My Fellow Pitt Fans – I’m going to try to post up one of these “look back” articles, with an embedded audio recording of a dramatic reading of some articles and other media bits, on a weekly basis. If you have ever heard of, or read, the really good coffee table book “The Pitt Football Vault” then you know that is is just full of every detail imaginable pertaining to our football history and traditions. It was written by the Post-Gazette’s Sam Sciullo Jr and covers from the 1890s through the 2007 season.
What I’ll try to do is start at the beginning of our program’s history and do one or two pieces on each decade, interspersed with other biographical pieces on some of our superstar players…. like Tino Sunseri. These take only a small bit of time and effort so I’ll try to be regular with them.
We’ll see how it goes. Forgive the small mistakes, I’m getting better as time goes by.
Here is an audio recording of Sport’s Illustrated article on the 42-14 win over FSU to get to 5-0 on the 1981 season. I like this piece because of the similarities between the defense then under Sherrill and Foge Fazio and our current defense under Narduzzi and Josh Conklin. We aren’t as successful statistically but the pressure concept is quite alike.
This is the actual Sport’s Illustrated cover for the week the article was published.
Some items of note:
This was Jackie Sherrill’s last season at Pitt before he left to become the highest paid HC in history at Texas A&M.
Six of our opponents that season became our fellow Big East member teams; FSU, Rutgers, WVU, Cincinnati, Syracuse and Boston College.
Here is a great link to the 1981 season’s stats.
The Pittsburgh Press had some detailed articles on the game also; “Panther’s do it all“, “Pitt’s fantastic Team” and “Memories stir Pitt’s Thomas“. (To move the article around click on it, hold down and move).
The actual article (3/4 of it) looked like this is the magazine: (check out the uniform colors – this is what a lot of current fans want to go back to).
Here is the article, read with pleasure and with Pitt pride, for your listening enjoyment. I especially like this story and feel that after our regular season ending loss to Miami it’s nice to go into the Way-Back machine and relive a fine victory over another Florida team.
It is about 15 minutes long so put your work away and relax…
Best of luck to him in the NFL or if some reason he comes back, great to have him.
Two reasons.
1. Quadree Ollison deserves to be the starting back in the bowl game and get the bulk of the carries. Hall and James should get some carries too.
2. Pitt should not chance Conner getting hurt on their watch, for one meaningless bowl game.
If he would blow out his knee during that game, the non sense from some Pitt fans, lots of national fans, talking heads etc. etc.
would be “what did Pitt do to that kid”. “he should have never been in that game”
etc. etc.
Middle of the season with 5 or 6 games left ok.
Not worth it for one game.
On his end, he wouldn’t gain much anyhow. Even if he had some good runs, that is not going to be enough to tell NFL people “he’s ok, his knee is fine”.
He’ll have the combines.
Not trying to deprive Conner of anything, wish him well, I really do, but I just think it’s risky putting him him in for one final game.
Let his knee heal for 4 more months.
Was a go to for me, especially late night. Real food, at prices I could afford on a part time job. Could take a lady friend there, too… An Oakland gem for sure.
absolutely fantastic.
That’s not over hyping. Several of those kids have offers from all the big boys.
The others, from mostly Power5 schools.
It would be excellent!! Especially for the coaching staffs first year.
Now the bad news. If we end up not getting any of them, then it’s an ok to good recruiting class, and a building block.
Pitt’s recruiting class is teetering right now between good/absolutely fantastic.
Those guys you mentioned will determine what it ends up as.
Real simple, and what’s nice about sports. Teams play.
Beat Purdue tonight. I’m no genius. We’ve all lived and breathed, worked with people.
I can give you three different scenarios for tonights game, and give you the comments in the office tomorrow and on the call in shows.
Pitt gets blown out. “that teams a mess”, “Dixon should hit the road”, “Dixon can beat Albany St. and Wofford, but….”
Pitt loses a close one. “gonna have to see”, “looked ok, but wait till the conference to really see”
Pitt wins. “hey, what do you know, they beat Purdue”, “wow, beat #11 huh”, “good half against Gonzaga, beat Purdue, maybe we have something here”
It’s all in front of them. Beat Purdue tonight, there will be a little buzz in the air in the morning.
I know he said Pitt likes him as a safety but if he ends up a Panther, I think they should give some consideration to him as a WR…
I looked up the article myself… didn’t want to play spoiler.
I still like to get over there when I can.
Based on the clue it’s not Primanti’s and therefore must be a more recent establishment like Fuel and Fuddle. Personally, Primanti’s can’t be beat from the 70-80’s.
Comment by PittPT 12.01.15 @ 4:51 pm
LOL, I was going to say the same thing.
For you gamblers, game is even.
We will know after this if Pitt has a team
Was at the “O” just a few weeks ago. The dogs are still excellent, and the fries are still piled high.
I certainly couldn’t eat there everyday like I use to, but once in awhile it’s a little refreshing compared to my chicken breast and garden salad lunches I usually have.
We have this girl in the office. Weighs about 95-105 lbs. She’s about 45 yo.
I am not making this up.
Comes in, has 2 or 3 regular doughnuts or whatever is out.
I kid you not, around 10AM she has a 2 pckgs of Reeses Cups.
Then lunch. No brown bag or a quick Subway.
Full lunch she orders from one of the restaurants.
Afternoon snacks. Many times she brings in a thing of Cracker Barrel cheese and a sleeve of Keebler crackers.
Starts talking about what she’s grabbin’ for dinner going out the door.
Not once a week. EVERY FREAKIN’ DAY!!!!!!!
That’s BS!!!
I look at a slice a pizza and I put on 3lbs.
Doc- LOL 🙂
Doc advising eating Reese Cups – way to churn business!!
Crohn’s?
Pitt offensive line coach John Peterson was in Citra, Fla., on Monday to meet with Class of 2016 offensive tackle Zack Williams.
He’s 6’5″ 265lbs with offers from Miami, Louisville, Oregon State to name a few.
Zack is scheduled to make an official visit to Pitt on 12/11/15.
HTP!
No, no Crohn’s or anything. Healthy, metabolism, says she’s eaten like this her whole life.
Suprisingly, NO, she could not eat a whole order of “O” fries. For real, she’d eat half.
Then an hour later, she’d want a couple burgers.
I’m laughing, but it is frustrating.
I guess the positive side is, that if I ate like her, I’d have to lose 100lbs instead of 20lbs.
I worked in the kitchen that location during my college days. And the crowd of college kids that lined the doors at 10 mins till 11pm were just astounding. It was non-stop madness in that tiny kitchen for 2 straight hours! It was fun on a few nights we had live music there too.
We ended up cooking for several celebs in town during my days…cooked for Michael Douglas, Robert Downey Jr., Katie Holmes when they were filming Wonder Boys at night. We’d have a huge order for them coming in almost every night around 12:50am.
I know the original owners of the place sold the company to new owners back in 2014. Had some great memories working there in college.
Wouldn’t need a bag or anything!! LOL
LOL
HTP by the way
WBB – I grew up near Cleveland. My dad worked for Republic/LTV for 29 years. You give too much credit to Browns fans. They aren’t as near as good as their reputation. Cleveland never sold oout a season in the old barn, and that is having nearly a million people in Akron-Canton, plus the majority of Youngstown/Warren and a part of Erie, Toledo and Columbus. I grew up around people who could not have found old Cleveland Stadium if their lives depended on it. They hated Modell for decades and they got their wish – a team without Modell for an owner. Serves ’em right.
