Pederson created stir at Pittsburgh, too, but his success turned many critics into fans
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BY MARK DEROWITSCH
PITTSBURGH - People shoot baskets at the place where Tony Dorsett ran away with the Heisman Trophy, where Dan Marino wowed NFL scouts with his strong right arm, where "Iron" Mike Ditka turned himself into one of the toughest hombres to ever strap on a football helmet.
On occasion, you can still catch a football game on the ground that once housed the north end zone of Pitt Stadium. Just a while ago in fact, on a sunny, cold afternoon, the kind that exists especially for football, 10 youngsters gathered for some fun in the snow.
There was quite a crowd, too, but nobody showed much interest in their game of football. Basketball's the main game played on top of "Cardiac Hill" these days.
The 10,000 people who filed past this group of kids were headed into the University of Pittsburgh's new basketball arena, the $96.4 million Petersen Events Center that opened in 2002 and bumped Pitt Stadium off the college football map forever.
The arena, one of the best in the country, is the hallmark of Steve Pederson's six-year tenure as the school's athletic director.
Pederson took plenty of heat for his decision to take away a Panthers landmark and replace it with a basketball court.
Alumni and former Pitt football players were his most vocal critics. Few are complaining now.
Pederson's time at Pittsburgh ended a year ago, when he left the Steel City to take over the athletic department at Nebraska, but he's still highly thought of around these parts.
The Panthers have a football program that was ranked in the Top 25 most of this season and recently earned its fourth straight bowl invitation. The men's basketball team advanced to the NCAA Sweet 16 each of the past two years, and appears destined to be a major player again this year.
"Steve Pederson did for Pitt what the Marshall Plan did for Europe," said Beano Cook, a Pittsburgh resident since the 1930s and longtime college football television analyst with ABC and ESPN. "He rebuilt Pitt athletics. He saved Pitt sports."
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Call anyone in the Pittsburgh athletic department and there's a good chance you'll hear the same greeting.
"Hello, Pittsburgh Panthers."
Like the Petersen Events Center and the football practice facility across the Monongahela River, the friendly welcome is a Pederson production. No detail slipped his attention.
"He's not a control freak, he's a visionary," said swimming coach Chuck Knoles, in his 14th season at Pittsburgh. "He moves very quickly. He's very decisive, and either you believe in him or you don't. We were fortunate here at Pittsburgh that everybody believed in him.
"Look, he tore down Pitt Stadium and let go one of the most successful football coaches in college football history in Johnny Majors. Hands were up in the air, eyes were wide open, chins dropped a few inches, but he did the right thing. Pittsburgh is a much better place than it was before he came here."
While it's hard to find a ready critic of Pederson's results, the method he used to revive the Panthers' athletic department rubbed many the wrong way.
"Don't think he was beloved by everyone around here, because he wasn't," said Ron Cook, a columnist for the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. "He made a lot of enemies over Pitt Stadium, but I think people now agree that what he did was good for Pitt."
On the surface, it's easy to see why Pederson is praised on city campus in the hills of Oakland and about three miles east of where the Allegheny, Monongahela and Ohio rivers come together.
The Petersen Events Center is one of the best college basketball arenas in the country, and the Panther football team plays at Heinz Field, the $281 million home of the NFL Pittsburgh Steelers completed in 2001.
Even so, alumni sent Pederson hate mail when he announced plans to tear down the on-campus football stadium. He also alienated big-time athletic boosters and donors by not consulting them on plans for the new arena.
"He doesn't tell anything to the boosters because boosters like to go to the newspapers and act like big shots," Beano Cook said. "No, he's like a priest in confession. He keeps everything to himself. That's the way he is."
When a difficult decision needs to be made, Pederson usually forms a committee of one (see NU's current search for a new head coach).
That did not sit well with small pockets of Pittsburgh boosters, who in the beginning resisted his sweeping changes.
"It was tough for some people who have been around here for years," said Pitt volleyball coach Chris Beerman, hired by Pederson in 2000. "But Steve is like, 'Trust me, believe in what I'm doing.' All the people who doubted him really came around."
Said Beano Cook: "He's autocratic. It's his way or the highway, I will say that. He can be stubborn, but he's usually right."
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To understand Pederson's effect, you have to look back at the past 20 years of Pittsburgh athletics.
When he arrived in November 1996, the Panthers were the laughingstock of the Big East Conference. The football team was coming off its fifth consecutive losing season, four of them with Majors as coach, and the basketball team was nearly as bad.
On top of that, Pitt's athletic facilities were among the worst in the conference.
The day before Pederson started work at Pitt, he still served as the director of football operations at Nebraska, and the Huskers beat Colorado in front of 76,000 fans at Memorial Stadium.
He flew to Pittsburgh the next day to witness the last game of the season against Rutgers at Pitt Stadium. He was one of about 5,000 people in the stadium at kickoff.
"Steve joked later that he made a point to shake everyone's hand to thank them for coming to the game," said Ron Cook. "That's how bad it was."
Change came fast and furious.
Majors - who led Pitt to a national championship in 1976 before bolting to Tennessee, then returned for a not-so-successful second stint in 1993 - resigned before Pederson took over. In 1999, Pederson gave men's basketball coach Ralph Willard his walking papers following a lackluster 14-16 season, his second straight below .500.
Majors was reassigned - he still serves as a special assistant to the chancellor and athletic director - while Willard resigned to avoid being fired.
Willard's final days were much like Frank Solich's at Nebraska. Late in 1998-99, Pederson told a reporter he wouldn't evaluate Willard's performance until the end of the season, and Willard took it as a vote of no confidence.
After meeting with Pederson, he announced his resignation but coached the Panthers during the final nine games of the season. The Panthers went 3-6.
Willard, now head basketball coach at Holy Cross, his alma mater, declined an interview request, but said, "If you're asking me what type of person (Pederson) is, the best thing a coach can say is no comment."
Pederson also gave Pitt's mascot a face-lift, and announced the school would be referred to as Pittsburgh rather than Pitt.
That was only the beginning.
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The nasty letters started pouring in when Pederson, with the help of Chancellor Mark Nordenberg, announced plans to raze Pitt Stadium and replace it with a 12,500-seat basketball arena.
All of a sudden, the athletic world at Pitt - Pittsburgh by this time - was turned upside down.
"One of the biggest distractions an athletic director has, and obviously Steve had it here, is getting people out of their comfort zone," Knoles said. "He had to do it in order to advance the program.
"We were a lot of people going in a lot of different directions. Steve gave the athletic department a focus."
Looking back, the decision to tear down Pitt Stadium was easy. Built in 1925, it didn't have any of the amenities that come with modern athletic facilities.
The last time Pittsburgh came close to consistently selling out its old stadium came in 1982, when Marino was a rising star, the Panthers were No. 1 for several weeks and, most important, NFL players were on strike.
Football fans used the Panthers to get their weekly fix since the Steelers sat on the sideline.
Don't forget: Pittsburgh is a professional city, and it's Steelers Country.
Unlike Lincoln, where every move Nebraska's athletic director makes becomes front-page news, the Panthers battle the Steelers, plus two other professional teams, for media attention.
If anyone had a right to be upset about plans to tear down Pitt Stadium, it would be Jim Duratz, a deep-pocketed booster who lives about 90 miles north of Pittsburgh in Meadville, Pa. Two years before Pederson arrived, Duratz handed Pitt a $1 million check to upgrade the Panthers' training facilities.
But Duratz, a cable television pioneer in Pennsylvania, decided he wasn't going to live in the past.
"At the time, I was getting a lot of calls from alumni, and I didn't want to hurt their feelings," he said. "I told them, 'I'm an expert in cable television and I'd be happy to talk to you all day about cable television, but I don't know a damn thing about football fields. I've got to rely on guys like Steve Pederson to make those decisions.'
"If Steve Pederson likes it, I like it, and now it's all forgotten."
What would have happened if Pederson had stayed the course at Pittsburgh?Mark Boehm, Nebraska's executive associate athletic director who served under Pederson there, doesn't like to think about it.
"There would be no football program at Pittsburgh," Boehm said. "Ireally believe that. If Steve didn't do something drastic, Pittsburgh would have been without a football team. That's where it was headed."
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Before he could tear down Pitt Stadium, Pederson needed help, and the Steelers happened to have an alternative.
Dan Rooney, chairman of the Steelers, put together a plan with city, county and state officials to replace aging Three Rivers Stadium with Heinz Field, a state-of-the-art facility across the Allegheny River from downtown Pittsburgh.
Soon after, Pederson approached Rooney about letting the Panthers use the stadium, too.
Pederson had no leverage - the Steelers ran the place and Pitt contributed no money to the project - but Rooney found himself across the table from a shrewd negotiator.
"He wanted to be an equal tenant and he got it," said Rooney, whose father, Art Rooney Sr., founded the Steelers in 1933. "Some of our people negotiated with the people from Pittsburgh, and I'll say this:Steve was tough. He was sticking up for his position, and I do nothing but admire him for that.
"He was not just coming with hat in hand. He said, 'We have to make this a college stadium,' and they've done a great job with that."
The Steelers made sure the Panthers felt at home. Rooney had both teams' nicknames stamped on each entry gate to Heinz Field.
On Panther game days, the stadium takes on a college feel, decked out with banners honoring past Panther greats.
To attract students, Pederson made sure shuttle buses ran between Heinz Field and campus for two hours before and after each home football game.
"I wish the stadium was still on campus, but it's no big deal," said senior Keith Mineo, a communications major from Easton, Pa. "A lot of the students liked to drink and stagger down to the game, but when the team wins everybody comes back to campus and celebrates. Not much has changed."
The Panthers and the Steelers also share a state-of-the-art training complex that includes a 120-yard indoor practice field, four outdoor practice fields and an office complex.
"It's the best indoor facility in the world," Rooney said. "I've never seen one that could equal it. Steve had a lot to do with the design of it."
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Pederson's pride and joy in Pittsburgh is the Petersen Events Center, named after John and Gertrude Petersen, who contributed $10 million. Panthers basketball moved out of aging Fitzgerald Field House, which has since been renovated, and into their new quarters last year.
Pederson helped design the events center, which includes several luxury suites.
Boehm remembers an early meeting "in the bowels of Pitt Stadium" with architects. Initial plans for the Petersen Events Center were presented, and they included everything Pederson wanted except high-dollar, court-side suites.
"Steve looks at the plans and points out they don't have court-side seating, and the response was that it never has been done before," Boehm said. "Steve picks up a napkin and starts drawing plans to include the court-side seats. He hands the napkin to the head architect. He looks at it for a few seconds and says, 'Ithink you got something there.'"
From all appearances, the Panthers play in a professional venue.
"The only people who are upset about this place probably had football tickets on the 50-yard line at Pitt Stadium," said Ed Graham of Monroeville, Pa., who has purchased season tickets since the Petersen Events Center opened.
"It is the best on-campus arena in the country for basketball," said Ben Howland, a Pederson hire who turned around the Pittsburgh men's basketball program before heading to UCLA last spring "It's incredible."
Every ticket to every game has been sold since the center opened last season.
Sal Gaetano and his wife, Chris, have bought season tickets for football and basketball for the past 35 years. They donate money to the athletic department, which allows them to get seats in the lower level of the Events Center. Those seats cost between $410 and $1,050 apiece for a season package and require at least a $1,000 donation to the athletic department each year.
Before Pittsburgh's recent game against Penn State, the Gaetanos were on a bench in the lower concourse, catching up with friends and renewing acquaintances.
"Name one other program with a top-20 football and basketball team in a pro city. You can't," said Sal Gaetano, a 1959 Pittsburgh graduate. "It's so much harder to do it here. You can do it in Nebraska, Oklahoma, Duke, North Carolina. Look at Penn State. There's nothing to do there besides the college. To do it here, it's a lot harder.
"It just proves everything Steve did was right."
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When it comes to hiring coaches, the jury is still out on Pederson's decision to turn the football program over to Walt Harris.
Before he was hired by Pederson, Harris' only head coaching experience came at the University of Pacific, but he was quarterbacks coach at Big Ten powerhouse Ohio State.
Harris has guided the Panthers out of a decade-long slumber, but whether he can take the program to the next level remains to be seen.
Pittsburgh began the 2001 season 1-5, and Pederson reportedly started looking for a replacement for Harris during the season. But the Panthers reeled off six straight wins to end the year, including a 34-19 victory against North Carolina State in the Tangerine Bowl. Harris saved his job.
The Panthers went 9-4 in 2002, Pederson's final year at Pittsburgh.
"Walt lost too many games, and Steve was unhappy," Beano Cook said. "You can't be mediocre anymore and still make money."
Pederson's biggest coup was hiring Howland. Before he went to Pittsburgh, Howland turned little Northern Arizona into a respectable team.
Only the most ardent basketball junkies had heard of Howland before Pederson tabbed him as Willard's replacement.
Everybody knows him now.
Last spring, after leading the Panthers to their second straight Sweet 16 appearance, Howland left western Pennsylvania for the glamour of UCLA.
To entice Howland, Pederson made a hard sell about the Panthers' up-and-coming program.
"He recruited me, really," Howland said. "One of his biggest selling points for me was the new arena. He told me he was going to get it built, and Ibelieved him.
"He had the vision and the foresight to make decisions for the long-term future. Those changes really energized the program."
Pederson hired seven coaches during his time at Pittsburgh, and each one experienced some success. The most successful were Howland, Harris and Beerman.
This season, Beerman guided the volleyball team to a Big East championship and into the second round of the NCAATournament for just the third time in school history. The Panthers' final record was 26-6, their best season in nearly a decade.
Pederson hired Traci Waites to coach women's basketball in 1998, and in her second season she was named the Big East coach of the year. Waites was fired by Boehm following a 12-16 season in 2002-03.
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When you examine the past, changes in Husker Nation were inevitable once Pederson assumed control at Nebraska.
Less than a year on the job, Pederson fired Solich, Tom Osborne's hand-picked successor who was 58-19 in six seasons. Nebraska, 7-7 in 2002, improved to 9-3 this season but suffered lopsided losses at Texas and at home against Kansas State.
In firing Solich, Pederson said, "I refuse to let this program gravitate to mediocrity."
Solich is the first head coach to be dismissed by Pederson, but he's left his mark on the athletic department. In a year's time, he has eliminated 22 positions in the athletic department and brought in Boehm to oversee Husker basketball.
"It's a business, despite what college presidents say," Beano Cook said. "As an athletic director, Steve Pederson has to run it no different than the CEO of General Motors or General Electric. You have to run it as a business, and you have to fire people you don't think are doing the job. That's why he's making a six-figure salary and gets a car and a country club membership."
Pederson, who declined to comment for this story, has been silent during his search for a new football coach.
When Pederson goes hunting for a coach, Beerman said, he looks for certain qualities regardless of the sport.
"He looks for real competitive people - you can go right down the line on that one," he said. "There's no doubt in my mind that he'll bring in that kind of person to Nebraska."
What Pederson is doing at Nebraska reminds Boehm of his early days in Pittsburgh.
"Isee change happening right before our eyes, and it's moving so quickly," he said. "I've seen it before and I'm seeing it now, and it's exciting. That's one reason why Icame back to Nebraska with Steve. I knew we would be on top again."
Beano Cook is betting Pederson will make the right choices.
"All I know is Harris has done a good job and Ben Howland was excellent," he said. "Can Harris can take the program to the next level? That remains to be seen, but he's done a good job. Steve's 2-for-2 in coaches.
"If he makes Nebraska a basketball powerhouse, that proves he can walk on water."
Reach Mark Derowitsch at 473-7438 or mderowitsch@;journalstar.com.
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