MORGANTOWN — The University of Pittsburgh, the nation’s ninth-ranked football team, has waited two weeks to play this 102nd renewal of The Backyard Brawl.
That is nothing to the two years West Virginia University has waited for this game.
True, the teams renewed the rivalry last year with the Panthers winning, 19-15, but that was in Pittsburgh.
Now the Mountaineers, their season teetering precariously on the brink and with the Gator Bowl suddenly an achievable goal, get Pitt at home with a chance to ruin their dream season just as the Panthers ruined theirs two years ago with a 13-9 upset.
Kickoff is at 7 tonight.
“It’s heated,” WVU wide receiver Carmen Connelly, a Pittsburgh kid who came to Morgantown to play, said of the rivalry. “All week you can tell it’s something different. This isn’t Louisville. This is the Backyard Brawl.”
The weak of heart need not apply. The week of body can’t survive.
“The last time they were here they abused us,” added Don Barclay, another Pittsburgh kid who came to Morgantown and who starts at left tackle for the Mountaineers. “They took something from us, and we want to get it back.”
While revenge would be sweet, it would not be complete.
When Pitt came in as a four-touchdown underdog, the Mountaineers felt they were on the verge of their first national championship. Ranked No. 1 in one poll, they were assured a spot in the BCS championship game with a victory and will argue to this day that they would have beaten the Ohio State team that showed up that day.
A WVU victory would certainly crush Pitt’s national reputation, but the Panthers would still be able to claim a share of the Big East title and earn the BCS bowl bid by upsetting Cincinnati next week.
The bowl scenario remains as jumbled as the conference picture, especially since Notre Dame remains in the Gator Bowl picture if it can defeat Stanford this weekend. If not, the Irish would be 6-6 and ineligible to take the Big East’s spot in the Gator Bowl.
If WVU beats Pitt and Pitt then loses to Cincinnati, it would be almost a certainty that WVU would be Gator Bowl bound. If, however, Pitt beats WVU and then loses to Cincinnati, the Panthers probably would head for the Gator Bowl.
But first there is a matter of this football game which matches Pitt’s explosive pro-style offense built around the running of freshman sensation Dion Lewis and the pass catching of explosive Jonathan Baldwin and Dorin Dickerson and brawling band of defenders against WVU’s more sophisticated motion offense run out of multiple sets with Jarrett Brown throwing and Noel Devine, coming off a series of injuries that had slowed him down, running.
WVU’s offense has been sluggish of late, not reaching 30 points in five games, and Devine has not rushed for 100 yards in three games. What’s more, Pitt has stopped Devine well during his career, holding him to 27 yards on 19 carries in two games.
In the final analysis, the game may come down to the protection the Mountaineer offensive line can give to Brown, with much of the pressure on Barclay, who lines up against one of the nation’s premier pass rushers, Greg Romeus of Pitt.
“He’s going to be a high draft pick,” Barclay said of Romeus. “This will be a big test. The big thing in this game is who is going to be nastier.”
WVU must win this game to regain some of the momentum it had under Rich Rodriguez, before he fled to Michigan. This is especially true in recruiting, for the rich Western Pennsylvania area around Pittsburgh has been drying up for WVU.
In fact, this year, the Mountaineers have failed to land a commitment from Western Pennsylvania among 18 verbals.
The Pittsburgh area has long been a hotbed of recruiting for WVU.
“Coach Bobby Bowden made a statement,” Stewart said, referring to the Florida State coach who was the Mountaineers coach from 1970-75. “Now this was the heyday; the mills were going; the mines were going strong up and down the river. Coach Bowden said it was such a hotbed that you didn’t have to leave the Pittsburgh area to find the best athletes in the United States. That still holds true to a certain point; there are just not as many as there used to be.”
“This game can swing it either way for a high school kid (from Western Pennsylvania),” Connelly said.
E-mail Bob Hertzel at bhertzel@hotmail.com.
Bob Herzel
WVU, Pitt renew longtime rivalry tonight
- Bob Herzel
-
-
HERTZEL COLUMN: Patrone finally gets his due
Lee Patrone says he remembers it vividly, even though more than 50 years have passed, and while it was the greatest accomplishment in his life it has nothing to do with the West Virginia University basketball career that has lifted him into the Class of 2012 that will be inducted into the Mountaineer Sports Hall of Fame in September.
-
HERTZEL COLUMN: No doubt WVU made out well
There was a cold, ill wind blowing in from the north on Friday.
It was the kind of wind that blows whenever a Pitt man opens his mouth, as the Pittsburgh athletic director Steve Pederson did. -
Tears and memories: VIDEO
It was mid-Thursday afternoon at the Morgantown Event Center and the crowd stood mostly silently in line that wound out of the Events Hall and into the hallway toward the staircase.
A young lady was there holding a singular golden rose
“I wish,” Rebecca Durst said, “it could be gold and blue.” -
HERTZEL COLUMN: Stew fondly remembered by players
The tributes have poured in all week for Bill Stewart, the former West Virginia University football coach whose sudden and unexpected death from a heart attack at age 59 on Monday stunned the state, but it wasn’t the administrators or executives or politicians who really knew him.
-
HERTZEL COLUMN: White right there with Hall of Famers
Back on New Year’s Eve, 2008, shortly after West Virginia University had edged North Carolina, 31-30, to win the Meineke Car Care Bowl, an attempt was made to put Mountaineer quarterback Patrick White into his proper historical perspective.
-
HERTZEL COLUMN: Pat Beilein follows in father’s path
In a day filled with the sorrow of former West Virginia University football coach Bill Stewart’s sudden and unexpected death, there was a ray of sunshine that managed to slip through, a happening that shows us all that even in death there is life and as one son grieves, as does Stewart’s son, Blaine, somewhere else a father basks in pride over his son.
-
HERTZEL COLUMN - Stewart’s gift was giving
It was the kind of cosmic happening that defies description. We all come across them from time to time, leaving us in a state of disbelief.
-
HERTZEL COLUMN: This ‘Maniac’ makes music with Kilicli
Mike Martin wasn’t long removed from his New York roots, a somewhat rare import in these parts compared to the migration of New Jerseyites who matriculate at West Virginia University.
-
Van Zant fired as WVU baseball coach
West Virginia athletic director Oliver Luck believes with a new coach and a new stadium the Mountaineers can compete with the likes of Texas and Oklahoma for the Big 12 baseball championship but understands it will not come easily or quickly.
-
SEC, Big 12 team up for bowl
Even before the full impact of West Virginia University’s 2014 season-opening meeting with Alabama in Atlanta has been grasped, the opportunity presented itself for the two to meet again later in that season or future ones in a bowl agreement between the Big 12 and SEC that is much like the Rose Bowl agreement between the Big Ten and the Pac-12.
- More Bob Herzel Headlines
-
HERTZEL COLUMN: Patrone finally gets his due
