Aug 3, 2022 3 min read

LATROBE – Westminster has been a thorn in the side of Washington & Jefferson College’s football team over the past few seasons.

The Titans have gotten the best of the Presidents and it has shown up not only on the scoreboard but in the hearts and minds of the media, coaches and sports information directors.

For the third year in a row, those individuals selected Westminster as the team to beat in the Presidents’ Athletic Conference at the organization’s media day Wednesday at Saint Vincent College’s Dupre Science Center.

Westminster was selected as the team to beat in the PAC, taking 19 first-place votes and totaling 366 points to headline the poll.

“It is an honor,” said ninth-year head coach Scott Benzel. “Obviously, so competitive, in terms of the league and the teams that are represented. To have them think we potentially could be the flagship for the conference, it is a good accomplishment. But it is, as the football cliché goes, preseason and we have to go out and prove it.”

Washington & Jefferson finished second with seven first-place votes and 346 points while Carnegie Mellon was third with 10 first-place votes and 336 points. Grove City was fourth (278), Case Western Reserve was fifth (268), Saint Vincent was sixth (202), Geneva was seventh (174), Allegheny College was eighth (173), Waynesburg University was ninth (110), Bethany was 10th (83) and Thiel was 11th (40).

W&J had seven first-place votes and Carnegie Mellon garnered 10 first-place votes.

“Two dark horses are Saint Vincent and Geneva,” said W&J football coach Mike Sirianni. “Then you talk about Grove City, Case, Carnegie Mellon and Westminster. It’s a really good conference.”

The Titans defeated Washington & Jefferson, 23-18, last season as W&J finished in second place. The year before that, Westminster came away with a 27-20 victory as the Presidents coughed up the football three times on Justin Heacock interceptions.

That win sewed up the PAC title that season for Westminster, the first in Scott Benzel’s eight years as the Titans head coach.

“There’s a lot of history at (our) school,” Benzel said after the game. “We had to earn this. It was a long seven years. We’ve had a lot of good football teams that haven’t won a championship.”

Ed Farrell was honored as this year’s recipient of the Dow Carnahan Media Award. Carnahan, a longtime supporter and friend of the PAC, passed away unexpectedly on April 29, 2016.

The award is presented annually to a distinguished member of the media or on-campus representative for his or her commendable service while covering and promoting the conference’s student-athletes, coaches and programs.

Farrell arrived in Mercer County by way of working in the then-Public Relations office (later, “Media Services”) at Thiel College on Sept. 21, 1977 and was at the College for almost four years, the first three of which he served as sports information director both for Thiel and the PAC. He subsequently worked for newspapers for approximately 40 years, including the Jefferson (Ohio) Gazette, Greenville Record-Argus, Franklin News-Herald, and Sharon Herald, the latter three months into his 27th year.