Dave Wannstedt should still be coaching at Pitt.

Pat Narduzzi is the third coach to take a crack at it since Wannstedt was fired at the end of the 2010 season, and after Narduzzi’s fourth loss in a row Saturday to Notre Dame, he is 3-4 this season and 39-33 overall.

You could make a case for firing Narduzzi, just as you could have made a case for firing Wannstedt 10 years and three coaches ago, but what would you be expecting from the next guy?

Wannstedt was a Pittsburgh guy and a Pitt guy, and coaching at his alma mater would have been his last job. Unlike so many other coaches who came through here, he wasn’t going to use coaching Pitt as a stepping stone to a more glamorous job.

Who knows, Wannstedt is 68 and might have retired by now, but he was 9-4, 10-3 and 7-5 in his last three seasons. It should be clear to everybody by now that Pitt never should expect to be much better than that.

Do you need to see any more from Narduzzi to believe he never is going to do any better than 26 wins over three seasons?

And how do you like the chances of the next hotshot assistant coach coming here and turning Pitt into a top-10 program?

Walt Harris wasn’t a Pitt guy or a Pittsburgh guy, but he shouldn’t have been fired, either. He was let go after going 8-4 in 2004. The previous two seasons he had gone 9-4 and 8-5.

And we’re talking about a guy who took over a program that hadn’t won more than four games in the previous five seasons.

How many times does this have to happen before Pitt accepts the fact it’s ridiculous to think there’s a coach on the planet who is going to come close to matching Jackie Sherrill’s three consecutive 11-1 seasons from 1980-82?

It’s easy to second-guess now and say Wannstedt should have kept the job until he retired, but it should also be easy to see Narduzzi is not going to be any better.

He has had six years, same as Wannstedt and more than any coach other than Harris since John Michelosen’s 11-year run that ended in 1960.

Narduzzi’s contract was extended through the 2024 season back in 2017, but that never has prevented Pitt from firing a coach.

With Wannstedt, Pitt had a guy who knew his way around Western Pennsylvania high school football and could relate to local football coaches. He even had a Pittsburgh accent.

His final season was marred by four players getting arrested and ending up as part of a story by Sports Illustrated.

Wannstedt’s not coming back, but neither is Sherrill. Narduzzi’s record is 3-4 this season season only if you count Austin Peay’s surrender in the opener.

He could be on his way to a losing season, and Pitt is back to the point where its coach has worn out his welcome, but what happens if Narduzzi becomes the next guy to head out of town with a nice pile of cash from a buyout?

Is Narduzzi a bad coach, or is Pitt just a place where good coaches go to die?

You can be pretty sure he’s not going to be coaching Pitt in 2024. You’ll be seeing another one of those introductory news conferences before then, and the new guy will talk about Pitt’s proud tradition and his determination to return to glory.

Meanwhile, the best thing Pitt could do for the next guy is lower everybody’s expectations and say, “We’ll be happy if he can be as good as Dave Wannstedt.”

Or maybe Walt Harris.

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