Pitt Preview: For now, Nittany Lions and Panthers set for one last date
Pitt coach Pat Narduzzi got a laugh out of the crowd at his news conference earlier this week when he revealed that he vacations with James Franklin in the off-season.
As it turned out, Narduzzi was talking about the Nike coaches’ trip.
“I would call that a vacation,” he insisted. “So we do vacation and socialize. But when it’s game week, it’s game week.”
Game week has arrived, and a pregame handshake is probably the extent of the socializing that the head coaches of the Keystone State’s two Power Five football programs are going to be doing now that they’re no longer in Cozumel or Puerto Vallarta or whichever exotic port of call the Nike yacht last dropped anchor. Coaches may not always be as steeped in the grudges and resentments of college football rivalries as the rest of the world assumes they are, given their near-total immersion in the schematic concerns of the actual games. But the animosity that accompanies any big rivalry game has a way of lingering in the air that everyone breathes.
Penn State, Pitt and their respective fan followings have been breathing that air for quite a while. The two schools have a long history of getting on each other’s nerves – a history that predates Franklin and Narduzzi by decades but one that’s been perpetuated in recent years by a series of provocations and slights, the latest being a kerfuffle over information about Penn State’s defensive signals that recent transfer John Petrishen may or may not have shared with Pitt’s coaching staff. That kind of thing can’t help but get people even more amped up for this year’s clash in Beaver Stadium, but Franklin isn’t so sure it’s good for the rivalry, or for the sport. “There are aspects of this game that bring out the worst in both fan bases and populations,” he said. “I know some people may say that’s good, [but] I don’t know if that’s good. I think we can have a great game without all that other stuff.”
It’s unclear whether the Nittany Lions and Panthers will be able to have a game of any kind after Saturday. The upcoming matchup is the last in a four-game series that began in 2016. There’s been no official talk of resuming the rivalry, which dates back to 1893 and is about to be contested for the 100th time. Even if there were talk of a resumption, the earliest the schools could meet again is 2024. That’s the first season in which the Nittany Lions have a hole in their schedule for a nonconference opponent. They also have an opening in 2025, but they will need for both of those games to take place at Beaver Stadium in order to play seven-game home schedules those years. That would likely be a deal-breaker for Pitt, and it’s only the first obstacle in a maze of stumbling blocks.
Narduzzi said on Monday that he isn’t convinced the series will ever be revived.
“I’m going to emphasize to our kids, you might be the last team to ever get to play this game,” he said. “I don’t know if it will be played. I’m either going to be in a coffin or retired probably, so I don’t know which one it will be.”
The series’ end is disheartening, he said, because the geographic proximity of the two schools makes it the kind of rivalry that ought to be preserved.
“We all want to play this game,” he said. “It’s close enough to get on a bus. We don’t have to go wait at an airport, don’t have to go through customs, we don’t have to do anything. We don’t have to empty our pockets. We jump on a bus and we go. So we certainly want to play that game.
“And it’s a big game. It’s another game for us, but it’s a big game because it’s a rivalry game, in-state.”
Franklin was less pessimistic about the long-term future of the series, but he acknowledged that the Big Ten’s insistence on playing a nine-game conference schedule reduces Penn State’s flexibility. The Atlantic Coast Conference only plays eight league games, which gives Pitt four slots for nonconference games to Penn State’s three.
“That factors into scheduling philosophies,” Franklin said. “That has an impact on it, and I don’t think there’s any doubt about it. … You look at a lot of the teams that are playing these historical rivalry games, and a lot of those schools and a lot of those conferences are playing eight games. The SEC is playing eight games. The ACC is playing eight games. That creates some challenges.
“I could see us possibly doing a neutral-site game with them. I think that’s a possibility. You know, we could have discussions. But we’ve got to be creative about it. … With us having a ninth conference game and them having eight, there are some problems with home-and-home.”
Penn State’s nonconference scheduling formula is to play three home games in odd-numbered years when it hosts only four Big Ten opponents, and two home games in even-numbered years when five Big Ten teams will visit Beaver Stadium. The upcoming home-and-home series against Virginia Tech, Auburn and West Virginia were set up in accordance with that plan. The Lions will travel to Virginia Tech next year, Auburn in 2022 and West Virginia in 2024. They will play host to the Tigers in 2021, the Mountaineers in 2023 and the Hokies in 2025. The remaining nonconference slots will be filled by visiting opponents from outside the Power Five conferences.
Pitt, too, is reviving a dormant rivalry against West Virginia, with the Backyard Brawl set to come back as a four-game home-and-home series beginning in 2022. The Panthers also have an annual game against longtime rival Syracuse now that both schools are members of the Atlantic Coast Conference’s Coastal Division.
“We have rivalry games,” Narduzzi said. “We’ll make [another] one. We’ll make one if we have to. Shoot, we made one back in the day when I was [defensive coordinator] at Cincinnati. The River City Rivalry, wasn’t that what it was called, something like the River City Rivalry? We’ll make one up. We’ll get a trophy made… and go play.”
The River City Rivalry was between Cincinnati and Pitt, back when both schools were in the Big East. And yes, it had a trophy. The Paddlewheel Trophy weighed 95 pounds and featured illuminated logos of both schools built into a brass telegraph taken from a steamship. But the annual series lasted less than a decade, one of the casualties of the Big East’s disintegration.
The Penn State-Pitt rivalry is a whole different enterprise. There’s nothing manufactured about it. When fans aren’t arguing about something that happened on the field, they’re arguing about something that happened off the field. This is a series in which the bureaucratic machinations have been as contentious as the games, dating back to Pitt’s abandonment of Joe Paterno’s proposed Eastern all-sports conference in the early 1980s, if not before.
Can it be revived someday? There’s nothing on the horizon, and possibly nothing beyond the horizon, either. But with deputy athletic director Scott Sidwell looking on from the back of the Beaver Stadium media room on Tuesday, Franklin refused to rule out the possibility.
“We’re open to having discussions,” he said, “but it’s got to make sense for both parties. It’s got to make sense for Pitt. It’s got to make sense for Penn State. … We’re open to talking about all different concepts and options. Scott Sidwell is in the back, and his phone is open for conversations.”