MORGANTOWN - In a what-have-you-done-for-me-lately age, Pitt's football team is finally doing something for its fans.

It wasn't always that way.

Dave Wannstedt, after all, is in his fifth season at Pitt. For all or parts of each of the first four it was an uphill struggle.

In fact, as recently as the beginning of last season his coaching obituary was still being written. That was when the Panthers lost their opening game at home to Bowling Green and the beat writer for one of the major daily newspapers covering the team described it, at least in his instant Internet story, as perhaps the beginning of the end of the Wannstedt era.

And who could have blamed him? Wannstedt inherited a program that, while certainly not upper tier, had been to five straight bowls under Walt Harris. Harris' last team at Pitt, in 2004, had won a share of the Big East title and played in the Fiesta Bowl.

And Wannstedt immediately lowered expectations. He won five games and then six and then slipped back to five again. And despite having upset West Virginia at the end of that third season - to avoid a 4-8 record - that loss to Bowling Green made his record to date 16-20.

But since that game Pitt is 18-4. This year the Panthers are 9-1 and ranked in the Top 10 of every major poll and in the BCS standings. Heading into Friday night's Backyard Brawl at West Virginia, Pitt is on the verge of its first 10-win season since the Dan Marino era almost 30 years ago.

And it's all because Wannstedt was given the time to put things together and, more importantly, managed to get it done. He took over the program that Harris had routinely guided to eight or nine games and a bowl and dismantled it.

But that was while he was recruiting players for a vastly different style.

"They're ninth in the country for a reason. They're very, very good,'' West Virginia coach Bill Stewart said. "And it's been five years in the works. It's five years of getting better each year and adding to the repertoire. To me, I see many, many seniors on the two-deep and that's been five years in the making.''

Pardon Stewart if he takes time out to admire not only the job Wannstedt has done, but the way he did it. Stewart, of course, is regularly criticized for the perception that he has run West Virginia's program into the ground. He has taken what Rich Rodriguez built, or so the storyline goes, and changed things just for the sake of change. And it's just not working.

It wasn't always that way.

Dave Wannstedt, after all, is in his fifth season at Pitt. For all or parts of each of the first four it was an uphill struggle.

In fact, as recently as the beginning of last season his coaching obituary was still being written. That was when the Panthers lost their opening game at home to Bowling Green and the beat writer for one of the major daily newspapers covering the team described it, at least in his instant Internet story, as perhaps the beginning of the end of the Wannstedt era.

And who could have blamed him? Wannstedt inherited a program that, while certainly not upper tier, had been to five straight bowls under Walt Harris. Harris' last team at Pitt, in 2004, had won a share of the Big East title and played in the Fiesta Bowl.

And Wannstedt immediately lowered expectations. He won five games and then six and then slipped back to five again. And despite having upset West Virginia at the end of that third season - to avoid a 4-8 record - that loss to Bowling Green made his record to date 16-20.

But since that game Pitt is 18-4. This year the Panthers are 9-1 and ranked in the Top 10 of every major poll and in the BCS standings. Heading into Friday night's Backyard Brawl at West Virginia, Pitt is on the verge of its first 10-win season since the Dan Marino era almost 30 years ago.

And it's all because Wannstedt was given the time to put things together and, more importantly, managed to get it done. He took over the program that Harris had routinely guided to eight or nine games and a bowl and dismantled it.

But that was while he was recruiting players for a vastly different style.

"They're ninth in the country for a reason. They're very, very good,'' West Virginia coach Bill Stewart said. "And it's been five years in the works. It's five years of getting better each year and adding to the repertoire. To me, I see many, many seniors on the two-deep and that's been five years in the making.''

Pardon Stewart if he takes time out to admire not only the job Wannstedt has done, but the way he did it. Stewart, of course, is regularly criticized for the perception that he has run West Virginia's program into the ground. He has taken what Rich Rodriguez built, or so the storyline goes, and changed things just for the sake of change. And it's just not working.

How else to explain that Stewart's Mountaineers have in two seasons lost seven games or that the offense that once terrorized the Big East and the nation is now but a curiosity?

But how different is that from what Wannstedt did? He inherited a team from Harris that was built for throwing the football. Linemen and running backs and hard-core defenders were secondary to throwers and catchers. Wannstedt wanted a team that ran the football and played defense. It took him time to recruit to that philosophy. Stewart inherited players tailored to Rodriguez's spread running attack. That's the same running attack that was throttled by Pitt and South Florida and others. It was the same attack that everyone agreed had to be altered if the Mountaineers were going to continue to live among college football's elite.

Forget that the Rodriguez-era linemen didn't know pass blocking from ballet dancing, that the wide receivers knew how to block and run maybe three patterns or that there was a mystifying imbalance among scholarship players tilting heavily toward the offensive side of the football. Stewart and his staff were supposed to take those players, change the system so that another Pitt debacle didn't happen and do it right now.

All of which brings us back to Wannstedt, who despite the calls for his head from fans was given time to do what he was hired to do by the Pitt administration.

"It might be the city of Pittsburgh," said Wannstedt, whose resume includes head coaching stints in the NFL with the Bears and the Dolphins. "Two years in Miami we won 10 games a year and people were ready to run me out of town because we weren't winning Super Bowls. The Steelers, they won six, seven, nine with Bill Cowher and they gave him a contract extension, and a few years later he wins the Super Bowl.

"After the first couple of years in Pittsburgh, everyone wanted it to happen faster. We were trying to build from the ground up. The seniors this year were the first recruiting class I brought in."

Now, a couple of things beg to be pointed out here. First, the fact that Pitt is 9-1 this season doesn't necessarily make Wannstedt a coaching genius. Maybe it's a fluke or fate or whatever. Maybe in another year the guy is 7-5 and the dogs are barking again.

And second, just because you give a guy five years doesn't mean he's going to get it done. Sports on all levels are littered with guys who said they needed five years and after only three or four it became obvious they weren't getting the job done. Charlie Weis, anyone?

But to declare a program dead in the water after just two years, as Wannstedt seems to have proven, is just a wee bit premature, don't you think? Shoot, you want numbers, try this one out for size: Since Pitt's 13-9 win over West Virginia to end the 2007 season, the game that supposedly was the turning point for both programs - Pitt's up and WVU's down - the Panthers have 18 wins and are 0-1 in bowls. West Virginia over the same span has 17 wins and is 2-0 in the postseason.

Sometimes what-have-you-done-for-me-lately isn't the right barometer. It's what-can-you-do-for-me. And for Stewart, as it was with Wannstedt, that jury needs to stay out for a while.

Reach Dave Hickman at 304-348-1734 or dphickm...@aol.com.