![]() "It's something I've been thinking about. ![]() "The hardest part, especially from a recruiting standpoint, is coming up with what's gonna be different from what other schools do and how you can kind of relate Pitt to them on a personal level," Lantz said. It certainly helps to have a graphics guru in the mix. Diethorn's department includes player personnel staffers Graham Wilbert and Da'Vell Winters, both hired this offseason, and as a group they spearhead the comprehensive grind of finding future Panthers. While Harley heads up recruiting efforts among Pitt's 10 full-time coaches, Lantz was initially contacted by director of recruiting Mark Diethorn. He's fast and works fast, which is the pace of recruiting." You tell him what you want, 24 hours later - not even, two hours later - he's got something mocked up and ready to go. He specializes in what kids these days call "edits" - basically, a photo or graphic that Lantz re-touches or enhances in a way that makes it pop off a page. So now Lantz, a former Division II college football player for one season at the University of Virginia's College at Wise, has become Pitt's secret weapon in recruiting. ![]() "We knew he was a special one, and we knew we had to have him," Harley said. Pitt and other schools noticed his work on James Madison's social media accounts and liked it so much that they wanted him to join their team. Lantz, 26, had been video coordinator at his alma mater, James Madison, but also did graphic design work for the defending Football Championship Subdivision champions whenever he had time. In fact, Lantz is delighted that Narduzzi and his staff hired him in April to be their director of creative media, a football-specific position rather than under the broader umbrella of the whole athletic department. Zach Lantz gives a slight chuckle at the mention of Narduzzi boiling down his duties to "guys like pictures of themselves," but he doesn't hold it against the CEO of Pitt football. "I hate pictures of myself, but guys like it." (Recruits) like pictures of themselves," Narduzzi said with a grin. "It's keeping up with the Joneses, and it's getting better - period. There's a chain of command that includes the recruiting staff and now Harley, who was named recruiting coordinator in late June, and goes all the way up to the top with Narduzzi. That's especially true if it's something that will eventually be posted from Narduzzi's own Twitter account. Whether you consider the Kardashian sisters offensive, Clawson said there's a fine line between being creative and taking that creativity too far.Īt Pitt, an idea for reaching out to recruits can start just about anywhere, but always goes through Narduzzi in the end. I kind of gave them free rein until that baby came out." "I'm just like, 'Guys, from now on, I need to see these.' That's when my involvement changed. With a big Wake Forest logo plastered on there? "We sent one where we had a player with one of the Kardashians," Clawson said last month at ACC media day. After all, Clawson had actual coaching to do.īut after one particular recruiting ploy, he decided it was time to start looking at these things. The staffers who handle that would send out a graphic to a prospect, hopefully the kid would like it, and that was that. Wake Forest coach Dave Clawson never used to pay much mind to his program's recruiting efforts on social media.
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