There appear to be two widely divergent opinions on the status of Pitt football coach Dave Wannstedt.

He should be fired at the end of the season.

He should be given a contract extension before the end of the season.

Both opinions are wrong.

Wannstedt should not be fired, although not for the illogical reason that he deserves four years to get his program in place and to be playing with his own players.

Wannstedt should not be given a contract extension because he doesn't deserve one. Extensions should be rewards for a job well done. Wannstedt has not done his job well.

A perfectly good case could be made for firing Wannstedt. He is 13-16 in the middle of his third season. He has lost nine of his past 10 games against Division I-A opponents. By the most important barometer, wins, his teams are getting worse instead of better.

There's not a lot to say in his behalf, but there is something to say about the importance of continuity. Pitt has a long and unsuccessful history of changing coaches. A change is not always for the better. There's no guarantee the next man will improve the situation.

For example: Pitt fired Mike Gottfried, who had a winning record, after the 1989 season and replaced him with Paul Hackett, an offensive guru who talked a superlative academic game. His football game, though, wasn't much. Pitt was 12-21-1 under Hackett, whose tenure began a run of eight consecutive non-winning seasons.

Sometimes, it takes a coach a longer period of time than might be expected to grow into the job. In Wannstedt's case, although he has a long resume as a head coach, he had been away from the college game and in the NFL since 1989. Wannstedt isn't likely to admit this, but he has probably learned a lot and changed some of his views since returning to Pitt.

This column was in favor of Wannstedt's hiring, and, even if that opinion looks twisted today, we believe he has a chance to turn this mess around. Despite the 2-4 record, there's reason for optimism because of the promise of running back LeSean McCoy and quarterback Pat Bostick.

So, yes, he deserves next season. But he does not deserve an extension until he earns it.

The main reason presented for an extension is that it will help with recruiting.

It might, but an extension for that reason would be dishonest. It would be nothing more than an attempt to fool high school recruits on what is one of the most important decisions of their lives. If Wannstedt, for example, is given a two-year extension, he could tell recruits he would be around for their entire career. What he wouldn't be saying, and what some recruits might not realize, is one more bad season could result in his firing and he would not be around for their entire career.

That's a level of dishonesty a university should not be part of, even if it is common practice.

The notion that Wannstedt needs four years to get his program in place is based on the false premise that he inherited a bad situation. He did not. His situation is often compared to Greg Schiano at Rutgers. Schiano was 12-34 in his first four seasons, but his contract was extended and he turned Rutgers into a winner.

The situations are not comparable. In 2000, Schiano took over a program that had been 6-24 in the three previous seasons and hadn't been to a bowl game since 1978. In 2005, Wannstedt took over a program that had been 25-13 in the three previous seasons and had been to five consecutive bowls.

Wannstedt did not take over a broken program, nor did he, as his apologists claim, take over a program bereft of talent.

When Walt Harris, Wannstedt's predecessor, became Pitt's coach in 1998, there was one player in the program who would go on to be an NFL draft choice, Hank Poteat. Wannstedt inherited five players who since have been drafted by the NFL, and there might be more to come. What's more, there are four Pitt players recruited by Harris who played for Wannstedt currently receiving NFL pay checks.

To further debunk the theory that Harris left little talent consider this: Three recruiting classes, supposedly good ones, into Wannstedt's tenure, 10 of Pitt's 22 starters on the depth chart this week were recruited by Harris.

The Pitt administration needs to stay the course on Wannstedt's contract and, for now, do nothing. Hopefully, Wannstedt is the answer, and he'll coach many more years at Pitt. But he has to prove he deserves those years, and the only way to do that is to start winning football games.