Fired off an e-mail to Pitt’s sports information director, E.J. Borghetti, to get to the bottom of something that seemed too surreal to be real regarding Coach Dave Wannstedt. Turns out it was both.

E.J.’s reply:

Hello, Mike. In a development very fitting for a season in which we have lost  four starters to season-ending or long-term injuries, indeed, Coach had to have surgery today on his Achilles. We expect him back and at it tomorrow.
EJ

Borghetti wasn’t sure how Wannstedt had torn the Achilles’ tendon, but said the coach had been bothered by a “chronic situation” that he was hoping to have fixed after the season.

“Sometimes nature has other plans.”