Sep 1, 2018 5 min read

It is nice to see Penn State and Temple are renewing their intense rivalry.

Temple will be looking to even up the series. It might only take 150 years or so. Right now, Penn State has a slight edge at 40-4-1. They’ll play a home and home series in 2026 and 2027.

Get your tickets now.

Of course, within 30 seconds of the announcement being made, Pitt fans and anybody who enjoys some semblance of a real football game on a Saturday afternoon, were ridiculing Penn State.

Not long after that Penn State fans were laughing at Pitt fans for their over-dependence on Penn State for its program’s success.

It’s all stupid.

Penn State and Pitt not playing each other every year in football is stupid.

Scheduling issues because of the number of non-conference games are stupid. Penn State needing more home games to make it possible for the field hockey team to travel to Iowa is stupid.

College football stupidity is the only reason for them not playing.

You might make a case for fans being stupid enough to show up in big numbers to see Penn State play teams like Temple, Delaware and Villanova playing a part in it, too, but then that would also fall under the heading of college football stupidity, wouldn’t it?

You know what else is stupid? Anybody believing that Pitt should ever expect to compete with Penn State on a regular basis. Take a look at your favorite college football poll. How many teams named after a city do you see?

Miami is there just about every year. That’s it. Louisville has sneaked in a few times in recent years, but, in the last 50 years, no team named after a city other than Miami has had the success that Pitt had from 1974-1982. And Pitt is the only one of the two not to spend any time on probation.

If Miami isn’t the poster school for college football corruption, who is? So, how realistic is it to expect Pitt to ever become a perennial top-10 team again without massive cheating?

Pitt is never going to fill 68,000 seats at Heinz Field on a regular basis. Teams named after cities, including Miami, just don’t do that. It would do a lot for Pitt fans’ mental health if they would accept the fact that their team is never going to be able to compete with Penn State again the way it competed and surpassed it in the late 1970s and early 1980s.

Maybe it’s time to get a full appreciation for what an amazing, improbable and almost impossible run Pitt had from the time Tony Dorsett showed up in 1973 until Jackie Sherrill left after going 33-3 from 1979 through 1981. It might also be a good idea to investigate how he was able to do it without going on NCAA probation.

That’s never going to happen again. No matter who’s the coach and who’s on the schedule.

But that doesn’t change the fact that Pitt and Penn State not playing each other every year in football is stupid.

• Mason Rudolph, a third-round pick, wasn’t going anywhere.
• The Cardinals winning 22 games in August should be something to keep in mind the next time you get excited about where the Pirates are in May.
• Come to think of it, a lot, if not most of what’s happening on most college campuses these days is stupid.
• Why when a young quarterback does well in an exhibition game is it always pointed out that he’s playing against second- and third-string guys? It’s almost never pointed out that he’s also surrounded by the same kinds of players on offense.
• Los Angeles Rams defensive tackle Aaron Donald just got over $65 million in guaranteed money. Not bad for a kid who wasn’t a five-star recruit.
• Did I mention that Pitt and Penn State not playin
• g each other in football is stupid? So is Pitt not playing West Virginia. The Mountaineers played Tennessee on the road on Saturday while Pitt was playing Albany at home. Albany. Only stupidity can explain them not playing each other to open the season.
• Former Pitt wide receiver Larry Fitzgerald became good friends with John McCain. So he went to Vietnam, rode for 700 miles on a bike from Hanoi to Ho Chi Minh City “just to see how the people lived.” He’s not your average NFL player.
• The Baltimore Orioles came into the weekend 55 games under .500 and 52½ games out of first place. I seriously think I could manage any team to 55½ games under .500. They’re on pace to lose 114 games. How many games would they lose with my wife as manager? How many would they lose with no manager, which would probably be a better idea than my wife.