This just sent to me by a friend (total old time Pitt fan). Take a look and if you are over 60 years old grab a tissue box… Note the 1:24 minute mark – the photo on the wall (from a Life magazine cover) shows my Dad standing – his head is the tallest one shown.

I used to go watch the rare weekday day games from there while my dad worked – you could see everything but home plate and the batter/catcher/ump.

Watching this video, seeing the photo and talking on here about past Pitt football games, both at Pitt stadium and at Heinz, make me very nostalgic for ‘the good old days’.

Which also makes all these earthshaking changes happening in college sports all the harder for me to handle. For me, and I don’t speak for others, but for me I just don’t see the all-encompassing fun that college football used to be happening in our future.

It is not just what happened over these last few months either. It started with the separation of athletes in football and basketball programs by being sequestered from the general student body and the slowly narrowing circle of involvements of the student athletes in university life.  365-day training tables didn’t help nor did the heavy dependency on tutoring vice attending classes because damn it! that just keep getting in the way of football!!

The shift to Power Five conferences kept it going with all the haves and have-nots being clearly defined and the driven stake in the heart by jettisoning the pretense of amateurism completely with the pay-for-play time we live in (and that is exactly what it is). Obviously the $20+K in-state and $33+K out-of-state tuition scholarships just were not enough for the kids.

This isn’t even like Chinese water torture – more like a series of car bombs going off and driving me away from what I used to truly love. When I turned the POV over to Mike in 2018 it gave me a real opportunity to take a step back and look at all this with a clearer field of vision – not being so intertwined with Pitt football and the POV.

Sadly, that clear vision is coming into crystal clear awareness that all ghee doings are not just the changing of the times, that I could live with, but more of a march in lockstep to a purposeful end to a once joyful thing.

Business is King! Long Live the King!

Maybe it was seeing Pitt’s average-at-best QB Kenny Pickett trademarking a personal logo today. Please… A GIF of him throwing a incomplete deep pass would have had more truth to it. But I guess that is just mean spirited on my part.

So, spare me the old saw of “But they are just kids out there doing their best” or “Don’t criticize them too much, they are students just trying to play their way through college.”

Nothing could be further from the truth at this point – they are now going to be, quite literally, paid employees of the University, choosing schools to attend by the highest bid offered for their services and I for one hope the IRS pays close attention to what that entails.

You know what – there is a reason Pitt fans leave the games in droves at halftime and it ain’t just because of the bussing. It is because after making a cursory appearance at the game they realize they have better, and more fun, things to do on a Saturday afternoon or Thursday evening – like drinking in Oakland, Shadyside, Bloomfield, etc… anywhere without having to watch prima donnas, with personal logos no less, playing poor football and being coached by a bigger prima donna who is so arrogant that he does not even realize his program really sucks.

Because if he actually did realize it sucked he would call the Offensive Coordinator into the HC’s office and demand his committing seppuku immediately. Then he would get someone into the position who knows what an actual running game looked like.

Ever wonder what Narduzzi’s personal logo is going to look like? Here my suggestion.

Anyway – have a great Pitt Day!