69 days to go ...
With 9 national championships and
696 wins all-time, the Pitt Panthers are one of college football's storied programs. The Panthers had won 8 MNCs by 1937 but have won just 1 (1976, Johnny Majors) since then with 20 different head coaches.
The program started in 1890 and has been part of many of college football's 'firsts', including:
- First known use of numbers on the uniforms of football players was instituted by Pitt in 1908 during the coaching tenure of John Moorehead.
- First live radio broadcast of a college football game in the United States when Harold W. Arlin announced the 21-13 Pitt victory in the Backyard Brawl over West Virginia at Forbes Field in Pittsburgh on KDKA on October 8, 1921.
- First nation-wide television broadcast of a live sporting event, a football game against Duke at Pitt Stadium, was televised coast-to-coast by NBC on September 29, 1951.
- First African-American player, Bobby Grier, to break the bowl game color barrier in the segregated, southeastern Deep South during the 1956 Sugar Bowl.
- First college football player, Tony Dorsett, at any level to rush for over 6,000 yards in a career.
- First defensive player, Hugh Green, to win the Walter Camp Award (1980).
- First live regular-season broadcast by ESPN of a college football game when defending national champion BYU defeated Pitt, 20-14, at Pitt Stadium on September 1, 1984.
RIVALRIES
For years, Pitt's most heated and longest standing rival had been
in-state foe Penn State. The first Pitt-Penn State game was played in 1893. The game has been played 96 times, with Penn State holding a 48-42-4 edge in the series. This rivalry has been on hiatus since a 12-0 Pitt victory on September 16, 2000. Efforts to renew the rivalry have been mired in difficulties. It is widely believed and well documented that Joe Paterno was not in favor of resuming the series despite the University of Pittsburgh having long been open to resuming the series on a home and away basis. A four game renewal of the series has been scheduled for 2016–19.
One of Pitt's fiercest rivals has been with the
West Virginia Mountaineers. Dubbed the
Backyard Brawl, the rivalry was first played in 1895 and is one of the oldest and most played in college football. Of historic note, the 1921 Backyard Brawl was the first live radio broadcast of a college football game in the United States. On November 10, 1979, the Backyard Brawl was the last college football game played at old
Mountaineer Field in
Morgantown, West Virginia, with the Panthers prevailing 24-17. Through the 2011 season, Pitt and West Virginia have met on the gridiron a total of 104 times with Pitt holding a 61-40-3 edge in the series. With the movements of West Virginia and Pitt into different conferences, no further games between the two schools are currently scheduled.
Other longstanding rivals include
Notre Dame and
Syracuse; both schools are tied as the third most played rivalry for Pitt.
The series with Notre Dame began in 1909, and since that time no more than two consecutive seasons have passed without the teams meeting each other with the exception of the periods from 1913–1929, 1938–1942, and 1979–1981. Notre Dame currently leads the series 47-21-1. Games between Pitt and the Irish had typically been scheduled annually, however, Notre Dame's agreement to play five ACC opponents each year starting in 2014 precluded annual games, so Pitt and Notre Dame will meet no more than twice during a three-year period.
The
rivalry with fellow ACC conference member Syracuse began in 1916, and has been played annually since 1955, with the Panthers leading the series 35-31-3. Pitt and Syracuse also shared membership in the
Big East Conference from 1991 to 2012 before both schools simultaneously moved to the ACC where they are designated as cross-divisional rivals and are scheduled to meet annually.
HISTORY
1918:Pittsburgh had long been working their way up the college football ladder, going 78-25-3 from 1904-1914, and posting perfect records in
1904 and
1910. They had been a strong 8-1 team in 1914, and Pop Warner's arrival as coach in 1915 put them over the top. They would not lose again until the finale of the 1918 season --- 32 straight wins --- and they are credited with as many as 3 national championships during that time.
The presumed game of the year in 1918 was Pitt against Georgia Tech, and all the important football men and writers came to Pittsburgh to witness it, joining a crowd of 30,000 fans in attendance. The proceeds went to the United War Work Fund. Neither team had lost since 1914, and though most writers had declared 9-0 Georgia Tech the mythical national champion over 10-0 Pittsburgh in
1917, the debate had not been settled on the field of play.
Georgia Tech returned only 2 starters from their 1917 team, Hall of Famers Joe Guyon and Bill Fincher, but John Heisman's "jump shift" offense was putting up even bigger numbers in 1918 than it had in 1917, beating 3 teams by over 100 points (118-0, 123-0, and 128-0), and drubbing 5-2 Clemson 28-0. They also won 28-0 over Camp Gordon, a military team that featured GT's 1917 star Everett Strupper. Georgia Tech had 3 consensus All Americans this season, as many as Pitt and 2 more than GT had in 1917. The press treated this bout as a national championship game before and after it was played.
But the game did not meet expectations, as Pitt ran away with it 32-0. The "jump shift," used by Georgia Tech on virtually every offensive play, was completely stifled by Pitt, so in that battle of the legendary coaches, Pop Warner won out over John Heisman. As he would in 1919, and then 3 more times from 1920-1922, when Heisman was coaching Penn, and then yet again in 1923, when Heisman was at Washington & Jefferson. So 1918 was the first of 6 straight years Warner would frustrate Heisman.
1936: Pittsburgh had been playing very tough schedules for a couple of decades, and 1936 was no different. They liked to challenge teams who had great seasons to a game the following year, and they were willing to play those games on the road. That's what led them to Columbus, Ohio in their 3rd game, following a 53-0 warm-up over Ohio Wesleyan and a 34-0 rout of 6-4 West Virginia. Ohio State had gone 7-1 the previous season, their only loss coming 18-13 to 7-1-1 Notre Dame in a famous 4th quarter rally. They started this season by annihilating NYU (5-3-1) 60-0.
71,000 filled the stadium for what was expected to be one of the best intersectional match-ups of the year and Ohio State's marching band spelled "Ohio" in script for the first time at this game, but it was otherwise rather unmemorable for OSU.
Pitt only won 6-0, but they completely dominated the game, outrushing the Buckeyes 251 yards to 77. They were stopped inside the OSU 5 yard line twice, whereas OSU only advanced past the midfield stripe once, reaching the Pitt 44 on their best drive. Still, OSU hung tough until a bad punt into the wind gave Pitt the ball at the OSU 34 midway through the 4th quarter. Substitute halfback Harold Stebbins scored a touchdown on a run from there. Pitt showed nothing but the most basic and primitive form of football, as they did not throw any passes or even lateral the ball in this game.
After losing its next game to Duquesne, 7-0, Pitt defeated Notre Dame 26-0, had a scoreless tie with Fordham and Lombardi's "Seven Blocks of Granite" team, defeated top-10 Nebraska, and cruised through the rest of the regular season to the 1937 Rose Bowl vs. Washington. Having lost its last 2 Rose Bowls by a combined 77-12 tally, coach Jock Sutherland took the team out 2 weeks early and walloped the Huskies, 21-0 en route to a share of the national championship.
1937: Pitt went undefeated, tying Fordham 0-0 for the 3rd year in a row, and was invited to the Rose Bowl again. This was where the beginning of the end of Panther dominance occurred:
"The seeds of Pittsburgh's downfall were planted following their Rose Bowl victory that capped the 1936 season. Jock Sutherland asked the athletic director for money to pay for a celebration in Hollywood, but despite Pitt's $95,000 Rose Bowl payout, the AD declined. Sutherland paid for the celebration out of his own pocket, but he was angry and bitter about it, and the incident ignited a war between he and the administration at Pitt.
Like many coaches of the time, Sutherland wrote newspaper columns, and he used that pulpit to air his grievances with Pitt's administration. He also used connections to big-money donors to pressure the AD, who finally resigned in the Spring of 1937. But while Sutherland had won that battle, he would ultimately lose the war. At the end of the 1937 season, Pittsburgh was again invited to the Rose Bowl, and the players allegedly asked for $200 each for spending money, or they wouldn't play at all. That was an exorbitant amount for the time, but Pitt's administration was fed up, and their counter-offer was zero. Pitt's players then voted not to attend the Rose Bowl.
The city's media and citizens, and the school's alumni and donors, were furious. School chancellor John Bowman, already sick of the emphasis on football at his university, answered the firestorm by gutting the football program. He ended scholarships and other perks and subsidies for football players, banned recruiting, and forbade coaches from writing for newspapers or magazines, from appearing on the radio, and even from commercial endorsements-- a dramatic cut in income as well as exposure. This was like pouring gasoline on the firestorm, but the Pitt administration held firm. Jock Sutherland retired after the 1938 season, and Pitt fell off the big-time football map immediately thereafter, going 14-21-1 over the following 4 years.
Attendance plummeted and donations to the school slowed to a trickle, so the total cost of the decision to deemphasize football was simply enormous, incalculable. And lasting. Except for an 8-year period 1975-1983 (their last MNC came in 1976), Pitt has not been an elite program since Jock Sutherland retired more than 70 years ago."
1976: The 1976 season began with the Panthers ranked ninth in the AP preseason poll. The first game was at Notre Dame, where the Irish grew the grass long on the playing field in a failed attempt to slow down Dorsett, who had burned them for 303 rushing yards the year before. Their efforts were in vain as Dorsett ran for a 61-yard touchdown on Pitt's first play from scrimmage on the way to a 31-10 win. The season continued with a 42-14 win at Georgia Tech and a 36-19 win over Miami. On October 23, the Panthers travelled to Annapolis to face Navy during which Dorsett broke the NCAA career rushing record on a 32-yard touchdown run in Pitt's 45-0 victory. Dorsett's achievement prompted a mid-game celebration in which even Navy saluted the feat with a cannon blast. Pitt next defeated eastern rival Syracuse 23-13, and on November 6, number two ranked Pitt easily handled Army while number one ranked
Michigan lost to
Purdue.
For the first time since 1939, the Pitt Panthers were the number one ranked team in the country. The following week, they successfully defended their top rating in a close Backyard Brawl against rival West Virginia. With a record of 10-0, the Panthers headed into their regular season finale with only heated instate rival Penn State standing in the way of Pitt's national title aspirations.
At a packed
Three Rivers Stadium on the day after Thanksgiving, the Nittany Lions held Dorsett to 51 yards in the first half and had the game tied 7-7. Majors adjusted for the second half by shifting Dorsett from tailback to fullback, enabling him to explode for an additional 173 yards as Pitt rolled to a 24-7 victory that capped an undefeated regular season. In December, Dorsett became the first Pitt Panther to win the Heisman Trophy as the nation's best college football player. Dorsett also won the Maxwell Award, the Walter Camp Player of the Year Award, and was named UPI Player of the Year.
The 11-0 Panthers accepted an invitation to the 1977 Sugar Bowl to face second ranked Georgia. Pitt defeated the Bulldogs 27-3 and was voted number one in both the final Associated Press and
Coaches polls, claiming their ninth national championship. This was Pitt's first undefeated national championship since 1937. The American Football Coaches Association (AFCA) named Majors the 1976 Coach of the Year. Following this historic season, Majors returned to his alma mater, the
University of Tennessee, to take the head coaching job.
1979 - 1981: Jackie Sherrill led the Panthers to 3-straight 11-1 seasons, missing out on possible national championships each year. In 1979, Pitt lost on the road at North Carolina, 17-7, before winning out including a 16-10 Fiesta Bowl win over Arizona. In 1980, Florida State dealt the #4 Panthers a 36-22 loss in October, but Pitt would win out again and crush South Carolina 37-9 in the Gator Bowl. The 1981 season saw Pitt climb to #1 in the polls during the month of November only to get destroyed 48-14 by #11 Penn State at home. They rebounded to knock off #2 Georgia 24-20 in the Sugar Bowl in one of the most memorable bowl games in history.
[TABLE="class: wikitable sortable jquery-tablesorter"]
<tbody>[TR]
[TD="colspan: 5"]
Pittsburgh Panthers retired numbers[/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TH]No.[/TH]
[TH]Player[/TH]
[TH]Pos.[/TH]
[TH]Career[/TH]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TD]
1[/TD]
[TD]
Larry Fitzgerald[/TD]
[TD]
WR[/TD]
[TD]2002–03[/TD]
[TD][/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TD]
13[/TD]
[TD]
Dan Marino[/TD]
[TD]
QB[/TD]
[TD]1979–82[/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TD]
33[/TD]
[TD]
Tony Dorsett[/TD]
[TD]
RB[/TD]
[TD]1973–76[/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TD]
42[/TD]
[TD]
Marshall Goldberg[/TD]
[TD]
RB[/TD]
[TD]1936–38[/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TD]
65[/TD]
[TD]
Joe Schmidt[/TD]
[TD]
LB[/TD]
[TD]1950–52[/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TD]
73[/TD]
[TD]
Mark May[/TD]
[TD]
OT[/TD]
[TD]1977–80[/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TD]
79[/TD]
[TD]
Bill Fralic[/TD]
[TD]
OT[/TD]
[TD]1981–84[/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TD]
89[/TD]
[TD]
Mike Ditka[/TD]
[TD]
E[/TD]
[TD]1958–60[/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TD]
99[/TD]
[TD]
Hugh Green[/TD]
[TD]
DE[/TD]
[TD]1977–80[/TD]
[/TR]
</tbody>[/TABLE]
