I hope you are not surprised by this predictable outcome. New PSU Head Coach Bill O’Brien generated plenty of pixels of media coverage and cheers from the Penn State base at saying he wants to restart the tradition and play Pitt annually. As I wrote a little over a week ago, I didn’t see it likely to occur. And that was even without taking into account the Pac-12-Big 10 deal to have annual games between the conferences that will be home-and-away. Effectively giving every Big 10 a quality non-con game every year to to with 8 conference games.
That leaves only 3 non-con games left. And we know from past Paterno deflections, Penn State needs to have 2 guarantee home games every year. Soooo… Gentlemen. Start. Your. Hedging.
Penn State has four non-conference games, and O’Brien says he’d like to play a neutral site game (The Meadowlands and Washington, D.C., are possibilities) to begin the season against a traditional or new rival (such as Alabama or Notre Dame). Moreover, in 2017, the Big Ten and Pac-12 are expected to begin an annual non-conference game between the conferences, further crowding the schedule.
That leaves two non-conference games remaining, and both of those must be moneymakers for the health of the program. In other words, they must be guarantee games against teams that can’t expect a return game.
“We’ll see what happens,” O’Brien said Monday. “I’d like to find a way to make it all work out.”
O’Brien has spoken at length since arriving at Penn State about the desire to play Pitt annually, but admitted Monday it may not happen because of logistics.
O’Brien is overpromising on the schedule, because PSU fans are tired of a non-con schedule that might have one good team every other year at home and at least two patsies. That’s not changing too radically.
The teams may play periodically, but it won’t be on an annual basis. Now if the basketball teams want to start back up with things that would be a good start.
Plus, they can’t even sell out their arena.
Seriously, get over it.
While PSU-Pitt or WVU-Pitt certainly makes geographical sense, it apparently doesn’t make, according to O’Brien, logisitcal sense
Again why have PITT’s name associated with Ped State. No thx, we’ve survived quite well, thank you very much,…. WITHOUT playing Paterno’s Peds for the last 12 years.
Veritas et Virtus !
I’ve always felt that the decision might have come more from Paterno than DeChellis. Whatever. When you offer a helping hand to someone and they slap you, you don’t reach out again.
You are sssssoooooooooooooooo right !
For several years, we have asked PSU to enter into agreements for our football teams to play. Recently, we entered into such an agreement to play twice in the coming years.
There is little doubt but that these are times of change in college athletics. Change is constant, but growth is optional. Therefore, we state publicly that we will play PSU anytime regardless of the perceived difficulty of our schedule and will cancel games to make sure that happens.
However, we will no longer engage in the public posturing that seems to have become the focus of discussions about whether our schools will face one another.
We will play you if you like, all you have to do is call.
There is nothing further for us to say on the subject so we won’t discuss it again. Ever.
