PITTSBURGH — The press release heralding the upcoming season-opening game between the Pittsburgh Panthers and the Duquesne Dukes hit my inbox last Wednesday, and with all respect to Mike Annarella, who has done as good of a job as is imaginable in replacing legendary Pitt SID E.J. Borghetti, I regret to inform the audience that the press release was missing two words.
Pitt publicized its first-in-86-years game with their Fifth Avenue cohorts as a part of a greater celebration of “Pittsburgh Day.”
They’re giving out special rally towels, all of the Pittsburgh sports mascots will be involved, and the rest of the in-game fan experience will be Pittsburgh-themed. That’s all well and good. Props to the Pitt marketing squad for coming up with any way they can to sell more tickets against an FCS team on Labor Day weekend.
But nowhere in the press release — or any of the other press releases issued by Pitt about this game — does it say the words “City Game.”
That is, of course, what it is. It’s Pitt and Duquesne. That is the name of the rivalry between those schools. That’s what the historic game between the men’s basketball teams has always been called. Both schools have also referred to the women’s basketball game between the schools as the City Game and the men’s and women’s soccer games between the schools as the City Game.
In my unending list of press releases from the schools, I have dozens and dozens of mentions including the words City Game since Pitt did its best to kill that particular rivalry in 2019.
It has always struck me as intellectually dishonest, at best, for Pitt head coach Pat Narduzzi to line up to any microphone he can find to talk about how and why Penn State refuses to play Pitt, while the men’s basketball team will do whatever it can to schedule anyone other than the Dukes.
And don’t get me wrong, Narduzzi is right. Penn State’s behavior in refusing to schedule Pitt is shameful and cowardly. Narduzzi is also right that there are real benefits to playing a team in your backyard instead of scheduling some nobody from somewhere else.
“They’re right down the road,” Narduzzi said on Monday. “We can bring someone from Youngstown or Rhode Island. Why not take care of a school in state, let them have an opportunity to play in their city, for their city? I think it’s a great game. …
“I just think it’s great to play another team from Pittsburgh. Fans aside, I think it’s an opportunity for another Pittsburgh school. I’ve got a ton of respect for Jerry Schmitt. It’s good for them, good for us. Again, short trip for them. So we’re excited.”
Someone should send those quotes to Jeff Capel. With respect to the Schmitt, a great coach and leader of a program that has some serious uphill battles to climb in the NIL era, this is not the City Game that anyone was asking for. The Panthers are favored by 37.5 — a line probably deflated by Narduzzi expressing his admiration for Schmitt and oddsmakers assuming he’ll try not run up the score.
At least the idea of playing Duquesne for the first time since my grandfather was a teenager might be interesting for a quarter or two, and the way college sports are headed, maybe I should be happy we’re getting that instead of complaining about what we’re not.
After this season, Pitt will play two straight without Penn State, Notre Dame or West Virginia on their football schedule — at least. With Narduzzi admitting that it seems likely the ACC is headed for a nine-game conference schedule this week, even the future scheduled versions of the Backyard Brawl could be in jeopardy.
I’m more than well aware that this is not just a Pittsburgh problem. Rivalries around college sports have been decimated by the collective greed and lack of foresight of college administrators. At a time when college programs need the money of their fanbases more than ever, they’re returning the favor by providing them an all-time low in terms of games they actually want to see.
In that regard, I’m not upset about this showdown with the gridiron Dukes. As Narduzzi said, it’s more interesting than some other random FCS team from some distant locale (remember when they beat Austin Peay so badly they played with a running clock?).
It just serves as a somewhat painful reminder of what we’ve lost in college athletics, and what we’re probably never getting back. So regardless of what the press releases say, I’m calling it the City Game. They can’t stop me.
