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With news breaking in the middle of the night that Pitt football head coach Paul Chryst is poised to accept the Wisconsin job, speculation will be ramping up quickly on possible candidates to replace him.
The question is how many old names bandied about from Pitt's last two coaching searches will be included on any short list put together by the university.
Some of those old names, as a refresher:
Teryl Austin - Former Pitt player and current NFL defensive coordinator
Tom Bradley - West Virginia assistant coach and longtime Penn State coordiator
Paul Rhoads - Iowa State head coach and former Pitt defensive coordinator
Sal Sunseri - Longtime college assistant coach and former Pitt player
Marvin Lewis - Cincinnati Bengals head coach and born in western PA
Any number of these guys can probably removed without consideration, and that includes a guy like Mario Cristobal, who was thrown around quite a bit before he was ultimately let go by FIU. And I've never understood why an NFL head coach like Lewis would willingly leave for college unless it was his alma mater (which Pitt is not).
It's really hard to imagine that Pitt would go to a lot of these names. In addition, consider that the school has a new Chancellor since the last search and he will certainly have a hand in this. With a few years passed since the last search, you can expect to hear a lot of new names, which we'll get into a little later.
Going to be interesting to see how quickly Pitt moves with the news of Chryst's expected departure and what new names head join the discussion. My guess is that a lot of the older names won't again be considered, but you never know.
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