PITTSBURGH — The hall that leads to Pittsburgh’s practice facility is festooned with all sorts of bright slogans, Hail To Pitt and its hash-tagged variant #H2P and others of the motivational or school-pride variety. Jeff Capel is big on entrances, and this is a fairly important entrance, and the visuals must reflect that. Before his arrival in the spring of 2018, the visuals didn’t do that. They reflected, in fact, a place with inadequate storage space: mops, vacuum cleaners, a few trash cans, all lining the hall. There were some graphics on the wall but they were outdated, to put it charitably.



This is what you saw when you came to work every day as a player in a program in one of the best leagues in the country. You walked through a broom closet to get to your job.



And so begins the tale of how Capel, just three or four days on the job as Pitt’s head coach, felt compelled to apologize to his new boss. He was on his way to the practice gym. He...