For years now, the regular presence of The Penn State Football Story on Fox Sports Pittsburgh’s television lineup has bothered me. Penn State is certainly entitled to produce its own propagan… er… television show about its own football team. And Fox Sports Pittsburgh is certainly entitled to air said show on a regular basis, especially if a lot of Penn State fans watch it.

What bothers me, of course, is that Pitt has no equivalent to The Penn State Football Story — either on Fox Sports Pittsburgh or on any other network that I know of. This is probably more Pitt’s fault than anybody else’s. And I’m not even sure if Pitt has a production department capable of producing such a show.

But what I do know is that now West Virginia University has placed both shows and games on Fox Sports Pittsburgh under the guise of MSN (the Mountaineers Sports Network… did Bill Gates forget to trademark that or something?). I watched a genuinely good show on the West Virginia/Wisconsin game Tuesday afternoon.

But the last damn straw was what came on next. A well produced show dedicated to the intercollegiate affairs of Lehigh University. That’s right, Pitt fans. We’re getting beat for air time on our own hometown network by a tiny school in… heck, where the hell is Lehigh? Bethlehem? Allentown? Easton? I honestly don’t know and definitely don’t care. Worse yet, Fox Sports Pittsburgh will show all eleven of Lehigh’s football games this fall.

Will somebody in Pitt’s P.R. department do something on camera for Fox Sports Pittsburgh, please? Heck, hide a camera in the men’s room for all I care. Just make sure that there’s a Pitt logo somewhere in the background.

And I said to take Kent State and the points on Tuesday.

Hail to As Many Jokes about May 4, 1970, as We Pitt Fans Can Cook Up This Saturday