Let’s get right to the facts shall we. If you are a Pitt football fan, age 40 or younger, Pitt has not finished in the top 10 at the end of any season nor won a major bowl game in your lifetime.
The last time Pitt finished a season ranked in the top 10 was 1982 and the last major bowl game Pitt won was the 1982 Sugar Bowl against Georgia.
After the 2022 football season on Pitt message boards, some Pitt fans went so far as to think Pitt was elite because they won 20 football games total in 2021 and 2022. Elite! Pitt fans need to take off those myopic blue and gold glasses and face reality.
When you haven’t finished in the top 10, nor won a major bowl game in more than 40 years, you are as far from elite as elite is to zyzzyva in the dictionary.
This is a list of some schools that have finished in the top 10 at a season’s end since Pitt last did in 1982: Air Force, Arizona (3x), Arizona State (2x), Arkansas, Baylor (2x), Boise State (4x), Boston College (2x), Brigham Young (3x), California (2x), Cincinnati (3x), Colorado (6x), East Carolina, Georgia Tech (2x), Houston, (2x), Illinois (2x), Iowa (7x), Iowa State, Kansas (2x), Kansas State (7x), Louisville (2x), Marshall, Michigan State (5x), Minnesota, Mississippi (3x), Mississippi State, Missouri (3x), North Carolina (2x), Northwestern (2x), Oklahoma State (3x), Oregon State, South Carolina (3x), SMU, Stanford (5x), Syracuse (2x), TCU (7x), Tulane, UCF (2x), UCLA (6x), Utah (4x), Virginia Tech (7x), Washington State (5x), and West Virginia (3x).
How many of those schools do you consider a football power? How many of those schools do you feel have a more successful football program than Pitt? Yet they all managed to finish at least once ranked in the top 10 since the last time Pitt did it, 41 years ago. Even the University of Nevada has finished ranked higher than Pitt in more than 40 years when they were ranked 11th in 2020.
Not enough evidence for you to re-evaluate how good Pitt’s football program is? Here is a list of some schools that have won a major bowl game since Pitt last won their major bowl game, the 1982 Sugar Bowl versus Georgia. Some of these football “powers” may surprise you: Arizona, Arizona State, Arkansas (2x), Baylor, Boise State (3x), Boston College, Brigham Young, Colorado (3x), Georgia Tech, Houston, Kansas, Kansas State (2x), Iowa, Iowa State, Louisville (3x), Michigan State (4x), Mississippi (5x), Missouri (3x), Oklahoma State (2x), Oregon State, SMU, Stanford (3x), Syracuse, Texas A&M (4x), Tulane, UCF (2x), UCLA (5x), Utah (2x), Virginia Tech (2x), and West Virginia (3x).
Again, ask yourself, how many of those schools do you consider a football power? How many of those schools do you feel have a more successful football program than Pitt? Yet they all managed to win a major bowl game at least once, if not multiple times, since the last time Pitt won one 41 years ago. Puts Pitt’s football program in a better perspective, doesn’t it? It should.
Is it then any wonder why when there’s discussion of a future 28 or 32-team super league of college football, that Pitt is not listed as one of those schools?
Want more proof? Pitt has played in just three major bowl games since they last won a major bowl game. Those three bowl games were: the 1983 Cotton Bowl – a 7-3 loss to SMU; the 2005 Fiesta Bowl, a blowout 35-7 loss to Utah; and the December 2021 Peach Bowl – a 31-21 loss to Michigan State. That averages out to making a major bowl game appearance once every 13 years or so.
The last time Pitt football had a season that it didn’t lose three games was 1981. That was 42 seasons ago! FORTY-TWO! Only these P5 “football powers” have a longer streak of consecutive three-loss-or-more seasons than Pitt: Duke, Indiana, Iowa State, Kentucky, North Carolina State, Purdue, Vanderbilt and Wake Forest. None of those schools is thought of as a football power. Pitt managed to keep that ignominious streak going after just week four in 2023.
But, but, 2021 Pitt fans will say. Well, in Pitt’s ACC championship season of 2021, the Panthers did not face a ranked opponent until the ACC Championship Game against 18th-ranked Wake Forest. That’s how weak the ACC was in 2021.
One would be hard pressed to find schools that went from a 11-win conference championship season to only three wins in two years, but not surprisingly Pitt did just that. Both are outlier seasons for Pitt as the Panthers usually do manage to win six to eight games a year.
The last time Pitt was even ranked in the top 10 during a football season was in 2009 at number eight late in the season. The last time Pitt was involved in a game between two top 10 teams was in 1989 when Pitt was ranked seventh and traveled to South Bend, Indiana, to face number-one ranked Notre Dame and Pitt lost 45-7.
It’s amazing the lack of overall success the Pitt football program has experienced since 1983 despite producing not only NFL stars, but players that have gone on to be amongst the best to have ever played their position, such as Aaron Donald, Larry Fitzgerald and Darrelle Revis.
If you picked an all-time Pitt NFL team, it would be in the top 10 that any school has produced and look something like this: https://johnbaranowski.wordpress.com/2018/02/13/updating-the-pittsburgh-panthers-all-time-football-team/
It is truly an enigma that despite producing some of the greatest players in NFL history, that Pitt, unlike so many other schools, hasn’t been able to catch lightning in a bottle for a season, even once, or manage to lose less than three games in a year, or finish ranked in the top 10, or win a major bowl game in more than 41 years.
However, that’s the reality of Pitt’s football program when you take off those blue and gold glasses.
John Baranowski is a sports historian and contributor to newspapers, sports publications, and sports websites. This and other articles written by him can be found on his blog: https://johnbaranowski.wordpress.com/
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