Former Penn State punter Blake Gillikin rips Pat Narduzzi’s final coaches ballot

This week saw the final USA TODAY Sports Coaches Poll released following Georgia‘s national championship romp over TCU in the College Football Playoff national championship. While the coaches’ individual ballots are kept secret during the course of the regular season, the final ballots are shared publicly to allow fans to see how the coaches stacked teams up from 1 through 25.

We got a chance to dive into James Franklin’s final ballot, and he did have a couple of Big Ten teams ranked while the consensus stuck to just Michigan, Ohio State, and Penn State. But it is also interesting to see which coaches ranked Penn State the highest and which ranked them the lowest. Perhaps not too surprisingly, Penn State’s lowest ranking in the final coaches poll of the season came from none other than Pittsburgh head coach Pat Narduzzi.

Narduzzi’s final ballot had Penn State ranked at no. 9, which is still a solid final ranking for the Nittany Lions. But Narduzzi was the only coach in the poll to vote Penn State that low.

Seven coaches ranked Penn State as low as no. 8 and most coaches voted Penn State at no. 7, with a handful of ballots going as high as no. 6 (including Rutgers‘ Greg Schiano and Maryland’s Mike Locksley).

Conversely, Kansas head coach Lance Leipold had Penn State ranked the highest on his final coaches poll ballot of the year. Leipold ranked Penn State at no. 5 and was the only coach in the poll to do so.

But Narduzzi’s ballot did not go unnoticed by the Penn State community, of course. And it was former Penn State punter Blake Gillikin, now with the New Orleans Saints, who fired off a bit of a shot at the head coach of the Panthers upon looking over the final ballots.

“Pat Narduzzi is SALTY,” Gilliken said on his Twitter account after looking over the breakdown of the coaches ballots.

But Gilliken didn’t stop there. He followed up with a kind reminder that it has been quite some time since the last time Pitt won a major bowl game.

It’s true. Pitt’s last major bowl victory was the 1982 Sugar Bowl against Georgia to spoil Georgia’s national championship hopes. But since then, Pitt is 0-4 in games that make up today’s New Years Six.

Surely Narduzzi has some explanation for ranking Penn State as low as he did when everyone else in the country had the Nittany Lions at least one spot higher. But we probably have a good guess as to why Narduzzi voted the way he did.

And, of course, Franklin left Pitt off of his ballot entirely.

List

Here is how James Franklin voted in final USA TODAY Sports Coaches Poll

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