Bob Smizik, January 21, 2007:
"Backstabbing": like "not speaking to each other" except to ask, "Other than the lung shot, how was your day?"
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The program was humming outwardly, but Sherrill was concerned. Athletic director Cas Myslinski was being stripped of his power by upper-level university administrators. Sherrill saw the folly in that and wanted control, or at least a say, in scheduling -- if Myslinski wasn't going to be in charge.
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As Pitt prepared for its Sugar Bowl game with Georgia, Sherrill wanted a meeting with Chancellor Wesley Posvar to discuss his situation. He couldn't get one. It galled him immensely that a coach of his success would be treated in such a manner.
Sure enough, on Jan. 18, less than 48 hours after rumors first surfaced, Sherrill was gone.
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The program was humming outwardly, but Sherrill was concerned. Athletic director Cas Myslinski was being stripped of his power by upper-level university administrators. Sherrill saw the folly in that and wanted control, or at least a say, in scheduling -- if Myslinski wasn't going to be in charge.
...
As Pitt prepared for its Sugar Bowl game with Georgia, Sherrill wanted a meeting with Chancellor Wesley Posvar to discuss his situation. He couldn't get one. It galled him immensely that a coach of his success would be treated in such a manner.
Hours after the Sugar Bowl win on Jan. 1, Sherrill told Pittsburgh Press columnist Pat Livingston, in a story written after Sherrill's departure, "I get the feeling there are people at Pitt who don't want me around here any more."
Sure enough, on Jan. 18, less than 48 hours after rumors first surfaced, Sherrill was gone.
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Months later, as Sherrill feared, Ed Bozik, the assistant chancellor and a man with no experience in athletic administration, forced out Myslinski and took his job.
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In a phone conversation last week, Sherrill, retired and living in Memphis, said he never wanted to leave Pitt. "But they gave me no choice."
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In a phone conversation last week, Sherrill, retired and living in Memphis, said he never wanted to leave Pitt. "But they gave me no choice."
The company line in 1982 was that A&M's financial offer to Sherrill simply could not be matched by any sanely-run university--similar to the company line on Matt Canada's departure for LSU. As Smizik wrote in 2007 that was not true.
But, I believe, I am not 100% positive, that there was more to Sherrill's departure than what Smizik wrote there. Posvar wouldn't meet with Sherrill: Wherever Jackie Sherrill coached rumor of scandal went with him like a personal assistant, including at Pitt. Posvar hired Myslinski, charged him with making "A Major Change in Pitt Football." And Myslinski did. Myslinski hired Johnny Majors and paid Majors and his outstanding staff, which included Sherrill, very well; he created the "Golden Panthers" booster organization to help with athletic department fundraising, provided Majors and his staff with all the money they needed for recruiting. :| (You can't pay recruits. (Former Pitt player, later big-time agent, Ralph Cindrich, flatly writes that Pitt paid players during the time.)) In four short years Pitt went from national laughing stock to national champion.
It seemed too short to be legit. At the Sugar Bowl game in 1977 in which Pitt win the national championship, Sugar Bowl officials told reporters they had never seen anything like the embarrassed, almost apologetic, Posvar.
Myslinski was a West Point guy, as was Posvar. Myslinski was a "close-to-the-vest" West Point guy, a redundancy. Secretive, not transparent. I believe that some of the "techniques" allegedly employed by Sherrill under Myslinski came to Chancellor Posvar's attention and Posvar was really embarrassed then, and refused to meet with Sherrill because he wanted him, and Myslinski, gone.
