Scarpinato to Pitt to play for Narduzzi

According to Chris Peak, Pat Narduzzi tapped into his Michigan State pipeline to add former Spartan Mark Scarpinato to the team. Scarpinato, a 6’3 286 pound DT, is an interesting case. He left MSU after the 2013-14 season to go to med school at Wisconsin. At that point Scarpinato was a redshirt sophomore yet had already graduated, an impressive achievement.

Scarpinato appeared in all 14 games of his sophomore season as part of a four man defensive tackle rotation on the number one defense in the nation. I’ll look into how his eligibility will function in terms of whether or not his year off counts against him. I would assume so and that would mean the former Spartan will only be able to play this upcoming season. At worst, Scarpinato is proven depth at DT and can use his experience to aid his fellow DL in adapting to a new scheme. At best, he could be a starter on a DL that under-performed last season.

Herbie Green wrote:Wtf?  He doesn't want to play doctor no more?

HT wrote:

Herbie Green wrote:Wtf?  He doesn't want to play doctor no more?

Kind of weird he left to attend med school, only to want to play football again at a different school. Feel like, given that MSU has a pretty good med school, he could have just stayed in East Lansing.

Did he just not want to be at MSU anymore or have some kind of issue with people in the program?

Other Teams Pursuing That wrote:I can only think of one reason.

He HATES MSU.

LooseGoose wrote:Good to see tRCMB jump all over this 3.5 hours later......after Rexrode tweeted it. The VIPs are gonna be pissed to hear it last.

Joe Rexrode ‏@joerexrode 4m4 minutes ago
Former MSU DT. MT @MarkScarpinato I am extremely excited for an opportunity to finish out my playing career at Pitt. #HailToPitt

Scarpinato, 22, was projected to start for last year's Spartans' team after starting two games as a sophomore and playing in every game as part of the four-man defensive tackle rotation on the 2013 Rose Bowl team.

The professional and academic side of the equation is the main reason why Scarpinato is headed to Pitt rather than East Lansing, as he's using his graduate transfer exception to pursue a Master's of Health Administration.

"Michigan State doesn't have a program that fits where I want to go — I want to run hospitals,'' said Scarpinato, who plans to take part in a summer residency program at Pittsburgh.

"I think God has a plan for all of us, and I needed to have that year off to truly realize what football meant to me.''

Scarpinato said he's training at the "Next Level" facility in Waukesha, Wisconsin, where Houston Texans NFL All-Pro. J.J. Watt trains.

“Med school is the hardest thing I’ve ever done in my life; harder than any conditioning or football, and you have to give everything you have to it,” he said. “There was just something missing for me. You can tell the guys on the field who aren’t 100% in, and that’s how it was in med school. There was a dichotomy between me and everyone else because I was still thinking about football, so I needed to finish it,” he told Panther Lair. “So I was looking at the top MHA programs, and for like the first five days I kept glancing past Pitt; it didn’t click. I talked to some other schools, and then at two in the morning one night, I woke up and said, wait, Coach ‘Duzz is the head coach at Pitt and they have a great MHA program. It all fell in from there.”

“I always wanted to be a doctor,” Scarpinato said.
That’s still the plan, albeit with a slight detour. Scarpinato completed his first year of medical school at the Medical College of Wisconsin — where his dad used to teach — earlier this summer. Before he goes back, though, he decided to take a two-year leave of absence to return to another pursuit he loves just as much as medicine: football.
Scarpinato, a defensive lineman, joined Pitt as a graduate transfer this offseason and will play for the Panthers in 2015 — while earning his masters in health administration — before returning to medical school full time.
Scarpinato played three seasons at Michigan State from 2011-13, but after the Spartans’ Rose Bowl win in the 2013 season, hung up his cleats to focus on medicine.
“We won the Rose Bowl and I got [medical school] interviews after that,” Scarpinato said. “I got into my hometown school, Medical College of Wisconsin. It felt like I had achieved everything that I had set out to. I was graduating, I won the Rose Bowl.