Wannstedt Two, Three Years from Time Machine, Flux Capacitor Technology

In a candid revelation following Saturday's loss to Rutgers, University of Pittsburgh Head Coach Dave Wannstedt tipped his hand at the future direction of the struggling Panther football squad. While Wannstedt has been candid about his desire to sure up offensive and defensive fronts, the local media was caught off guard when Wannstedt admitted that he has been working with Pitt Astrophysics Professor Norman E. Brown to develop a time machine that would portal the Panthers back to the pivotal year of 1989. Wannstedt admits that the team is close to completing the time machine, but is missing the crucial final piece - the elusive Flux Capacitor.

“While I am pleased with the progress this football team is making, especially recently with an impressive victory over Cincinnati and a near-win at Louisville, I still believe the future of this Panther football team lies in going back [to the future],” admitted Wannstedt. “I’m really optimistic that if we transport this team back to 1989, in two or three years we can beat the previous national champions of Alabama or Florida State. I really think I would be, and was, an outstanding football coach in that era when I could play real smash-mouth football and I wouldn’t, and didn’t, have to worry about the prevalence of the spread offense that is endemic in college football today.”

Panthers’ Assistant Media Director E.J. Borghetti cites 1989 as the transitional year in which Pitt football first fell into a downward spiral under then-new head coach Paul Hackett. The Panthers fell from a 8-3-1 season in which they appeared in and won the Sun Bowl to a disappointing 3-7-1 record under Hackett’s first full season. The rest of the decade produced similarly disappointing seasons in which the Panthers only reached above five hundred once.

“I really think Dave can do a lot of impressive things if transported back [to ‘89],” argued Borghetti. “And even if Dave is the lousy coach our critics claim he is, he’ll still get a guaranteed win against South Florida, who didn’t even have a team that year, and a highly probable win against Connecticut, who was division I-AA at the time. And if Wannstedt can land his targeted recruits of Gino Torretta and Rashaan Salaam, I would wager that a national championship is in the bag. As a matter of fact, I told Dave that when he goes back, he has to get in contact with my previous self and convince me to put a thousand bucks on it.”

Wanndstedt admits that he has been close to getting to where he wants the time machine to be at, but believes the team is just a couple gigawatts short of accomplishing the goal.

“Look, I can’t just drive the [time] machine around and wait for a blast of lighting to hit the Cathedral of Learning to power the time machine. That’s pure Hollywood fiction. Anyone with a rudimentary knowledge of science knows that to have a fully functioning [time] machine, you need to have 1.21 gigawatts. We’ve shown flashes of getting up there, and laying a good foundation, but I don’t think we’ll really get the time machine to the level we need it to be at until we land some Libyan exchange students to smuggle in some nuclear grade plutonium.”

Wannstedt has not revealed which players and coaches he intends to bring back in time with him. However, he did drop a strong hint about the future of Defensive Coordinator Paul Rhoads, who is rumored to be on the hot seat in the current season after the Panthers have struggled defensively in numerous games. “Rhoads?” questioned Wannstedt while lowering and then raising his Ray Ban sunglasses. “Where we’re going, we don’t need Rhoads.”