In all of college football, there is only 1 rivalry that can be defined without words.

13-9.

Whether you’re a Pitt fan or a West Virginia fan, you know where you were and you know how you felt on the cold December day when that final score became the new measuring stick of a rivalry that began during the 2nd Grover Cleveland presidency. It reverberated well beyond the Interstate 79 corridor, becoming one of the defining moments that makes 2007 remembered as the greatest college football season of the modern era.

Indeed, the 2007 Backyard Brawl is a prime example of what makes college football so beloved, period. A 5-7 Pitt team singularly prevented West Virginia from playing in the national championship game. That doesn’t happen in any other sport, where only a fellow semifinalist would hold such power.

Unfortunately, that’s the type of thing that does not resonate with the powers running the sport. Just 5 years after the Panthers struck the defining blow of a rivalry venomous enough to be defined as the Backyard Brawl, the game was no more.

Conference realignment created an every-man-for-himself scramble that scuttled the Big East. West Virginia found its life raft with the Big 12. Pitt stayed adrift for an extra year before the U.S.S. ACC came to the rescue.

Both programs found needed financial stability with these moves. Anything beats becoming UConn. But something spiritual was lost in the process.

Hatred.

So as the Backyard Brawl commences for the first time in 11 years, let’s refresh you on why this is the most important game on Pitt’s schedule.

Penn State doesn’t care about you

You want it to be Penn State. It should be Penn State. It isn’t Penn State.

Since joining the Big Ten, the snooty Nittany Lions have determined the Panthers too pedestrian for their tastes. Or at least that’s how the story goes within the boundaries of Allegheny County. But it’s probably not a tall tale. Penn State literally (and haughtily) brands itself as “unrivaled.”

Whereas Pitt would love for the series to continue, there’s little-to-no motivation from Penn State. The programs ended a 16-year hiatus with a home-and-home series played 2016-19. Attempts to revive it again during the late 2020s fell apart with Penn State claiming the Big Ten’s 9-game conference schedule made committing to it difficult.

There’s no telling when they’ll meet again. And that’s fine. Don’t ask someone to prom who would rather dance with someone else.

Ask out the date who is going to steal your wallet instead. At least they’ll dance with you in order to get to it.

Morgantown’s favorite pastime: Hating Pitt

Go to a bar in Morgantown, W.Va. — any bar, of which there’s no shortage — and it’s clear the animosity for the Panthers has never dissipated.

You’re likely to see a giant photo of Jack Fleming, who doubled as the radio voice of WVU for 5 decades and the NFL’s Pittsburgh Steelers for 3 decades. Fleming is beaming, holding a large placard that reads BEAT PITT.

This image is seemingly everywhere. But it’s not the only reminder.

Depending on which local tap you wander in to, you can find a framed newspaper from Nov. 9, 1975 — the day after Mountaineers kicker Bill McKenzie hit a 38-yard field goal at the gun to beat the Panthers 17-14. Or a piece of wooden goalpost stolen from Pitt Stadium with the score “W. Va. 7, Pitt 6 — Nov. 9, 1957” written in marker.

Better yet, you can go to the jukebox and play “Sweet Caroline” at these establishments.

You know the part where people singing along go “Bum-bah-bahhh-bahhhh” after Neil Diamond says “Sweet Caroline?” That’s only how they do it in 49 states. In West Virginia, it comes with a sing-along suggestion that Pitt eat excrement.

Throughout West Virginia, the acronym “ESP” has nothing to do with psychic abilities. It, too, is a rhyming suggestion of what Pitt’s next meal should be. Though sometimes it is cleaned up for a family audience.

Penn State would never.

It is better to be loathed than forgotten. And thanks in part to 13-9, Pitt’s place in the hearts and minds of West Virginia fans is unshakeable.

And there is no lack of previous material to work with.

Ejections, battling mascots, billy clubs, urine and EIEIO

The year after the Backyard Brawl ended, WVU writer John Antonik published a book commemorating the rivalry. And he shared the following doozies from “The Backyard Brawl: Stories from One of the Weirdest, Wildest, Longest Running, and Most Intense Rivalries in College Football History.”

  • Sometimes the brawl is literal. Like in 1976, when Tony Dorsett was ejected from his Senior Day game after he threw the ball at West Virginia’s Robin Meeley after taking a cheap shot and precipitated a bench-clearing brawl. Clearly unfazed, Dorsett and the Panthers won their final 2 games against Penn State and Georgia to win the national title.
  • In 1952, West Virginia fans prepared to storm the field at Pitt Stadium to take the goalpost. A police commander apparently told an officer, “Let him have it” as a WVU fan approached the goalpost — which was wrongly interpreted as a cue to start clubbing the fan rather than “let him have the goalpost.” Guessing this outcome wouldn’t go over well in 2022.
  • Speaking of police involvement, there is at least 1 recorded instance of cops needing to intervene in a fistfight between West Virginia’s Mountaineer mascot and the Pitt Panther.
  • Pitt’s gameday staff have reveled in poking fun at the Mountaineers over the years. After Pitt’s 42-14 win in 1980, the Pitt Stadium scoreboard read “A Coal Miner’s Slaughter.” In 1994, Pitt PA announcer Don Ireland made several joke announcements at the expense of West Virginia fans. They included “This is a reminder to all fans that smoking is not permitted inside the stadium. That includes cigarettes, cigars and corncob pipes” and “Attention fans: There is a tractor in the parking lot with its lights on. West Virginia license plate EIEIO.” Uproar from WVU’s administration led to Ireland’s resignation … and uproar from Pitt fans led to him getting his job back 4 weeks later.
  • Back to Fleming. During a Pitt-WVU basketball game in the ’70s, a group of Panthers boosters paid some Pitt students to pour a cup of urine on the West Virginia play-by-play man. And since college kids will do anything for money… Fleming called the entire game covered in urine.

Now tell me Pitt has another rivalry that means more than that.

A Brawl for all Backyards

Pitt needs this game. West Virginia needs this game.

All of us need this game.

As we sit on the brink of another decade of madness in conference realignment, the Panthers and Mountaineers are a reminder of how the process goes awry. West Virginia plays a school in Lubbock, Texas, every year but not the nearest Football Bowl Subdivision campus. Pitt plays Georgia Tech every year but not West Virginia.

It’s wrong.

Nobody in Atlanta has been excited to play a team from Pittsburgh since Sid Bream slid across home plate. In 2019, the Yellow Jackets had their lowest homecoming attendance in 25 years when the Panthers came to town. When Georgia Tech visited Heinz Field in 2018, the listed attendance was 34,284 — 50% capacity.

When the Backyard Brawl resumes Thursday night, the newly christened Acrisure Stadium is expected to set an attendance record. And it’ll be a packed house when the teams meet up at Milan Puskar Stadium next year in Morgantown.

This is what college football is supposed to be. Not moving headlong into a future of UCLA vs. Rutgers.

The ACC has been good to Pitt and the Big 12 good to West Virginia. But nothing beats what the Panthers and Mountaineers are to each other: inseparably linked partners in an acrimonious history.

Let the brawling resume.

West Virginia is the best thing Pitt has going for it. Pitt is the best thing West Virginia has going for it. And the Backyard Brawl is the best thing college football has to offer in Week 1.