BleacherCoaches.com

Just met a recent PITT graduate at a work related meeting. We talked about the Pitt/PSU rivalry. He said that he has heard some stories about past games, but there is no real interest with the current students, at least not that he is aware of. Funniest part about it is, he attends PITT, but is a PSU football fan along with about 10 other fraternity brothers. They attended about 3-4 PSU games a year and never went to a PITT game. He thinks the students hate the fact they don't have their own on-campus stadium. The quality of the teams fielded have not been very good, which could be due to coaching changes, and they haven't been consistently competitive over the years. This is coming from a PITT graduate.

Pitt fans can be Penn State students, and vice a versa. It happens, I know people on both sides of that fence. PSUA students that like Pitt, UPJ students that like Penn State. Both are good schools, stuff is bound to happen. I can assure me attending Penn State or a branch campus of PSU would not have made me a Penn State fan, I'm sure that's how those guys felt too.


And to attest to that, students DO hate having games at Heinz Field. Its inconvenient to party all night in Oakland, and meet somewhere at 9 A.M. and take a school bus to the game at Heinz. But in general, it would be a lot more ideal to have a stadium on campus that seated roughly 50,000.

Look at like minded, conference schools. Boston College and Georgia Tech.

BC plays at Alumni Stadium, it seats 44,500.
GT plays at Bobby Dodd Stadium which is 55,000.

Now those schools don't have great attendance, but campus atmosphere and all that jazz is a nice quality as opposed to a generic pro stadium.


Now, Wannstedt finally broke through and had a good run in 2008 and 2009 with a 9-4 season and a 10-3, and the team was ranked in the top ten for a few weeks. He followed that up with a dud 8-5 season. Wanny did NOT get fired because he only won 8 games in 2010, he got fired because Pitt was sacrificing some characters for some wins. At the time he was let go, he had a very good recruiting class lined up. 7-8 4 star players, and in the running for a few more. 27 wins in a 3 year stretch isn't Alabama worthy by any stretch, but its sure better than Pitt being 12-13 over the past 2 seasons.

They like Chryst because they think he can win, and they think he can hold guys accountable. I hope it works, I really do. The guy did a whole lot of good calling the offense in Wisconsin, I think he knows the game.

So the coaching changes happened because Wannstedt let a lot of things slide, but IMO the team would have been a consistent 8-9 win team, with potential to have an occasional better season every now and again.

Haywood left cause he beat his wife. (Notre Dame alum)

Graham left because he's an asshole.

and Chryst is here, and as a Pitt fan....I hope it works out.


So yes, to agree, there is obviously reason for frustration amongst the fan base.

Crimson, What are the facilities like at Pitt? Do they lift and practice on campus or off?

The practice in the South Side, along with the Steelers. I've been through the facility, its probably as nice as they come for a college team.

3 outdoor fields, and one indoor field. On the inside there is two of everything, since it houses two teams. But they share a cafeteria and the training rooms. But its a big place, and it is very much state of the art, and its unique.


From reading articles on Rivals, I'd say roughly 90% of kids mention that its awesome they share a place with the Steelers. It is cool for a HS senior to walk in and visit a Pitt workout, then look at the next field and Roethlisberger and Polamalu are playing one field over.

Todd Graham tried to make it perfectly separate, and didn't let the Pitt players or coaches interact with the Steelers. Again, he's a jackass. He didn't realize that's an excellent recruiting tool.

I know you meant football, but....

Obviously, Pitt's facilities for basketball are second to none. The Petersen Events Center is a well maintained, state of the art 12,500 arena. It looks no different than it did when it opened ten years ago. The basketball teams lift and practice in there.

The baseball, soccer, and softball teams just moved into a brand new sports complex. They are nice, but Pitt will have the smallest baseball field in the ACC. The Petersen's put up the money for that as well.

Wrestling is at Fitzgerald Field House. Its an old basketball barn, but they put some money into it.

say_oww, please show me where I said anything about "second mile" being a foundation that helped young boys. Or was that taken out of context also.

EVERYTHING is taken out of context, to make it fit their narrative. They could work for the national media.

You didn't... It was a joke.

OK then. I can take a joke.

sPITT? Ped State?

Why the name calling?