PITTSBURGH — Last winter, far from the worst season of his head coaching career, frustrated with the performance of his offense and furious with the attitude of his players, Pat Narduzzi approached the problems in his usual way: painfully direct and brutally honest.

Narduzzi fired almost his entire offensive coaching staff, completely changed the distribution of NIL money to his team and, finally, opened the exit door to a few players who were looking for more money as they didn’t necessarily earn it.

“I said, ‘S***, I have to clean up,'” Narduzzi said from his office Tuesday.

Eleven months after those cleanup decisions, the Pitt Panthers are in the midst of one of college football’s biggest turnarounds — from 3-9 last season to 7-0 this season.

They’re off to the program’s best start in more than 40 years, have one of the nation’s highest-scoring offenses and demonstrated their invincibility with two double-digit fourth-quarter comebacks. They’re using a new offense from the FCS level, playing a new quarterback they got from Alabama, and have a rebuilt defense that’s thriving despite the departure of a handful of starters.

But perhaps most interesting of all, the school’s NIL collective, working with Narduzzi, made the off-season decision to overhaul the team’s distribution structure – from paying each player in a multi-player system levels to the payment of selected players who win it.

“We won three games and had a structure where everyone was paid and it didn’t work for us. So we changed it,” said Chris Bickell, a Pitt tech entrepreneur and promoter who not only founded the school’s collective, Alliance 412, but also donated $20 million of his own money to the football program in 2021.

“You have to be hungry,” Bickell continued. “If you want sponsorships and you want to get paid like a professional, you have to earn them. This team is hungry.

At a time when athlete compensation figures continue to rise, the move represents one of the industry’s most unique approaches: a public admission of a reduction, not an increase.

But for Pitt, it works, even the most veteran players say so.

“I don’t want to say the money had an impact, but the attitude toward money had an impact,” said Brandon George, Pitt’s sixth-year starting linebacker.

“Money doesn’t buy you a championship,” Narduzzi told Yahoo Sports. “If that were the case, all these teams that spent all that money would be really good. State of Florida. Michigan spends a lot of money. I want hungry players.

“Are you talking about how did we go from 3 to 9? That’s how it is.

There are of course other reasons.

As the 18th-ranked Panthers (7-0, 3-0) prepare to face 20th-ranked SMU (7-1, 4-0) on Saturday — an unexpected showdown between the ACC’s undefeated — Narduzzi’s club enters with an attack that exceeds double last year’s unit. Pitt has the nation’s sixth-best offense (40 points per game) a year after ranking 116th (20 points per game).

Behind this improvement are transfer quarterback from Alabama, Eli Holstein, and first-year FBS offensive coordinator, Kade Bell. Bell brought with him from Western Carolina not only his fast-paced, movement-filled program, but also two coaches and two players, including versatile guard Desmond Reid, a 5-foot-8, 175-pounder who broke out on the major college football stage. with electric performances (he became the only player in Pitt history to accumulate 100 rushing and receiving yards in a single game earlier this season).

Holstein and Reid play a multi-faceted offense with concepts drawn from the NFL (pro style), Josh Heupel at Tennessee (hurry up) and LSU’s 2019 national championship (the RPO and vertical passing attack) , said Pat Bostick. , the former Pitt quarterback and color analyst for the team’s football broadcasts.

Holstein succeeds. He has thrown for 17 touchdowns and is the team’s second-leading rusher behind Reid. Although his status for this week’s game against SMU remains uncertain — he came out in the second half last week — the undisclosed injury is not serious in nature, those here say.

How Holstein, a Louisiana native, ended up here involves a connection point with Holstein family friend and former Pitt football letterman Mike McGlynn. He served as a conduit for the school and player after Holstein entered the transfer portal following his true freshman season last year at Alabama.

Eleven months later, he was leading an undefeated ACC team. But not everything is perfect.

“I would have liked him to go a little more out of bounds,” lamented a smiling Narduzzi.

Holstein is physically imposing at 6-4, 225 pounds. And he has a scruffy goatee that Narduzzi often jokingly suggests he shave off.

“It attracts the girls,” Holstein jokes to his coach.

Given his start to the season, it might be best to keep him unshaven.

It’s been a pretty crazy ride so far. Holstein led back-to-back comebacks in the fourth quarter. Against Cincinnati, the Panthers led 27-6 with 4:50 left in the third quarter before putting down 22 unanswered. The following week against West Virginia, Pitt trailed by 10 with five minutes remaining before Holstein led touchdown runs of 75 and 77 yards.

“The turning point was Cincinnati,” George said. “The defense was stopped and our offense scored. It was like, ‘Okay. This isn’t last year’s offense.

No, that’s definitely not the case.

Narduzzi fired four offensive coaches, including coordinator Frank Cignetti, and a fifth offensive assistant left for an NFL assistant job. Two of those coaches, Tim Salem (tight ends) and Andre Powell (running backs and special teams), had been with the coach for his entire tenure at the school. That overhaul led to the arrival of younger coaches who Bostick said revitalized the operation.

The staff has also changed. Players like Holstein and Reid were added. Others were shown the exit door.

“They wanted more money,” Narduzzi said Tuesday from his office. “It made us better. We didn’t need these guys.

And then came the change in the collective’s NIL distribution structure.

“I sat down with (some) guys and told them, ‘You’re not getting paid,’” Narduzzi said. “I told them the person who invests in you is not happy. I said, “If you were an investor putting your money down and you won three games, what would you do? The kids said, “Coach, I wouldn’t give it away.” » That’s what he does. You have to go and earn it.

Those who get it will be rewarded after the season, Bickell suggested.

“We watch our dollars,” he said. “There are guys on this team who don’t get paid a lot and who produce. We know we have valuable players in the market. We’re going to have teams interested in Dez Reid, right? Nobody knew he could play. We leave the negotiations until the end of the season.

As a university, Pitt occupies an interesting position in the transforming world of college sports. Although it resides in a population center within a football state – Pittsburgh has a metropolitan area of ​​approximately 2.5 million people – the school is not often mentioned among the heavyweights of the football state. ACC like Clemson, Florida State and Miami. The program’s rich history – it is in the top 20 all-time in wins – is forgotten by some, lost in the sands of time.

A consistent national championship contender in the 1950s, ’70s and ’80s, Pitt has appeared in just two major bowl games in the past 40 years. And yet Narduzzi, now in his 10th season, is poised to take the program to heights it hasn’t seen in years. The Panthers are on their way to a third season of nine wins or better in the last four years for the first time since the early 1980s.

As college sports moves closer to the era of revenue sharing among athletes, the school is preparing for its impact by making significant changes. Pitt Chancellor Joan Gabel, who arrived last summer, recently hired as its new athletic director Allen Greene, who brings experience at SEC football brands like Auburn, Ole Miss and Tennessee.

Bickell has recruited the Alliance 412 collective as an entity destined to thrive in a future world of revenue sharing and he hopes to continue operating. The collective has an annual budget of around $6 million. He hired a talent evaluator, former Buffalo Bills general manager Doug Whaley, and an experienced fundraiser, John Pelusi, who have deep and strategic ties to the company.

“Trust me,” Bickell said, “what we’re doing at Pitt, we’re going to be nationally competitive in revenue sharing. I participated in these meetings.

Despite the growing financial gaps between the SEC, Big Ten and everyone else, Narduzzi is confident Pitt can win its first national title since 1976. It can be done here, he says.

“There is more parity than ever before,” he adds.

“We operate Pitt football and basketball as a business,” Bickell said. “We see ourselves in a single market. We are not a major market team. We’re stuck between Penn State and Ohio. But we are in a huge and amazing city. This is the resurgence of Pittsburgh.