Backyard Brawl: Major bowl bid at stake
PITTSBURGH (AP) – The Backyard Brawl doesn’t differentiate between some of football’s greatest players or walk-ons paying their own way through college. The annual rivalry game between Pitt and West Virginia has humbled the big names and the lesser-knowns alike, some of the most storied coaches in the sport’s history and others hoping to hang on until their contracts were up.
Only a short bus ride through hilly, sparsely populated countryside separates the two rivals, but cultural differences and disingenuous stereotyping have long divided them.
To West Virginians, Pittsburghers are big-city elitists who care more about the Steelers than they do Pitt and thus don’t deserve the football riches – Dan Marino, Tony Dorsett, Hugh Green – frequently bestowed upon the school.
To Pittsburghers, West Virginians care less about football season than they do the state’s most-important season – hunting season – and thus should feel fortunate to be allowed to step on the same field as Pitt. (Even if it’s a grass field that has been in place for only days at Heinz Field.)
The Pitt-West Virginia rivalry has long been a pipeline to the pros, but only after the players’ passions, loyalties and stamina are tested in one of major college football’s oldest rivalries, one that began in the late 19th century and is thriving early in the 21st century.
All 65,000 seats in Heinz Field were sold earlier this week, Pitt’s first sellout in its two seasons there.
West Virginia quarterback Rasheed Marshall is a former Pittsburgh City League star who attended Pitt’s summer camp, yet chose to play for the Mountaineers. Former West Virginia high school star Tyrone Gilliard is a Pitt safety.
“There’s so much intensity,” Pitt offensive lineman Bryan Anderson said. “I don’t have any friends on that team and I don’t want to. Let’s not kid ourselves, coach (Rich) Rodriguez played at West Virginia before he started coaching there, and I’m sure he doesn’t like us. That’s just the way it is.
“When you come to Pitt, you find a way to hate them. You just can’t like those guys when you come to Pitt.”
There is much to like about Saturday’s 95th edition of the Backyard Brawl, a game that has a nickname befitting the series’ physicality and tough-guy posturing. This is no Apple Cup or Egg Bowl.
Anderson is right about Rodriguez disliking Pitt, too. Rodriguez said, “Penn State, Pitt and Virginia Tech were the three rivals we had and, without question, Pitt was the one we wanted most.”
Especially this week. Both teams are nationally ranked: Pitt (8-3) is 17th after its near-miss 28-21 loss at No. 1 Miami, West Virginia is 24th – its first national ranking since 1998 – after upsetting Virginia Tech.
This is the first time since 1989, when West Virginia was No. 9 and Pitt was No. 10, that the backyard brawlers have been ranked going into their game.
The payoff to the winner could be a big one, too: the winner will clinch at least second place in the Big East and may play in a New Year’s Day bowl game, most likely a Gator Bowl matchup with North Carolina State.
By winning, Pittsburgh (8-3, 5-1) would assure itself of its first nine-win season since Dan Marino’s senior season in 1982. A West Virginia win would complete a remarkable turnaround under Rodriguez from 3-8 in his first season a year ago.
“There are bowl games, national rankings, status in our league (at stake),” Rodriguez said.
With Penn State now off Pitt’s schedule for the foreseeable future, West Virginia not only has become the season-ending game on the Panthers’ schedule, it is the one they least want to lose.
For West Virginia, no season can truly be complete unless Pitt has been beaten. That’s something West Virginia accomplished seven times in eight years before consecutive Pitt victories the last two seasons, 38-28 in Three Rivers Stadium two years ago and 23-17 in Morgantown last year. West Virginia has one of the nation’s best rushers in school career rushing record-holder Avon Cobourne.
Pittsburgh has one of the nation’s best young receivers in Larry Fitzgerald, who had four touchdown catches combined against Miami and Virginia Tech.
“It’s going to be a wild game,” Marshall said. “This is it. This is it right here.”