Pitt HC Pat Narduzzi Sounds Off on Tampering
PITTSBURGH -- For the Pitt Panthers and head coach Pat Narduzzi, the sting of losing star wide receiver Jordan Addison to USC via the transfer portal under circumstances that he believed to be less than ethical or legal under NCAA rules, is fresh and still burns.
Narduzzi was more than willing to call out Trojans head coach Lincoln Riley at the time. He alleged that Riley and USC tampered with Addison - reaching out to begin recruiting him using the promise of lucrative NIL deals before Addison had entered the portal and is happy he did so.
"Hell no," Narduzzi told Bruce Feldman of The Athletic, who asked if he regretted calling out Riley.
Narduzzi, who was the only coach willing to go on the record for Feldman's dive into the seedy and foggy world of tampering in college football recruiting, said he hasn't received any backlash from other coaches. In fact, he claims they've been unanimously supportive of the way he's gone with complaints about how his peers have recruited the transfer portal.
He added that it's important for coaches to police one another. The NCAA has proven ineffectual in enforcing anti-tampering rules and with solid evidence hard to come by, Narduzzi believes speaking publicly about it is the only way to deter deep-pocketed schools from luring players away from smaller schools.
“Whether it does any good to speak up, I don’t know,” he said. “But the more people speak up, the better. I think not speaking up is wrong. If we don’t speak up, what voice do we have? I talked to some of those NCAA guys and they’re like, ‘No one wants to talk.’ They haven’t done anything with the Jordan Addison thing so, really, what does it matter? Everybody wants to be hush-hush, but why? The only reason to be hush-hush is if you’re breaking the rules yourself and you don’t want someone else to turn you in, and maybe that’s the problem: They’re cheating too. Let’s not turn each other in. That’s what I think it is. I got no problem talking, because we’re doing it the right way here.”
Narduzzi told Feldman that no schools have tried to tamper with his players this offseason and he thinks that could be due to the fact that he was willing to call out Riley last summer.
“Maybe that was a tribute to me speaking up and people knowing this dude will say something," Narduzzi said. "My dad always taught me to just tell it like it is.”
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