Despite the uproar, I certainly hope new Pitt football coach Michael Haywood is everything Panthers fans are hoping he will be.

But the smart money says, no, he won’t be.

As a Pitt graduate, I certainly wish Haywood luck. Maybe things will turn around with Pitt winning Big East titles and getting shots at the national championship.

However, this is Pitt football we’re talking about here. Success just isn’t something that is sustainable.

Other than a 24-year stretch when Pitt went 171-32 — Glenn “Pop” Warner was 60-14-2 from 1915-23 and John “Jock” Sutherland was 111-20-12 from 1924-38 — Pitt has had only one great decade.

After Sutherland, Pitt has had just seven coaches with winning records and only the Johnny Majors-Jackie Sherrill era is worth noting. The duo went 83-22-2 from 1973-1981 and Pitt won a national title under Majors in 1976.

Since then Foge Fazio (25-18-3), Mike Gottfried (26-17-2), Paul Hackett (13-20-1), Sal Sunseri (0-1), John Majors, Part II (12-32), Walt Harris (52-44) and Dave Wannstedt 42-31) have been less than impressive.

If Wannstedt does coach the Compass Bowl game and beats Kentucky, he will have won 27 games in the past three seasons, the most since Sherrill’s squads of the early 1980s.

However, his team underachieved this year and he was shown the door — at least one to another office. A win against Kentucky would give Wannstedt a .581 winning percentage, making him fifth on the Panthers’ all-time winning percentage list, just ahead of Gottfried (.578).

It’s also a fact Wannstedt won just one bowl game, last season against North Carolina, but bowl games are a crapshoot. Unless you’re in the national championship game, no one will remember if you finished fifth in the country by winning the Orange Bowl in 2003.

Notre Dame, one of the most storied programs in NCAA history had dropped nine consecutive bowl games, which dated back to the 1993 Cotton Bowl, until a Hawaii Bowl victory after the 2008 season. Taking away the past few seasons, the Fighting Irish hasn’t been a bad program. They’ve just suffered from a few lean years.

Notre Dame, however, is usually not down for long. Its track record for grabbing the top recruits is there. Pitt, however, never can seem to put it together.

While Harris did reach a BCS game back in 2004, he did so by winning a tiebreaker against three other teams. This season Pitt was 5-2 and lost the tiebreaker, but still gained a share of the conference title.

Despite missing All-American caliber linebacker Greg Romeus all season due to injury and playing a sophomore quarterback with no starting experience in Tino Sunseri, the Panthers still stumbled because of lofty expectations.

The Big East, the way it is now, is winnable. After that Panthers fans will have to temper their expectations.

It’s Pitt football. If you haven’t already, you better start getting used to this.

Sam Tallarico is a staff writer for the Butler Eagle.