During this off-season time of the year, when there is really nothing of substance to discuss about the football program yet, our thoughts of fancy turn to the direction of Pitt’s stadium… or the ghost of one to be more accurate.
I know, we do this all the time but for some reason, maybe because Pitt fans are giddy with the higher level of interest in the football program due to Narduzzi’s hire and our eight wins last season, the talk has ratched up more so than in the past.
I’ll not go over and rehash every little reason, place, finance issues or feasibility studies (done by ex-students on their websites apparently) that we just talked about on here four days ago but will start off with a bit of a different spin on an “Is Heinz good for Pitt or not?‘ issue.
Cardiac Hill posted a fan poll article entitled “Cardiac Hill Poll: Where should Pitt play the spring game?” and allowed Pitt fans to note only vote but to comment on the subject.
Basically the poll choices were Heinz Field, Highmark Stadium, another HS Field or “other” (maybe the Console Energy Center if we really want to spend some of that ACC money every seems to think we have a surplus of). DiPaoloa understands that the Pitt admin wants to build up to a bigger spring game attendance, I know that Barnes is throwing out the 10K target in conversations, but Junker rebuts with his thought that until it truly looks like that could happen then Highmark provides the atmosphere and fun that has always been lacking at Heinz in April.
Another note is that 15,000 season tickets have been sold or re-upped. Pitt wants 50,000 by the start of the season which would be a record. We best get them onboard before Sept 10th because if we lose to PSU our fickle fan base, the local media and all of the other college football fans in PGH will turn rabid on a dime and won’t see another new subscription for some time.
It is a great give and take and I urge you all to jump over there and vote… then comment if you feel like it.
Also, here is a podcast on the triblive.com website that has a clip of “Pitt Panthers Beat Writer Jerry DiPaola joins Ken Laird, Guy Junker and Tim Benz to talk about the Pitt Spring Game at Heinz Field, on-campus stadium talk and tickets sales for 2016 Pitt Football Season.” If you remember Jerry DiPaola is the Trib’s Pitt beat writer and as such knows the program, and what the principals of the program are doing and thinking about doing.
He’s on from the start of the podcast until around the 15:00 mark or just after. it is worth listening to as they discuss the mini-controversy over the spring game moving back to Heinz Field and then they address the question of just how much a spring game means in the long run for the program anyway?
Here is a bit of the transcript of SP being asked in an interview about the status of the spring game.
Q: Will the spring game be at Heinz Field this year?
SB: It will be. Absolutely. We looked at this and I remember seeing and studying, coming into this, the highlights from the spring game at Highmark and it was packed, but it holds 4-5,000 people. If we’re going to be what we want to be, that number has to be multiples of that for a spring game. We’re really looking forward to making a big splash back at Heinz Field and getting, what that number is is yet to be determined, but a large number of our folks for our game.
Q: Have people asked for the game back at Heinz Field?
SB: Not specifically. In my own mind, you see what you want to be. Highmark is a great venue, but it’s not big enough for what we want to be. It’s just not what we want to do. We want to have multiples of that in terms of what our attendance is at spring games. Moving back to Heinz Field is a natural progression.
DiPaloa seems to agree in part with the comments I wrote on the Cardiac Hill’s piece about the upcoming spring scrimmage. At the 9:30 point they discuss an on-campus facility and if it was feasible or realistic to expect one to be build. Nothing new here – DiPaola states That Pitt isn’t interested and will not be interested in the near future. Recall Gallagher and Barnes have come out publicly and either directly shot down those questions of answered that a stadium would be so far in the future it wouldn’t mean anything to talk about it now.
So, DiPaola says that because of the above he feels that he “won’t see it in his lifetime…” which is exactly what I was told on the subject also.
At the 11:00 mark of the recording they talk about what might have happened if Pitt had renovated Pitt Stadium and kept it as our home field. Again – I agree with him 100% here that it wouldn’t have mattered much at all to the football program because of the human factors of the “big decisions: that have been made since 2000.
It doesn’t take an National Merit Scholar to see that our football was dragged to the mediocre level in the NCAA D1 schools because of decisions off the field (SP & Nordenberg) and on the field (DW’s inability to win any sort of a big game that actually meant something in future play.
But what was also interesting to me was DiPaola’s discussion of the seminal point in the Pitt football program’s decline from the Harris days through the aftermath of DW’s horrid year in 2010… not the 2010 season per se but that whole calendar year.
For those who continually point the finger at Peterson for everything that went wrong in Pitt football over the last six years here is an inside voice pointing one in the other direction and mentioning those 2010 arrests and academic failures we had then and soon afterward. He mentions in twice actually.
Things are going to stay at the status quo as far as Heinz being the go-to stadium for the spring game and as the home of the Panthers for a long, long time.
Face it, we would be overjoyed if we owned it, it had a capacity of 50k and the seats were Navy Blue.
Should have happened years ago.
Pitt stadium was OK if they would have widened the ass space by 50 to 100 %. I always bought 3 seats so I could seat myself and my adult son. I always had parking closer to the stadium in Oakland than on the North Side and The bars and restraunts are better in Oakland.
3 Rivers always felt like a Spanish bull ring where you could only see the sky if you were on the field and it was dreary. The fact is we got jammed into Heinz because the state would only fund 1 stadium each in Pittsburgh and in Phillie Pitt and Temple both were told where the bear — in the buckwheat and had no say in what happened.
It will not be different in 15 Yrs. If we build a nationally recognized program we will fill seats and they will come.I sat next to a group of Michigan fans who came to see Pitt in 81 or 82 as they rooted for Pitt cheering ” go blue”.
Peterson was Pitt’s point man for all of that and, while he wasn’t the reason we are in the ACC, to say that he was invisible or had nothing to do with it just isn’t the way it unfolded… not by a longshot.
Here are some facts of the matter:
Pitt wanted out of the BE early on in 2010 and pinged (via SP) the ACC as to the feasibility of joining that conference. The ACC then started in motion the phases I mentioned above and when satisfied basically told Pitt – ‘Here is your invite; You can apply for entrance into the ACC now.’ That was in early September of 2011 and Pitt (and SYR BTW) formally put their request to join in on Sept 18, 2011.
But Pitt wasn’t about to ‘formally request’ entrance until they knew 100% they would be accepted… and the ACC wasn’t going to accept Pitt until they had vetted ALL the prospective schools who they might have wanted. That wasn’t only Pitt & SYR but UCONN and others were looked at as well.
No university is going to change such important and long-reaching things on the drop of a dime and certainly no conference is either. When a conference adds or subtracts members it sets in motion dynamics that reach far past just football and other sports – they are inviting into conference two schools that meet all their requirements (academic and economics, i.e. What future $$ do you bring to our table? is a huge part of that also) and all of that has to be perfectly in place before the invitation to join is tendered.
That was basically a future billion dollar business transaction that had to be shepherded to make happen; SP was right smack in the middle of all that and worked on it for almost two years.
But yes – He was NOT the final decision maker – that was really up to the primary administrative deciders – the Chancellor, General Counsel and the BoT all had to have agreements align to make such major changes to the university’s future.
Let’s not just denigrate SP’s role as the AD just because we may not like what he did in other areas. He was successful in that mission, as were all the others at Pitt who worked to make it happen, he was tasked with by the chancellor in paving the way for the ACC invite and should get at least some credit for the way it turned out.
BTW – I got a lot of that info from some people who paid SP’s salary.
The game? I think it was baseball.
f the Big House had Heinz seats, it would hold maybe 80k
Right now I have a 55″ Samsung HD TV. In 15 years I’ll have a 90″ 4K TV with surround sound….nice and warm in the winter and the bathroom is close by.
The NFL may have to go to pay-per-view for each game by then to pay for the players making 25-50 million a year and for the expensive stadiums going up. They’ll never get away with that in college games though.
Oh wait…I’m 66 years old….I might be dead by then. 😉
“The first target was Syracuse, which had been on the original ACC expansion list eight years ago. The Orangemen, like BC, were disappointed when they didn’t make the final cut, passed over for Virginia Tech and Miami.
Under coach Jim Boeheim, Syracuse was clearly one of the elite basketball teams in the country and would boost the ACC’s stature in that sport.
The second target was Connecticut, which was part of the Northeast footprint the ACC wanted, and was coming off the daily double of a BCS bid in football and a championship in men’s basketball (the third for Jim Calhoun).
In addition, the women’s basketball program under Geno Auriemma had established itself as the most dominant in the sport over the past 15 years.
With growing instability in the Big East, both schools were bound to accept any offers.
While Syracuse presented no problem, UConn did — to BC, which was still fuming over what it perceived to be vitriolic comments made when BC was finally invited to join the ACC and started competing in 2005. UConn and Pittsburgh filed a lawsuit against BC, and Calhoun made comments about never playing BC again.
DeFilippo does not deny that BC opposed the inclusion of UConn.
“We didn’t want them in,’’ he said. “It was a matter of turf. We wanted to be the New England team.’’
Turning to Pittsburgh
BC officials argued that Pittsburgh, with a stronger tradition in football, as well as a long-established — though dormant — rivalry with the Eagles, would be a better fit.
Although BC and UConn are the only FBS schools in New England, BC officials were reluctant to give UConn any more credence. Membership in the ACC would do that.
UConn had already reached milestones that BC had not – including national championships in men’s and women’s basketball and a BCS bid in football. And there was the lawsuit.
Duke and North Carolina, who have thrived as rivals and neighbors, didn’t quite understand the passion behind BC’s argument, but Pittsburgh seemed like a reasonable alternative. Under Jamie Dixon, Pittsburgh had established itself as a national power in men’s basketball, so the Tobacco Road contingent didn’t argue. Calls were made and invitations were accepted.”
Did youi all get that last line? “Calls were made and invitations were accepted.”
SP answered the phone…that’s it. This all was happening while the BE was imploding…., yet some guys like Smizek think Cyanide was a genius behind the move.
Your account of the ACC expansion with Pitt aligns with the account that was presented to me by Pitt representatives while I was in Iowa for the Pitt game. If an invite was forthcoming there was nothing for Pitt to consider because if they declined obviously someone else in the Big East would be snatched up. Without BC there would not have been any ACC for Pitt, there were no drawn out negotiations BC blocked UCONN, they went to Pitt next and if we delayed making a decision ACC was going to Plan C. Syracuse was the ACC target hoping to get a NYC market and as you indicated UCONN’s basketball success put them at the top of NC and Duke’s list.
At the ACC meetings BC vetoed UConn for the reasons given by the local Boston reporter who no doubt got the information first hand from BC people.
~ DeFilippo does not deny that BC opposed the inclusion of UConn.
“We didn’t want them in,’’ he said. “It was a matter of turf. We wanted to be the New England team.’’
I’ve read other newspaper articles saying the same things.
If SP did anything warranting any smarts is was not reaching out to the Big 12 right away. The ACC saved this athletic dept.
When someone did try to move down the row it necessitated extensive contortions from everyone in the row and caused a major disruption.
Go Pitt.
And DiFelippo thought Calhoun was a pompous ass with some comments he made about BC, which motivated him all the more for lobbying against UConn
I will say that I also saw a baseball game at the Kingdome and that was not a good experience. Very dull atmosphere. Works for football but not baseball.
Governance in higher ed is a great study in futility. Due to massive decentralization, many committees are formed with big ego’s sitting on those committees. SP would not be the point person per se’ for the ACC and was most likely the provost. There is a reason for this. In higher ed, ownership of anything important,is shared. That is the problem. If higher ed wanted to, they would enable their most senior leaders to actually own an issue and then execute on the plan. Take a private industry approach to a higher education governance structure is tricky. These groups love to point the fingers at each other instead of knocking down the silo’s to move the university to the top. Don’t underestimate the power of the academics on a college campus.
They don’t like big brother watching squat and they don’t kiss the butts of coaches.
Those that discount the impact of this game on the fortunes of both Pitt & penn state as it relates to acquiring blue chip recruits from our local areas are just buried heads in the sand. This game is huge for both universities, even more so for Pitt, IMO, since we have been irrelevant for so long in competing for top recruits against the likes of PSU & OSU.
A win on September 10th is essential on so many levels for the Panthers. Don’t bother rationalizing a potential Pitt loss here. Losing is not an option. I will guarantee you Narduzzi gets it, do you!?
No more and no less, but the urban legend that all SP did was ‘answer the phone’ or have minimal input is wrong.
Fans should remember that all this happened under Nordenberg’s tenure and when Nordenberg saw SP as his Golden Boy. Not Gallagher who promptly shitcanned SP (which was the absolute right thing to do).
I find it kind of funny that some people think that what was essentially a billion dollar business deal would be conducted so cavalierly as to be executed with nothing more that a phone call or an outreach by the ACC of “Hey, want to be in the ACC?”
wbb makes an excellent observation above about Louisville’s AD being so shocked and upset that Pitt got the nod. Pitt fans assume that we had it easy and were some sort of a lock to be in the ACC when that wasn’t the case by a long shot. As we know UCONN was under consideration as was WVU and also, even though not as much discussed in the media, Cincinnati who would have given the ACC a footprint into the eastern mid-west and football mad Ohio.
Another thing that had to be really worked through was the trouble Pitt was having in the football program at the time the ACC advertised those two open memberships. Remember, all this started in early 2010 and what quickly followed in Pittsburgh was the series of player criminal arrests and the subsequent Sports Illustrated article about those arrests.
Look at the timeline there:
In early 2010 the ACC lets it be known they are expanding two memberships and Pitt desperately wants one of those spots as the BE was imploding.
During the spring and summer of 2010 we had those arrests with the accompanying bad publicity and then it all came to a head with DW’s firing in November of ’10… again folks, all this was going down while the ACC was getting requests from the mentioned schools to join their conference and were in the process of serious vetting of those universities.
In March of 2011 SI comes out with that article which, contrary to some Pitt fan’s belief, truly was a negative blockbuster when it came to Pitt’s reputation. BTW – the Pitt administration knew earlier in the fall of 2010 that SI was doing the article because they were contacted repeatedly by SI for interviews with the AD and the Chancellor.
Again, and I repeat it because of its importance, all this is going down while the ACC is in the process of vetting prospective new members.
To think that Pitt wasn’t scrambling around like crazy doing damage control so that their future could be secured in a stable and bigger conference is pretty ignorant – we were not on the ‘fast track’ for ACC approval by any means. We had to really fight for that invitation.
Knowing that the ACC was in that process an about to choose between multiple schools was another factor in Pitt’s firing DW. Pitt wanted to show the ACC that we took serious corrective action with a major change in the program. Contrary to public belief financial aspects of what a new team brings to a conference is not the be all end all factor in a conference invite – maintaining the conference’s reputation on all fronts is right up there also.
I think Pitt fans are pretty naive to think that what we see on the surface is what was actually happening with all of this. Pitt had to fight for that conference invite and the Pitt administration pulled out all stops to make that happen.
Again – SP was the point man for all of this and represented the university, along with others, in the discussions and meetings over the almost two year period before the formal invite came from the ACC in Sept of 2011.
Pitt had serious competition for that move and the fact that it worked in our favor was, as I said above, due in a large part to the work SP and his staff did to help make it happen.
Hating SP is one thing, believing that he had nothing whatsoever to do with the biggest move in modern Pitt football history is another thing altogether and just isn’t true. I’m not being a SP apologist here – I was as happy as anyone to see the back of him – but trying to show a bit of the behind the scenes stuff that went on.
And, again as wbb says, all the above is what the job of a major university AD entails. They don’t do things like this on their own but they certainly are in the thick of things. The fact is that Pitt had some more to do than the other schools to secure that invitation.
Been beating dead horses for over a week.
Has anyone’s opinion changed on any of these issues?
Enjoyable conversations for the most part though.
Really a must win today, doubtful we pick off Louisville or Duke. So a loss today most probably means no NCAA’s.
Certainly glad that BC blackballed UConn the first time, but when Maryland left, they missed the opportunity to gain the NY City area for TV’s and recruiting. Connecticut is a major suburb of NYC with UConn grads living and working in NYC. This would have offset the loss of the Maryland /DC area much better than Louisville which adds fewer TV’s and no recruiting area, not to mention academics. Even Cinci would have been better than Louisville.
BC is completely stupid for the call. Look how much all the schools in NC benefit from being in the same conference. Having your rivals to play twice a year. BC’s recruiting would have improved immensely being relevant in NYC. Fans could easily travel for the Football rivalry for New England supremacy.
Kind of surprised that the B1G picked Rutgers over UConn. I guess with Rutgers they get a patsy in both sports.
Louisville didn’t get in for their academics.
Pitt BB game attendance has been an occasional occurrence for us when we are in town for business or visiting relatives.
But, in BB she is a huge Duke fan first, Pitt a distance second. So we both are intrigued by this game and decide it may be worth a trip to Pittsburgh to catch the game. The cost is $115 per seat in the nose-bleed section. So I get over the sticker shock and I realize, for $230 + parking + fuel + meals + hotel + that one of use is going to leave the Pete disappointed.
Without missing a beat, my wife says “it’s probably gonna be you!”
Sorry Mr. Barnes, but I’m going to pass this time. Catch me when the product on the court is better.
Playing in a closed dome is just like going to a dog track and the dogs run in tubes. The same dog would win every time. Perfect conditions, speed teams win. Southern teams need them, watch a baseball game down in the sun and you would be crispier than Popeyes chicken! Shit, why leave my house to see a game in the dome. Have some friends over, turn up the volume, same deal.
Oh, and by the way, where does a ridge runnin inbred from Fayette county get off making fun of people from Carrick?
It rains in SFLA.
It is 105 degrees in Texas.
I’d take The mountain of fayette county over the cesspool of trash in Carrick.
Dr. Tom @ 8:02am
I was the 1st to graduate from college in my family. I have one sibling and she chose psu while I was in school. My dad, to this day does not understand this rivalry.
My wife and I have one son who is in the working world and is a Pitt fan. My sister has two boys who are mid teens and very athletic. The oldest is a freshman in HS – a 1,000 yard running back (varsity level) and a good BB. His brother is one year younger, but taller than bro – is a QB and good BB player.
My nephews are invited guests to Pitt games of my wife and I – right now they are Panther fans. They only wear Pitt gear, nothing pedo state.
This game on September 10th is HUGE in my family. A win may secure my nephews allegiances for life. A lose could loosen the grip…
By the way, my brother in law went to the same HS as James “the beast” Conner.
HTP!
You don’t just build a dome. Why would Pitt build something for a fan base that has never consistently showed up for games? Even in it’s heyday at the old Pitt Stadium?
Let alone an OCS … but a dome with a retractable roof? SMH. You guys went to the wrong school if these are your expectations. Pitt has under 19K undergrads on an urban campus in one of the most up and coming cities in the United States. This isn’t a huge state school with 30K undergrads with nothing else to do.
Rail lines? Not to mention that this is the city’s responsibility and not Pitt’s, it’s still going to be a hassle to get to Oakland. And if you think on OCS is expensive, an OCS and a rail line? The rail line would be more expensive than the stadium.
Anytime you have to catch a subway, metro or rail somewhere just amplifies how annoying of a place it is to get to. You still have to drive somewhere, you still have to park, then you have to wait for and catch a train and then walk to your final destination. Then reverse it to go home. How is that easy?
Plus it eliminates any semblance of tailgating. Some may prefer it but the majority will still want to drive. We’re Americans. We like our cars.
Plus it would be empty outside of Pitt games. Pittsburgh has a premier convention center. Most outside venues would still defer to Heinz. The PEC already hosts other events and can stay occupied outside of basketball season. What other purpose could an OCS provide except football?
A 40K stadium would not provide a quick enough return on investment in relation to how much it would cost to build. It would have to be bigger and Pitt fans have never showed enough interest to warrant a bigger stadium.
It’s a tougher question than many might think.
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Digital Freedom Foundation, a non-profit organisation that acts as the official organiser of Software Freedom Day
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???
Can’t golf because there is too much snow on the ground.
I guess the pass the “eye” test of being a good BB team and Pitt with a similar record (plus a win over nd) does NOT pass the eye test.
My thoughts are that neither team should be rank. But if nd is ranked at #17, there must be hope for Pitt. Too optimistic???
A win today in the dome vs cuse could cure a few ills…
My mother grew up in Lawrenceville and really didn’t have indoor plumbing until she was in elementary school. Now the original people there couldn’t afford the current housing prices.
I also felt bad for the old Italians that lived on Semple St or Atwood. You could tell the house was meticulate surrounded by shit hole rentals with couches and kegs on the porch. How those poor older folks could sleep is beyond me.
I’m assuming cuse is favored…
If Jones plays again like a shooting guard should and Artis shows up, JR should not have to shoot much. This game is made for Young and Jeter shooting jumpers from foul line area.
Next up is tOSU in an afternoon game today.
HTP!
If Pitt doesn’t win today we’ll be 2-7 (most likely) in the last 9 games going into the last 2 on the schedule, both on the road. I figure we’ll win one of those. Not a good recent resume’ going into Selection Sunday.
