Dan Lanning was sitting in his Chevy Cobalt in the parking lot outside the University of Pittsburgh football offices. It was 6 a.m. on a January morning in 2011, and Lanning was there to pursue a dream. He arrived unannounced and uninvited, on a crazy cross-country quest to become a Division I college football coach.
Lanning had driven through the night from Liberty, Mo., to Pittsburgh, a trek of some 13 hours. He’d stopped at a Love’s Gas Station near the end of the journey and changed into a suit. He had a thin strand of a connection at Pitt and was gambling that he could build it into a bridge if given a chance.