Alumni praise departed equipment manager
“Tim is one of those people I’ll always be personally indebted to for helping me transition to Pitt and Pittsburgh,” Narduzzi told the Post-Gazette via a school spokesperson. “He was an invaluable member of our staff and so many Pitt staffs before our arrival.
“Tim always put other people first, starting with our players. I have the utmost respect and appreciation for him. We all wish Tim and his family the very best in his next chapter. Pitt football will always be his home and these doors will always be open to him.”
Andrew Taglianetti, a former safety from 2008-12, put the departure in the context of recent turnover for Pitt athletics. Men’s basketball alumni weren’t pleased that their longtime athletic trainer, Tony Salesi, was removed from that role two months ago. Athletic director Heather Lyke named Jennifer Brown, who worked with Lyke at Eastern Michigan, senior associate athletic director for sports medicine June 25. She also was appointed head trainer for the men’sbasketball team.
On the football side, Narduzzi steadily has seen changes in his front office, though from the outside it’s hard to tell which ones he made and which were made for him. Dann Kabala, Pitt’s player personnel director/ recruiting coordinator from 2012-16 and a former graduate assistant from Fox Chapel, was replaced last offseason. He spent last season out of football but now is Penn State’s recruiting coordinator. Mark Diethorn, Pitt’s recruiting director the past three years and a Belle Vernon native who was on staff since 2012, left in early June to become director of player personnel at his alma mater, Virginia Tech.
And none of that includes the six head coaches who have resigned, retired or been fired since Lyke was hired in March 2017, most recently the baseball and softball coaches.
Neither McKillop nor Taglianetti wanted to comment on reasons they heard for Enright stepping down, but “I do know something must’ve happened that just sent Ox over the edge; I don’t think it was necessarily fair to him,” Taglianetti said.
McKillop and Taglianetti spent part of Tuesday chatting with old teammates — John Malecki, Dom DeCicco, Adam Gunn and Jason Pinkston, to name a few — and reminisced.
They spoke to the Post-Gazette about the loss of Enright and what it means to them as alumni, but dozens of others — former players, equipment staffers and fans — voiced their respect for him on Twitter.
Even current redshirt senior tailback Qadree Ollison posted, “Woww not my dawg Ox.”
“It’s crazy to see,” Alex Officer, an offensive lineman who used up his eligibility last season, wrote in a text message. “He was a great person. Treated me right from myfirst day to my last.”
Although Officer is a more recent graduate, McKillop and Taglianetti are well aware — perhaps painfully so — that they’re no longer as connected to the program they loved playing for as they used to be. They still do love it, but it’s just getting harder and harder to recognize it.
They both mentioned associate athletic director/ football administration Chris LaSala, director of player development/high school relations Bob Junko, and head trainer Rob Blanc — all of whom have spent at least two decades with Pitt football — as the lone stalwarts left to return to. McKillop gave a shoutout to Danny Kozusko, Enright’s longtime assistant equipment manager, who still is listed on the team website.
“The way I like to look at this is, over the past 30 years, Ox is the only one who’s been there,” Taglianetti said.
“All the coaching changes, every cycle of players, Ox has always remained constant. Through all that time, through every coach, he’s always been loyal. … It really [stinks] that as important as Ox is to that program and what it means to the alumni and players in there, these top guys can kind of do what they want and there’s not much Ox can do.”
To be clear, Taglianetti insisted that Pitt’s alumni outreach efforts are genuine, and that he doesn’t expect Narduzzi to have time to connect with him individually — “I wasn’t a first-round draft pick. I’m just a washedup guy,” he quipped — but seeing Enright go is a major blow to morale.
When he wasn’t comfortable around new coaches or new players he had never met, he still visited the old guard, the same equipment manager “who would talk you off a cliff, make sure you’re doing well after a bad practice when you had no one else to vent to.”
“Any time you stepped into the equipment room with Ox,” Taglianetti recalled, “it was like all was well with the world.”
McKillop, who spent the 2015 season as a graduate assistant under Narduzzi, thought back on stories he had heard about one coach or another needing something to be fixed last-minute, “and Ox had his connections and people that were able to get it done.”
“The only thing constant in life is change,” McKillop said. “But I don’t know, something doesn’t seem right. … I guess they’ll never appreciate how much Ox did until the first game of the season, or the first away game, or when a problem presents itself. I loved Ox as a friend and on a professional level.
“He probably had the biggest heart I ever met for someone connected to Pitt football.”
Brian Batko: bbatko@post-gazette.com and Twitter @BrianBatko.