Carter: Can Pitt get back to national contention? taken on the South Side (Pitt)

PITT ATHLETICS

Mark May.

ESPN's Bill Connelly released his top 50 all-time NCAA football teams to not win a national championship Wednesday, and it sparked plenty of debate among where some teams of legend should rank against others.

Pitt had one team make the list ranking 32nd, the 1980 Panthers. Those Panthers finished 11-1 finishing with a 14-9 win over No. 5 Penn State and a Gator Bowl win over No. 18 South Carolina, and ranked No. 2 by the Associated Press.

That team got to celebrate again in the following 1981 NFL Draft when 12 Panthers were selected overall, and seven came in the first three rounds, including Hugh Green, Mark May, Rickey Jackson and Russ Grimm.

But since then, Pitt hasn't inside the AP's top ten since 1982, with 2009's No. 15 ranking being the last time the Panthers finished ranked. It begs the question if Pitt can ever get back to where it was.

2021 marks Pat Narduzzi's seventh season coaching Pitt, passing Dave Wannstedt's six seasons to have the sixth longest tenure coaching the program in its history. 

Narduzzi followed up seeing six players make the 2021 NFL Draft by putting together a strong 2021 recruiting class that ESPN ranked 25th in the country with four recruits rated four stars.

If Pitt's ever going to get back to making big bowl games regularly, it has to show stability in how it recruits and produce developed players who make the NFL, while playing a brand of football that further excites future recruits. Narduzzi hasn't produced a nine-win season yet, but he has developed an aggressive brand of defensive football that is attracting higher graded recruits.

Pitt needs to keep building that momentum and see if it gets them to at least being consistently ranked, even in the 20s, in the coming seasons. If Narduzzi can get that, it'll be the first step to Pitt maybe getting some even bigger wins in recruiting and giving itself a chance to compete with the big dogs of college football someday. 

YOUR TURN: Can Pitt ever get back to national contention?

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