot of different ideas and are even talking about things in the residence halls and in the dining halls so it will be a fun day.
RSD: I know ticket sales have been very good for this game – are you guys expecting a big crowd, say 55,000 or more?
PEDERSON: We expect to have a great crowd for the game Saturday and it will be a fun day. We have a great opponent coming in, it is homecoming – there are a lot of things going on that day and we haven’t been home for a couple of weeks, either, so it is a good time to play at home. And then we are off for two weeks and play again at home, so we have some good momentum building.
RSD: You guys have done a great job selling tickets even though the team has been down for a few years. Now that it is coming off a winning season and off to a fast start – do you expect the ticket sales for the final two Big East games after Saturday at home field to really pick up? [Obviously, there are three remaining home games but it goes without saying that the Notre Dame ticket sells itself]
PEDERSON: I think we have some real opportunities here in the second half of the season. The most important thing we did was drive our season ticket base up and now, with the team winning and the excitement surrounding it, I think it gives us an opportunity to take it to another level. And what I like is our people are having fun. They are having fun at the games, people are getting energized by it and Heinz Field is a fun place to be. Here this weekend, now, we have us and the Steelers playing back to back days – I don’t know that there is a city in the country where it gets better than that.
RSD: A number of fans have e-mailed me and wanted to voice their displeasure for the noon kick-off and there main gripe is that you said you wanted later kick-offs. How much of the kick-off time is in your control, and how much is based on outside factors, like TV or working with the Pirates?
PEDERSON: It is all TV. That has been controlling the times of our kick-offs. When we’ve been able to choose the kick times, we’ve chosen ideally to do them later in the day if we can. Of course, then we get some people who say ‘hey, why can’t we play at noon, I love the noon games’ so I don’t think there is a general consensus of what people want. I think everybody has different ideas. But it is not ideal and every school in the country goes through this right now, this business of waiting until two weeks before to find out when the kick time is and I think in college football that has become a part of the norm. I hope we can find a better way to do this at some point, I really do, we are not there right now and certainly the game times are being dictated to us and not vice versa. But certainly you want the exposure from being on television and every conference is doing some of the same things but like I said, at some point I hope we can get better control of this so we can give our fans more advance notice on when games are going to be. I wish we could do that but right now – and I’m not any different than any athletic director in the country – we just can’t do that right now.
RSD: Your first game back as Pitt’s A.D. was that famous 13-9 game [any real Pitt fan doesn’t need to be reminded what game that score is from as it is one of Pitt’s biggest upset wins]and you’ve watched this team go 16-5 since (and counting) that game. Given that record, do you think that, from what you see, this program is indeed headed on the right path and are you excited about its future?
PEDERSON: I think there are a lot of good things and a lot of very encouraging signs and a lot to be excited about. Certainly we have a very talented team. If you look at our team we have talented people and I think we have an excellent coaching staff. I think the fact that we are able to win games like we did against Connecticut, where we fought back and got things done at the end of the game. Then we had some bad things happen against Rutgers but we withstood it – those things give us a good indication that we are building a good program, not just a good team. And when I watch this program grow, I feel like we are getting on real solid footing and our opportunities ahead are terrific.
RSD: Finally, can you add some clarity to this one – a newspaper report a few weeks ago said that the Big East was having serious discussions about adding a ninth football playing member but that is contrary to everything officials from the Big East has said over the past three years. Is there indeed a movement towards a ninth member?
PEDERSON: We haven’t had much of any discussions about that and I think the reason that we haven’t – other than having to respond to the whole ‘well there is a media report that said this’ or sometimes our commissioner will report that there was a story about this school or that school – is that there just hasn’t been an institution emerge that seems to be the right fit for this conference. I think that the only growth we will every see in this conference if there was an institution that all of the sudden just made absolute sense to everybody. There are a lot of great schools out there and they are in their conferences and doing fine, but just in terms of something that makes a difference in our conference or someone who is a great fit for us, there just hasn’t been anybody out there that makes sense that is available for us right now. So of all the things we talk about in the Big East, that is just one we don’t talk about much, if at all.
Posted
Oct 23 2009, 01:13 AM
by
Paul Zeise