Penn State Is Not “Afraid” To Schedule Pitt

Despite the insistence of some cantankerous columnists, Penn State hasn’t exactly shied away from facing their former archrival.

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Let’s get one thing out of the way right up front: If any of the charming folks who represent the Pitt fanbase online come across this week’s column, it will undoubtedly provoke some comments that they are living “rent free” in my head.

Don’t get it twisted; invited guests don’t have to pay rent.

I grew up with the Penn State-Pitt rivalry and remain steadfast in my nostalgia for intense battles played out in the late November chill. I’m writing this piece because Pittsburgh columnists setting Twitter ablaze with rhetorical Molotov cocktails and Penn Staters responding in kind is all in good fun.

To me, the gridiron animus between two great Pennsylvania universities symbolizes everything good about college football. If I had my druthers, the teams would play every year, ideally at the end of the regular season. Based on many in-person and virtual interactions with many Penn State alumni and fans over many years, I am confident that this puts me in the minority.

As far as I can tell, the number of Penn State fans who remember or care about a time when Pitt-Penn State belonged in the same conversation with Alabama-Auburn, Ohio State-Michigan, or Florida-Florida State dwindles with each passing year. The Nittany Lions are about to begin their fourth decade of membership in the ever-expanding Big Ten, and the prospect of future games against USC or Oregon generates much more excitement than the memory of dormant rivalries from the analog age. Today’s college seniors were born after 9/11. Games involving Tony Dorsett and Dan Marino mean little to them. Much of Nittany Nation has moved on.

It often seems that the same cannot be said of their counterparts from the Steel City. An important lesson for the modern age is to never judge fans (or any group, for that matter) based on a sample drawn exclusively from the internet, but there is a subset of the (yes, mostly online) Pitt fanbase and Pittsburgh media that seems (at times significantly) more interested in dogging the Nittany Lions than following the Panthers. Even the head coach gets in on the act. Pat Narduzzi routinely takes unprovoked shots at Penn State, as he did this August when he bizarrely took a question about his quarterback room as an opportunity to insult PSU’s “one word” offense (feel free to compare results against a common opponent). Another familiar refrain, especially from the press, comes in the form of complaints about Penn State “refusing” to schedule Pitt. One columnist even suggested recently that both teams ought to give up their bye weeks, adding a 13^th game to the schedule just to preserve this traditional rivalry, one that’s been dead everywhere save Twitter’s dystopian hellscape for nearly 30 years. Frequently laced with resentment and entitlement, these claims often imply, or even suggest outright, that PSU dodges the Panthers out of fear of being embarrassed by their former in-state rivals.

For the record, the all-time series currently sits at 53-43-4 in favor of Penn State with the Nittany Lions holding a 26-8 advantage (with one tie) since 1966.

The newspaper and radio crowd I sort of understand. These guys have a job to do. They are just, as George W. Bush would say, “working hard to put food on their family.” Clicks are the coin of their realm, and frankly, dusting off a variation of the annual “THEY’RE AFRAID TO SCHEDULE US!” column is going to generate way more engagement than anything having to do with the actual team they cover.

This puzzles me – genuinely; I’m not being condescending or sarcastic. Even as someone who relishes the antagonism between the two schools, I have never, even at Penn State’s lowest points (and I have, of course, endured some doozies), found Pitt’s moments of misfortune (no matter how frequent or amusing) more compelling than even mundane recruiting updates and roster news about the Nittany Lions. I realize that Pitt football, despite a proud tradition and a smattering of nice enough seasons, hasn’t exactly lit the college football world on fire. This year’s Panthers are 1-4, wallowing in the basement of ACC offensive statistics, and will now turn to a Penn State transfer at quarterback to try to right the ship. I’m sure it doesn’t arrest the attention, ok? I still find the obsession a little odd.

The Flyers have been a smoldering tire fire for what feels to me like forever, and yet I’ve still been more interested in following their puzzling and futile personnel moves than in rooting against the Penguins.

So is there any merit to these claims, or are they so much click-bait? Is it possible that Penn State is actually “afraid” to schedule Pitt? In the spirit of friendly rivalry, I thought I’d use the occasion of State’s Bye Week to take a closer look. Let’s start with the raw numbers.

The last edition of the traditional Pitt-Penn State rivalry (a 57-13 victory for the Lions) was played in 1992, PSU’s final season as an independent before beginning Big Ten competition the following year. The Big Ten move, which presaged the tectonic realignment to come, complicated the scheduling paradigm for Penn State, which previously enjoyed complete freedom to set its own slate. The long-running series with Pitt ended, but not for long. The schools were able to arrange a four-game non-conference series beginning in 1997.

Since that ’97 season, Penn State’s first opportunity to again face Pitt following the seismic shift to conference membership, the teams have played a total of eight times with six PSU victories. Far from ducking the Panthers over that stretch, the Nittany Lions have scheduled them more than any other non-conference opponent save Temple (12 games vs. Penn State since 1997).

For the Pitt boosters who may scoff at the many matchups with the Owls, it is important to point out that State got three home games for every one trip to Philly. One sticking point in the scheduling process has been Pitt’s insistence on an equal exchange of home games. Playing Temple has helped Penn State maximize its home-game revenue, a critical component in supporting an Athletics budget that receives no tax or tuition dollars. Any series with Pitt offers no such flexibility. The time frame in question also saw Pitt face Temple eight times from 1997-2004 as a Big East conference opponent, compiling a 6-2 record.

Over that period, Penn State also scheduled home-and-home series with Alabama, Auburn, Miami (FL), Nebraska, Notre Dame, and West Virginia along with Pitt’s current ACC conference opponents Syracuse, Boston College, Virginia, and Virginia Tech (canceled due to COVID). To the point about fan interest in the game from Penn State’s side, traditionalists like me appreciated having the Panthers back on the slate, but nearly everyone enjoyed seeing the SEC schools and other familiar foes from the independent days, including the many folks who couldn’t care less about playing Pitt. Given how far in advance these games are scheduled and the necessity of balancing conference dates and a seventh home game annually, locking in an every-year game would have made this type of marquee scheduling next to impossible.

Pitt deserves recognition for some tough scheduling as well. The Panthers have faced Notre Dame 14 times since ’97 (going 5-9) with another game scheduled for later this year. They have played Iowa four times along with home-and-home series against Michigan State, Nebraska, Texas A&M, Oklahoma State, Virginia, North Carolina, West Virginia, and Tennessee, plus one-offs against Florida State, Miami (FL), and Virginia Tech (with all ACC schools prior to their joining the conference).

Overall, from the start of the 1997 season through this week, the Nittany Lions have an .822 winning percentage in non-conference games with a record of 74-16. Over that same time period, Pitt, which has never gone undefeated in non-conference play, has an out-of-conference winning percentage of .551 and a record of 70-57. The particulars of Pitt’s Big East and ACC schedules account for the disparity in number of games played.

By the simplest and most direct measure, Penn State has not shied away from playing Pitt. The University has, in fact, done the exact opposite. Even as the massive Athletics budget demands revenue generated from seven home games per year, with fans treated to a variety of matchups involving some of college football’s most historic programs, PSU has still managed to face off with the Panthers the second-most times of any opponent.

Another favorite canard goes something like this, “Penn State can always find room on the schedule for Idaho, Villanova, Delaware, and UMass, so why not Pitt?” Again, I am no great fan of power programs scheduling FCS opponents, though I do feel a bit more charitable to the concept when it brings a regional team like the Wildcats or Blue Hens to Beaver Stadium. But that last bit there is the literal money line. As I think most fans understand, these schools happily travel to Happy Valley and trade a notch in the loss column for a nice payday from Penn State, even as PSU benefits from the financial windfall of a home game without any obligation to reciprocate in the future. You can make the argument that the University ought to compromise its model for funding its other 30 varsity sports in the name of keeping the Pitt rivalry on life support, but don’t expect to find a receptive audience.

In mild defense of these types of games, by the way, there is no preseason in college football, and stringent restrictions on Summer practices have drastically reduced the amount of physical and mental preparation that can happen before the opening kickoff. Scheduling a game or two against inferior competition not only makes good business sense for power programs like Penn State, it also helps make up for this deficit in crucial reps. What’s more, these games create an opening for families who may otherwise struggle to afford attending a bigger ticket matchup a chance to experience Nittany Lions football in Beaver Stadium. I may not love these games, but I do understand their purpose.

Also worth noting is that in the 26 years since PSU first got Pitt back on the schedule after joining the Big Ten, the same time period in which Lions fans are supposed to feel shame over Penn State’s hosting the occasional Vandal or Minuteman, the Panthers have scheduled: Youngstown State, Delaware, New Hampshire, Albany (all twice), plus Austin Peay, East Tennessee State, Furman, Gardner-Webb, Grambling, Maine, Old Dominion, Rhode Island, Rice, The Citadel, UMass, and Wofford. Glass houses, and all….

When James Franklin was cornered about it on his radio show earlier this year, he grudgingly delved into another important aspect of how Penn State views the question of scheduling Pitt: attendance. How much does it help Penn State to keep Pitt on the schedule versus the benefit to the Panthers program when the Nittany Lions come to town?

Back in 2016, when the two teams began their second four-game slate, the renewal of the rivalry drew a Pittsburgh city record 69,943 fans. That’s awesome and, in my opinion, great for the health of college football. Here’s a hard truth: It is not Pat Kraft’s job to make college football better. You can argue whether the conference carousel that will bring four (and counting?) major brands under the Big Ten umbrella next year will help or harm the sport’s long-term outlook, but there’s no contesting that Pat, and every other B1G AD, will gratefully cash those $70 million checks that come with it. Money talks, and that’s a college football tradition that will never change.

Reviewing attendance data made available by the NCAA reveals that the off-the-cuff numbers James threw out a few weeks ago hold up. In 2017 and 2019, years in which Penn State hosted Pitt, Beaver Stadium averaged 106,707 and 105,678 attendees respectively. With Pitt game attendance of 109,898 in ’17 and 108,661 in ‘18, a visit from the Panthers improved on the season average by around 3,000 fans. In comparison, Penn State’s two visits to Acrisure Stadium ne Heinz Field improved upon Pitt’s season-long attendance by an average of 29,358 attendees. That’s a pretty attractive one-way street. Like I said, money talks.

To review: Over the last quarter century, Penn State has scheduled Pitt more than twice as many times as any other Power 5 opponent, despite little economic incentive and limited demand from its customers to do so. In fact, no other opponent in that time frame has played more than a single home-and-home series against the Lions, even as the University of Pittsburgh has gotten four of them. A neutral observer could reasonably claim that Pitt has received fair, perhaps even preferential, treatment. The reward for this? A ceaseless, exhausting barrage of recrimination and invective that boils down to one simple message: “Not good enough!”

So your reasoning for demanding that Penn State surpass all it has done in the past, handcuff its own scheduling options, and go steady with the Panthers is, what exactly? That you wish they would, basically. This is the powerful argument meant to sway the decision-makers in charge of a nine-figure athletics enterprise whose success or failure can move many millions more on the University-wide balance sheet? If you’re going to repeatedly and loudly make the claim that your rival is “scared” to put you on the schedule, you’ve got to come with receipts.

An appeal to tradition, then? You’ll find no more receptive audience than yours truly, yet I’ll also be the first to admit, however grudgingly, that such notions seem laughably quaint in an age when Washington and UCLA will join and Big Ten while Stanford and Cal compete in the Atlantic Coast Conference. The rampant upheaval in college football is pushing Penn State and Pitt further apart.

I do hope the Pitt-Penn State game will be scheduled again eventually, though I doubt it will happen soon. Until such time as the teams can once again decide the issue between the lines, we’ll have to settle for competing columns and dueling barbs online, enjoying a momentary throwback to that storied rivalry of yesteryear, and then returning our attention to these teams’ separate and diverging paths.

Three for the Road:

1. Northwestern’s interim head coach David Braun felt some kind of way about James Franklin pointing out what everyone has known about Ryan Field for decades: It’s quiet, and the atmosphere is dead. C’mon, guy. You’re getting 17,000 people a week in that building. Don’t die on that hill. I brought this up on the podcast this week, but the “Deion Sanders Effect” now has every coach in the country cutting a wrestling promo over some perceived slight every week, and it’s dumb.

2. I don’t think Pat McAfee is “ruining” College GameDay, but he doesn’t fit the show. Maybe it’s a moot point as the new reality of the Big Ten’s media deal is already fracturing the audience appeal of what used to be America’s pregame show, but much of GameDay’s magic derived from the chemistry between the personalities and the reverence they had for all that makes the college game unique. Pat just doesn’t match that vibe, and I’m not sure he ever will.

3. The Red River Shootout is easily the best game on the slate this weekend, and the outcome certainly has implications for Penn State’s path to the Playoff. The key contest for Nittany Lions fans to watch, however, might be Maryland at Ohio State. I’m not expecting much from the Terrapins, but we are going to learn something – maybe a lot – about both teams on Saturday, and that information should help clarify our thinking about the remaining conference schedule.