Football
- Title:
- Assistant Athletic Director, Football Recruiting Strategy
- Email:
- mdiethorn@athletics.pitt.edu
Mark Diethorn enters the first year of his second tour with Pitt football. He returned to the Panthers in April 2025 as assistant athletic director of football recruiting strategy.
In this capacity, Diethorn plays a multi-faceted lead role in the promotion and enhancement of the Pitt football brand. This includes oversight of the Pitt football creative team, social media initiatives and impactful collaborations with the communications and marketing divisions. He additionally is instrumental in recruiting communications, high school relations and special projects in personnel evaluations.
Diethorn’s initial tenure with Pitt football spanned from 2012-17. He joined the Panthers as a recruiting assistant and elevated to director of recruiting in 2015, when Pat Narduzzi took over as head coach.
Following his promotion by Narduzzi, the Panthers signed their best recruiting class in eight years, according to Rivals and ESPN. He played a role in helping acquire seven First-Team All-Americans and 38 players who would go on to play in the National Football League, including notable NFL Draft draftees Kenny Pickett, Tyler Boyd, James Conner, Brian O'Neill, Avonte Maddox, Damar Hamlin, Jordan Whitehead, Rashad Weaver, and Patrick Jones.
The Belle Vernon, Pa., native departed Pitt in 2018 to become Virginia Tech's director of player personnel and most recently served as Michigan State's general manager/executive director of player personnel & recruiting. While at Virginia Tech, Diethorn oversaw the Hokies signing a Top 25 recruiting class in 2019 according to Rivals, and a Top 10 transfer portal class in 2020 according to 247.
Diethorn served as a scouting and player personnel intern with the Pittsburgh Steelers during their 2017 training camp. Under the direction of general manager Kevin Colbert, Diethorn gained organizational knowledge of an NFL front office and evaluated college prospects for the Steelers' player personnel department.
Prior to his first stint at Pitt, he worked as a football recruiting assistant at Florida from 2009-10 under Urban Meyer and personnel veteran Mark Pantoni.
With nearly 15 years of experience working with Power 4 football programs, Diethorn returns to Pitt with experience overseeing Big Ten and ACC personnel and recruiting departments. In these roles, he has overseen prospect evaluations, roster management, coaches' road travel, campus visits, recruiting board and database organization, summer camps, prospect admissions, and monitoring the transfer portal.
Diethorn holds a master's degree in sport management from the University of Florida and an MBA from Pitt's Katz Graduate School of Business. He earned his B.S. in business information technology from Virginia Tech.
