100 Games: The Penn State–Pitt Rivalry

In two games against Pittsburgh, Penn State’s Saquon Barkley rushed 34 times for 173 yards and five touchdowns and caught six passes for 90 yards and two touchdowns.
Photo by Antonella Crescimbeni. Copyright © Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, 2019. All rights reserved. Reprinted with permission.

It “leaves an everlasting impression on you because, in Pennsylvania, it’s the only game that counts,” wrote Tim Panaccio about the rivalry between the Pennsylvania State University Nittany Lions and the University of Pittsburgh Panthers in his 1982 book Beast of the East: Penn State vs. Pitt. In the same breath, he added, “Records don’t mean a thing, just who wins this game.”

Panaccio’s conclusion might confuse college football analysts who have covered more enduring and consistent rivalries than Penn State–Pitt through the years. The game is not at all the one “that counts” during any given season for the two schools, at least not since the Roaring Twenties when coaches like Penn State’s Dick Harlow and Hugo Bezdek either maintained or lost their jobs based on whether or not they could win this game.

In 2016 the Penn State–Pitt game, newly branded as the Keystone Classic, was renewed after a 16-year hiatus. Even after this reunion of two respected football programs, little attention was paid outside the Keystone State when Penn State and Pitt faced off on the gridiron for an early season contest. Why would anybody outside the Big Ten or Atlantic Coast Conference care about the game? Neither team, it appeared at least, had any shot at a national championship. The 1–0 Nittany Lions needed a win to salvage Coach James Franklin’s job after a disappointing 7–6 campaign in 2015, while the 1–0 Panthers were trying to earn Coach Pat Narduzzi his first signature win since arriving in the Steel City after a successful tenure as defensive coordinator at Michigan State. Penn State boasted sophomore Saquon Barkley, but the five touchdowns scored by the elusive running back from Lehigh County were not enough to overcome the 42 points scored by the Panthers’ offense led by quarterback Nathan Peterman and running back James Conner.

Heralded running back James Conner rushed for 117 yards and two touchdowns in Pitt’s last victory (42–39) over Penn State in 2016. Photo by Jeffrey Ahearn

It is only in retrospect that Pitt’s 42–39 victory stands out as a landmark game for the losing team. Penn State lost only once more during the 2016 regular season (49–10 setback to Michigan) before winning nine consecutive games, including a 24–21 take-down of No. 2–ranked Ohio State and a 38–31 victory over Wisconsin, a 3.5-point favorite, in the Big Ten championship game. The success that Penn State went on to have during that Cinderella season, which did end in a 52–49 loss to USC in the Rose Bowl, emboldened Franklin to dismiss his team’s 2017 victory over Pitt as a nonrivalry win. In a clip that appeared on the Big Ten Network, Franklin told reporters, “Last year for their [Pitt’s] win it was like the Super Bowl, but for us this was just like beating Akron.”

It is only by looking back across the century that the Penn State–Pitt series — once among the best rivalries in college football, certainly the biggest rivalry in Pennsylvania — assumes its true significance. Fans want this game to have a greater meaning than it actually does. Today, the Penn State–Pitt rivalry has become something akin to a yo-yo relationship, wherein one indecisive football program — Penn State as of late — is sometimes in and sometimes out when it comes to scheduling the game.

Linebackers Warren Koegel and Jack Ham and Joe Paterno, entering his fifth year as head coach at Penn State, with the Lambert Trophy, an annual award given by the Touchdown Club of Columbus, Ohio, to the top linebacker in college football.
Used with permission from the Eberly Family Special Collections Library, Penn State University Libraries

When we think about how classic rivalries work, we probably think about the traditional trajectory: Students from two academic institutions met on a dirt field more than 100 years ago, they arranged an annual game usually around Thanksgiving, and as time passes and college administrators co-opt control over gate receipts, the venue, and promotions from the student body, the game is given a nickname and a celebratory trophy is awarded to the winning team. Sooner or later, the teams decide to either maintain the annual game or go their separate ways. For most of college football’s big rivalry games, schools have maintained a healthy rapport. The relationship between Penn State and Pitt, however, appears to be more convoluted and confusing.

The on-again and off-again nature of the Penn State–Pitt rivalry has created a roller coaster ride of pain and passion that has forced the fan base of each program to become conflicted over the significance of these two teams squaring off against one another each year. It hardly helps that the two programs play in different conferences unlike more prestigious competitions such as Alabama–Auburn in the Southeastern Conference, Harvard–Yale in the Ivy League, or Ohio State–Michigan in the Big Ten.

In the 1980s Joe Paterno, doubling as Penn State’s athletic director and looking to save Penn State’s other sports that were struggling to stay afloat without a conference affiliation, attempted to persuade charter teams from the Big East and Atlantic 10 — including Pitt, Temple, Boston College and Syracuse — to form an eastern all-sports conference. According to Frank Fitzpatrick, author of The Lion in Autumn, Paterno’s plan fell through when Pitt, Boston College and Syracuse decided not to “abandon lucrative Big East basketball to join a conference with the Nittany Lions,” a team with a mediocre basketball program.

Afterward, Paterno submitted a proposal to join the Big East in 1982 before Pitt and mostly basketball powers such as St. John’s, Seton Hall, Villanova, Georgetown and Providence torpedoed that effort too. These schools voted down Penn State’s application despite the frantic plea from Big East commissioner Mike Tranghese, who warned that they would all “rue the day” they turned their backs on Penn State. In hindsight, Tranghese was right. Since realignment in 2013, rivalries with Boston College, Connecticut, Syracuse and, of course, Pitt were lost. Additionally, these schools are making far less money and have suffered a loss of prestige and exposure in the current Big East and Atlantic Coast conferences. Paterno’s message three decades ago rings loudly: Football is king.

Paterno’s inability to create the eastern all-sports conference, combined with his failure to join the Big East Conference, ultimately initiated Penn State’s enrollment in the Big Ten. It also caused a fracture in Penn State and Pitt’s annual football game. And yet, instead of having a clean breakup, Penn State and Pitt have cancelled and renewed their football rivalry time and again in a pattern of separation and reconciliation that has become dizzying.

The Penn State–Pitt game scheduled for Beaver Stadium on Saturday, September 14, 2019, will be the 100th matchup between the Pennsylvania foes; however, it will be the last time the two schools will play one another until further notice.

Snow falls on Beaver Field in this view from the Penn State sideline in a game against Pittsburgh on November 19, 1955.
Used with permission from the Eberly Family Special Collections Library, Penn State University Libraries

Whether or not these two football teams will ever reunite after this latest breakup, they both have remained significant rivals through the course of the 99 previous contests. They have collectively played in 83 bowl games, with Penn State at 49 and Pitt at 34. The two schools combined have four consensus national championships (two by Penn State in 1982 and 1986 and two by Pitt in 1937 and 1976) and 18 claimed national championships (six by Penn State, eight by Pitt), dating back to the pre-AP Poll era. Also combined they have 1,611 NCAA regular season and bowl game wins (887 by Penn State, 724 by Pitt), boast 184 First Team All Americans (92 by Penn State, 92 by Pitt), and have produced two Heisman Trophy winners (one by Penn State for John Cappelletti in 1972, one by Pitt for Tony Dorsett in 1976). The Keystone rivals have had some of football’s most transformative minds serve as head coaches, including George Hoskins, Hugo Bezdek, Bob Higgins and Joe Paterno for Penn State and Glenn Scobey “Pop” Warner, Jock Sutherland (who never lost to Penn State) and Johnny Majors for Pitt.

The Nittany Lions own a 52–43–4 series advantage. The first game between the two schools was played at Penn State’s Beaver Field on November 6, 1893. Penn State won 32–0. The inaugural victory for Penn State was no fluke. The team from Happy Valley won the series’ first six contests by a margin of 167–4 over Pitt, then called the Western University of Pennsylvania.

After the fifth meeting in 1902, a 27–0 victory for Penn State, Pitt refused to continue the series unless games were relocated indefinitely to the Steel City. Pitt officials had complained that Penn State’s campus was so geographically isolated by large tracts of farmland and an expanse of the Appalachian Mountain ranges and forests that the games failed to generate the excitement that urban settings typically offer for home crowds. Even one of Penn State’s early-20th-century presidents, Dr. Edwin E. Sparks, conceded that it was virtually “impossible” to get their own students “in and out [of State College] with any degree of comfort.” In the end, Penn State relented. The next 28 games were held at either Exposition Park, Forbes Field or Pitt Stadium in Pittsburgh. The change benefited Pitt, which won 17 and tied 2 of the contests during that span.

To generate even more enthusiasm about the annual showdown, games in Pittsburgh were scheduled for Thanksgiving Day starting in 1904. The 1931 game returned to State College before the two schools took a three-year break from competition. When they once again renewed the rivalry, a stretch lasting from 1935 to 1992, Thanksgiving was no longer game day, although the schools still played one another in the final game of the regular season, usually in late November.

Pitt kicks an extra point in their 25–21 defeat to the Nittany Lions on November 27, 1958.
Wikimedia Commons/From the 1959 Owl, University of Pittsburgh

Pitt controlled the series during the 1930s and 1940s. Penn State dominated from the 1950s to the early 1990s, with sweeps from 1966 to 1975 and 1989 to 1992. After going their separate ways for four years, the series resumed once more in 1997, lasting until 2000. The Nittany Lions won three of those four meetings.

There are other great rivalries — Florida State–Miami, Alabama–Auburn, Notre Dame–USC, Oklahoma–Oklahoma State, Michigan–Ohio State, Army–Navy, Princeton–Yale, Lehigh–Lafayette — but as many Pennsylvanians assert, there is nothing better than Penn State–Pitt, because it is the only one that has the combination of inconsistency and obscure proximity as described above, along with dreadful elements and elusive recruits. In spite of it all, sports fans in Pennsylvania are left wanting.

Historically, the players, coaches and fans of each team have endured cold weather, often with rain or snow. Games in 1920 and 1921, both played at Pittsburgh’s Forbes Field—featuring one of the greatest individual matchups of Walter Camp All-Americans, Penn State’s Glenn Killinger versus Pitt’s Tom Davies — resulted in 0–0 ties because of conditions so bad that Camp, football’s foremost authority, called the playing surface “a sea of mud” and the games “a joke.” Although the stalemate in 1920 cost Penn State a mythical national championship, the 0–0 score in 1921 left sportswriters at odds on whether Penn State’s team measured up to Knute Rockne’s Notre Dame Fighting Irish. Two Pennsylvania sportswriters gave Penn State the national championship that year while nearly every major sportswriter granted the title to the Fighting Irish.

Perhaps the most memorable poor weather game was the contest of November 26, 1977, played in Pittsburgh. Penn State won, 15–13, after defensive lineman Matt Millen stopped Elliot Walker’s leap into the end zone preventing a two-point conversion with 10 seconds remaining.

In a 15–13 victory over Pitt in 1977, Penn State’s Ron Hostetler intercepted a Matt Cavanaugh pass. Here he is flanked by teammates on the defensive side, Matt Millen and Bruce Clark.
Used with permission from the Eberly Family Special Collections Library, Penn State University Libraries

Those who hardly noticed the intensity of the rivalry by 1977 received a wake-up call after the 1978 game when top-ranked Penn State inched out with a come-from-behind victory over No. 13–ranked Pitt, 17–10, at Beaver Stadium. Four consensus All-Americans played in this game — Pitt’s hole-clogging defensive lineman Hugh Green and Penn State’s quarterback Chuck Fusina, Lombardi Award–winning defensive lineman Bruce Clark, and offensive lineman Keith Dorney. Some critics argue that this was Penn State’s greatest team, though it would go on to lose the national title to Alabama in the Sugar Bowl. Down 10–7 with five minutes remaining in the game and facing fourth-and-2, Fusina (who would finish second for the Heisman Trophy behind Oklahoma’s Billy Sims) used a timeout to convince Coach Paterno to go for it instead of kicking a field goal to tie the game. Junior running back Mike Guman took a quick pitch to the left to score the go-ahead touchdown.

The 1979 clash in which freshman quarterback Dan Marino completed 17 of 32 passes for 279 yards led No. 11–ranked Pitt to a 29–14 victory over the Nittany Lions. Behind the running of Matt Suhey and Curt Warner, Penn State took an early 14–10 lead, but before halftime Pitt’s defense took command of the game. The win was Pitt’s first ever at Beaver Stadium. As reported in the New York Times of December 2, Pitt’s coach Jackie Sherrill called the game, “the biggest day of my football life,” as sportswriters had projected Penn State to be the best team in the East and among the best in the country at the start of the season. “We were obviously outclassed,” conceded Paterno after the game.

November 28, 1981, is a day that lives in infamy in Pittsburgh circles, as the city’s beloved Panthers, undefeated and ranked No. 1 in the country, riding the arm of Dan Marino and on a 17-game win streak, were pulverized by Penn State, 48–14. Perhaps not the most intense game, this particular contest is marked by most sportswriters as the best win in the history of the Penn State–Pitt rivalry. Trailing 14–0 in the first quarter and just moments away from being down 21–0, Nittany Lion defensive back Roger Jackson intercepted a Marino pass in the end zone. Penn State’s offense then marched 80 yards for a touchdown. Marino threw a second interception on the ensuing drive. The turnover resulted in another score by Penn State before halftime, tying the game at 14–14. In the second half, Pitt turned the ball over five more times, allowing Penn State to steal a victory and knock Pitt out of contention for the national championship.

After four years leading the Pitt offense, Dan Marino, here in 1982, scored record-breaking statistics with 693 completed passes of 1,204 for 8,597 yards, 79 touchdowns, and 69 interceptions.
Photo by Marlene Karas. Copyright © Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, 2019. All rights reserved. Reprinted with permission.

The award for most bizarre ending to a Penn State–Pitt contest goes to the 1983 game. Penn State kicked a 32-yard field goal as time expired to knot the game at 24–24. In his second season as Pitt’s head coach, Foge Fazio believed he received his first victory over Paterno when the clock apparently expired as a Penn State runner was tackled at Pitt’s 19-yard line. Hundreds of the 60,283 fans in attendance stormed the field thinking the game was over. Though the scoreboard clock showed no time remaining, the officials informed the teams that six seconds were actually left. According to the New York Times coverage, “the clock had not been recycled after a penalty two plays earlier.” When the fans were cleared off the field, Paterno elected to kick a field goal to tie the game — the first time in his career to not go for the win.

Naturally, both universities have been blessed with some of the best football minds in the game, men with the ability to get players to reach their full potential as individuals and as a team. Following a trend that started with the hiring of movie producer Knute Rockne at the University of Notre Dame along with thespian and playwright John Heisman at the Georgia Institute of Technology (Georgia Tech), Penn State and Pitt were pioneers among schools in the Northeast that proactively sought out celebrated names to lead their football programs. In 1915 Pitt was able to poach football innovator Pop Warner, famous for mentoring Jim Thorpe, from the Carlisle Indian Industrial School. Three years later, when myriad positions at Penn State opened up during World War I, a three-sport player-coach named Hugo Bezdek, made famous for his ability to turn shorthanded teams into formidable title contenders, arrived in Happy Valley.

Of course, the reason to bestow the position of head football coach to famous sports figures had everything to do with a colleges’ bottom line during the post–World War I era as newsreels, radio and other cutting-edge modes of mass media exploded across the country and as additional funds were infused into athletic departments. Name recognition alone was (and still is) used to financially reinvigorate football programs, increase student enrollment, and attract blue-chip recruits.

This is where contemporary Penn State–Pitt headlines seem to prevail. For decades, the Nittany Lions have held an edge in the recruiting department. Not only has Penn State been able to sign more blue chip recruits than Pitt, but the trio of Joe Paterno, Bill O’Brien and James Franklin have stolen the largest recruits out of the Pittsburgh area through the years, including outside linebacker Jack Ham of Bishop McCort High School in Johnstown; inside linebacker LaVar Arrington, who was born in Pittsburgh, attended the city’s North Hills High School, and blocked a field goal in the final seconds of Penn State’s 16-13 win over Pitt in 1999; and former wide receiver and current Penn State assistant coach Terry Smith, a Gateway High School graduate, who also works as Franklin’s recruiting coordinator.

The most recent skippers of the Keystone Classic, University of Pittsburgh’s Pat Narduzzi and Penn State’s James Franklin.
Photo by Matt Freed. Copyright © Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, 2019. All rights reserved. Reprinted with permission.

After a 14-year hiatus between 2001 and 2015, the rivalry was renewed in 2016. Since then, Pitt has struggled to crack the AP Top 25 despite signature victories over No. 2–ranked Clemson Tigers in 2016 and No. 2–ranked Miami Hurricanes in 2017. Although some of the blame can be placed on the Panthers’ struggles, the game itself has lost its intensity and quality because of the conflicting personalities of the two teams’ current head coaches.

In the Philadelphia Inquirer of September 3, 2018, Penn State’s James Franklin said he wants his players to treat every game like “it is the most important game on our schedule.” It is a coaching style that conditions players to remain focused on the upcoming opponent while fighting the monotony of daily meetings and practices during a long season that begins in mid-August and ends about January 1. Although he takes a respectable approach that aims to get young student-athletes just as excited about taking on Appalachian State as they would Ohio State, Franklin is fundamentally dismissive of the intrastate competition against Narduzzi’s Panthers or any rivalry for that matter. Franklin, therefore, has written a new narrative about this Keystone Classic for the fans in Happy Valley. The result, Penn State beat writer Lou Prato writes in 100 Things Penn State Fans Should Know and Do Before They Die, is a contest between the two largest and most successful college football programs in Pennsylvania that now lacks the “impact and significance” that its alumni, fans and the media desire.

It will hardly be surprising if either coach moves on before reaching retirement age. Franklin has taken chances as an assistant in the NFL and reaffirmed his place as a college coach, ferocious recruiter, and intense motivator. Unlike Franklin, Narduzzi is less the lightning rod, more stoic, and seemingly only wants to coach at Pitt for as long as he has the passion and good health to put in the immeasurable hours it takes to run a Football Bowl Subdivision program. The fact is that coaching college football is grueling; demands made by donors, alumni and fans make it difficult for coaches to survive at one place longer than a generation, as is the tale for those who have paced the sidelines at both Penn State and Pitt, save for Joe Paterno’s 46 years in Happy Valley.

It was long ago that Penn State–Pitt, the Keystone rivalry was “the only game that counts” in Pennsylvania’s sports culture, perhaps proven stronger than any single brand in the commonwealth besides the Philadelphia Eagles or Pittsburgh Steelers. This intermittent battle between intrastate foes will tentatively end at 100 games, perhaps becoming a cultural phenomenon of yesteryear. And yet, as if connected by a 140-mile umbilical cord, the two schools will never be out of each other’s sight or mind.

The 100th game in the rivalry between the Penn State Nittany Lions and the University of Pittsburgh Panthers is scheduled for Saturday, September 14, 2019, at Beaver Stadium in University Park.

Todd M. Mealy, Ph.D., resides in Lancaster County where he teaches at Penn Manor High School and is the head football coach for Lancaster Catholic High School. He is the author of the book Glenn Killinger, All American: Penn State’s World War I Era Sports Hero. His previous articles for Pennsylvania Heritage were “Keep the Boys in College! How World War I Produced a Penn State Football Legend” (Winter 2017) and “I Must Be an Abolitionist: Pennsylvania Liberty Man Francis Julius LeMoyne” (Winter 2018).