More than 66,000 fans jammed into Acrisure Stadium on Saturday to watch the 107th edition of the Backyard Brawl. And while Pitt defeated West Virginia, 38-34, the spectacle of the event itself at times overshadowed the outcome.
Fans wearing blue and yellow stood shoulder to shoulder in the stadium and in the parking lot, cheering on their team while soaking in the resumption of one of college football’s greatest rivalries.
It’s days like Saturday that make college football so popular. Rivalry games have defined the sport for decades. The games are so important to the fan bases, so integral to the landscape of the sport, that they are given names: The Backyard Brawl, The Iron Bowl, The Red River Rivalry, The Civil War, The Apple Cup, The Game.
It’s no surprise, then, that Pitt drew 70,622 people the previous time West Virginia came to Acrisure Stadium — a record for any sporting event in the city’s history. The Panthers drew 69,983 when they played Penn State at then-Heinz Field in 2016.
Unfortunately for Pitt, it’s also what is consistently missing from the Panthers’ schedule.
Since moving to the Atlantic Coast Conference, Pitt has been without a rival, struggling to fit West Virginia (and more rarely Penn State) into its puzzle of a schedule. With conferences growing in the number of teams, finding space in a schedule for nonconference games becomes more difficult.
The same can be said for West Virginia — and Penn State, for that matter. Since joining the Big 12 Conference, West Virginia also has been left without an annual rivalry game. Penn State fans consider Ohio State or Michigan their Big Ten Conference rival, but neither the Buckeyes’ nor Wolverines’ fan bases consider Penn State to be theirs — they have each other instead.
After next season, the Backyard Brawl takes a hiatus until 2029, which is what makes when the teams play so special.
“I know it’s wishful thinking,” said longtime Pitt play-by-play broadcaster Bill Hillgrove, “but maybe not in my lifetime, maybe in other people’s lifetimes, Pitt, Penn State and West Virginia and maybe even Syracuse will all play each other (every year).”
Hillgrove has been in the broadcast booth for every Backyard Brawl since 1970., first as color analyst to play-by-play man Ed Conway before he ascended to that role in 1974 when Conway died
He describes Pitt and West Virginia “almost like brothers who have a rivalry and end up in some cases fist-fighting. The closeness, the proximity just makes it more magical.”
The series began in 1895. Games were played almost every year — consecutively from 1943 to 2011 — until conference realignments temporarily ended it. It returned in 2022 for the first of four games and will go on hiatus after next year’s game until another four-game series begins in 2029.
Pat Bostick, a former Pitt quarterback and now associate athletic director for major gifts and color commentator on the Pitt Radio Network, admits his passion for the game goes “a little too far, but I care about it. More than anything, I appreciate what this rivalry means to both sides.”
“I think both programs need each other in today’s college football,” he said. “Let’s face it. Pitt and West Virginia are not bringing in the kind of money or in a conference situation like a Georgia or Alabama or Ohio State or Michigan or Penn State. But together, this game is going to be watched by a lot of people.
“Love what this game means. Win, lose or draw, it’s good for football. It’s good for this region.”
Bostick grew up in central Pennsylvania — Penn State country — but has an acute appreciation for Pitt’s rivalry with West Virginia.
“In this region,” he said, “that game, it affects people’s lives. I’ve always said that I feel like one day can determine the rest of the 364 days of your calendar, based on the outcome of a game. If you’re a Pitt fan and you win, you have bragging rights for 364 days.
“Family reunions, holidays, school, block parties, there are always representatives from both sides. That’s what makes rivalries great but particularly regional rivalries 75 miles away. (The Backyard Brawls) are tethered to this region, and they are in its DNA.”
Dislike, but respect
Bostick calls it “spontaneous combustion” when Pitt and West Virginia get together. Others take it a step further.
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“Guys hate each other,” said former West Virginia safety Beanie Bishop, now with the Pittsburgh Steelers. “That’s how a rivalry is supposed to be.”
Bostick, who quarterbacked Pitt to its iconic 13-9 upset of the Mountaineers in 2007, prefers a two-word phrase when talking about what the game means to players, coaches and fans.
“Hate in the context of football is a relative term, probably overblown,” he said. “I think that there is dislike. I do think there is mutual respect in this rivalry. I know I have it.
“It comes to a head, and it probably gets translated as hate, the words that are said, the pushing, the shoving (before games), the physicality. But ultimately, to me, it epitomizes college football. It epitomizes the passion, the pride that goes into this game and makes college football such a part of our country.
“I think what defines it is passion.”
It’s a credit to the Pitt and West Virginia athletic departments that they have revived the series while other rivalries have disappeared. Pitt coach Pat Narduzzi and West Virginia’s Neal Brown have said they hope it continues.
Pitt/Penn State was played 100 times between 1893 and 2019, but those two in-state schools are not scheduled to renew their rivalry.
Yet others have found a way to keep their rivalries alive.
Georgia and Georgia Tech will play for the Governor’s Cup on Nov. 29. Washington and Washington State met for the Apple Cup on Saturday. And Stanford/Cal-Berkeley both moved to the ACC this season and will compete for The Axe on Nov. 23.
Army/Navy has too much tradition tied to it to go away.
Steelers rookie center Zach Frazier, a Fairmont, W.Va., native, played in the Backyard Brawl in 2022 and 2023.
“Even when the game went away, that game was the game everyone still wanted,” he said. “I’m happy they’re playing it again. I wish they never stopped. The atmosphere of both places, electricity in there. Fans were more excited than normal home games.”
Rasheed Marshall can attest to the highs and lows that came from participating in the series.
A three-year starting quarterback at West Virginia, Marshall led the Mountaineers to victories against ranked Pitt teams in 2002 and 2003 but lost to the Panthers as a senior in 2004.
Marshall played high school football at Brashear in the City League, so the Backyard Brawl holds even greater significance for him.
“Being from Pittsburgh, it means everything,” said Marshall, now WVU’s director of player relations. “I kind of crossed enemy lines, went south to Morgantown, and there were a lot of guys I knew that either I played against or played with that stayed home and went to Pitt.
“It’s 365 long days if you do not win that game. You fight for bragging rights. On the field, trash talking with the guys you do know, it just made for some really good football.”
Bostick appreciates how the contrast between two schools translates into a heated rivalry.
“You have the city school. You have the country school. ‘Country Roads.’ You have national championships and close to national championships and great players on both sides,” he said.
Baldwin native Dave Wannstedt played and coached in many Backyard Brawls during his career as an offensive lineman and later as head coach at Pitt. He won a Super Bowl and national championship as defensive coordinator of the Dallas Cowboys in 1992 and the University of Miami in 1987.
“I have a lot of game balls,” he said. “I don’t have many of them left anymore. But I got awarded the game ball for the Pitt/West Virginia game my senior year (1973). That’s one that’s on my shelf. That I kept.”
13-9
One edition of the Backyard Brawl stands out among any other.
2007. No. 2 West Virginia simply needed to beat Pitt — a 28½-point underdog — and it would likely would have secured a berth to play for the national championship. The game was played in Morgantown.
Because of his experience as a player, Wannstedt, then the Pitt coach, was uniquely qualified to warn his players about what awaited them.
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“I remember talking to the guys (and telling them), ‘They’re going to be throwing bottles at the bus, and, if we get stopped, they may start rocking the bus,’ ” he said. “Guys,” he told his players, “I lived all that stuff.”
Wannstedt vividly remembers details of that bus ride.
“It’s a night game, and (the fans have) been partying all day. Sure enough, something smashed off the side of our bus,” he said.
Perhaps it was a wake-up call for the Panthers.
Wannstedt told his team that the only way they could win was to avoid penalties and turnovers. Someone wasn’t listening.
“First play of the game, Jeff Otah, our big left tackle, was going against a great player on their team (defensive end Johnny Dingle). Those two guys hit, and it sounded like two rams hitting each other on a mountaintop. It was an explosion.
“The next thing I see these two guys are just wailing on each other. I’m standing there on my crutches (he had Achilles surgery that October) and Scott McKillop (a Kiski Area graduate) looks at me and says, “Well, game on, coach.”
In separate fits of emotion, Wannstedt, who was on crutches at the time, broke two sets of crutches that night.
“I wasn’t supposed to be standing up,” he said. “Long story short, the next day, I went into the training room, and I remember (trainer) Rob Blanc saying to me, ‘Coach, any rehab you did the last month and a half is gone.’ To this day, I still limp on it.”
Wannstedt wasn’t the only one playing hurt that night.
Bostick, heavily medicated to ease a painful ear infection, scored Pitt’s only touchdown early in the third quarter to give the Panthers a lead they never relinquished. “I was pretty loopy,” he said.
Yet he gleefully joined teammates singing “Country Roads” all the way home. Wannstedt had played the song during practices that week — to no one’s delight.
“We got annoyed of that song pretty quickly,” Bostick said. But they carried the tune home like it was some invisible trophy.
“We enjoyed singing it going through the Fort Pitt Tunnels. By the time we got off (Interstate) 79 to 376, we were pretty well in tune. I wish we would have recorded it. I’ve never been associated with a group of people who were that happy after something.”
Staff writers Justin Guerriero and Chris Adamski contributed.
Jerry DiPaola is a TribLive reporter covering Pitt athletics since 2011. A Pittsburgh native, he joined the Trib in 1993, first as a copy editor and page designer in the sports department and later as the Pittsburgh Steelers reporter from 1994-2004. He can be reached at jdipaola@triblive.com.