Backyard Brawl between rivals West Virginia and Pitt returns Thursday

Lengthy earlier than he developed right into a wrestling and broadcasting star, even earlier than he burst onto the scene as a prized NFL punter, Pat McAfee drove aimlessly throughout the American terrain.

It has been 15 years since, and he remembers little or no in regards to the drive and says he has not spoken publicly about it. He remembers brushing away the damaged beer bottles in his driveway that West Virginia followers hurled at his Jeep Wrangler amid the violent aftermath of Dec. 1 2007, the worst night time of his life when his dependable foot partially value the Mountaineers an opportunity at a nationwide championship. His automobile was vandalized, his yard destroyed, his life threatened.

So, McAfee hopped into his Jeep and did what so many West Virginia followers requested of him: He disappeared.

“My life modified instantly that day. It was a horrible f—— night time, to be sincere with you,” McAfee says. “It was like one thing out of a film. I simply drove. I received all the way in which to Virginia by way of Maryland. I used to be gone for a pair days. I drove, parked, slept and saved driving. I didn’t know the place I used to be. I didn’t know the place I used to be headed. I didn’t know what was coming subsequent.

“And I didn’t know if I needed to dwell anymore.”

Outsiders would possibly suppose it’s foolish that one recreation may imply a lot to an individual, or that it may perpetually fracture a relationship between a coach, Wealthy Rodriguez, and his one real love, West Virginia. However that one recreation—Pitt 13, West Virginia 9—left as many scars as any recreation within the historical past of school soccer. For some, the injuries are as contemporary as they had been in 2007, an notorious date for a whole fan base and state left heartbroken by its archrival.

These concerned say outsiders don’t perceive the state of affairs, the stakes and the sequence.

On the fifteenth anniversary of the Yard Brawl’s most beautiful chapter, considered one of school soccer’s best rivalries returns Thursday after an 11-year hiatus. Pitt vs. West Virginia. Metropolis vs. nation. Metal vs. coal.

“Pitt and West Virginia, there’s a hate there,” former Pitt defensive coordinator Paul Rhoads says.

There have been 104 Yard Brawls, and though Pitt has gained 61 of them, West Virginia has significantly tightened the sequence, holding a 21-19-2 edge since 1970.

The colleges, separated by about 75 miles, are demographically dissimilar—Pittsburgh’s metro space (2.3 million) is larger than the complete inhabitants of West Virginia (1.8 million).

Earlier than its newest hiatus, the Brawl almost died within the Forties, when the sequence stopped for 3 years as a result of West Virginia, in dire monetary straits, owed Pitt $20,000 for assured video games performed in Morgantown the earlier decade. (Fortunately, the problem was resolved.) The sequence has actually produced brawls —in ’76, when Pittsburgh’s Tony Dorsett was ejected for sparking a struggle, and in ’70, when the Bobby Bowden–led Mountaineers squandered a 35–8 halftime lead and compelled the coach to maintain his gamers within the locker room for an additional hour to keep away from an offended mob of followers.

The Brawl additionally has created heroes—males named Jock (Sutherland), Gibby (Welch) and Bimbo (Cecconi). It has even featured duels between brothers—in 1965, Paul Martha’s 46-yard landing run lifted the Panthers to a victory towards brother Richie’s Mountaineers.

“Like most large rivalries, there are superior stereotypes,” says Oliver Luck, a former Mountaineers quarterback and athletic director. “It’s ‘subtle metropolis people’ of Pittsburgh towards ‘the hillbillies’ of West Virginia.”

Pitt followers famously say the one path to Morgantown is by swinging alongside tree vines. The Mountaineers counter with a three-word chant that usually erupts at numerous WVU sporting occasions, regardless of if the 2 groups are taking part in. Eat s—, Pitt!

No single chapter of the Brawl featured greater heroes and battle wounds than “13–9.” Thursday night time’s resurrection of this century-old sequence is a reminder of school soccer’s wealthy custom, elegant pageantry and, for some, agonizing historical past. The Mountaineers enter the sport, as they’ve for years now, holding a particular distinction—no main school soccer program has gained extra video games in its historical past with out having claimed a nationwide championship. Fifteen years in the past, on a chilly night time in Morgantown, the Mountaineers missed their newest likelihood at future.

“You make a play that makes a distinction on this recreation, you’ll be able to turn into a legend,” Dave Wannstedt, the previous NFL coach who performed and coached at Pitt, says. “Individuals will discuss you perpetually.”

Mike Patrick, a former NFL and school soccer broadcaster, is 2 years into retirement. He lives in Virginia, however he has not forgotten his roots. He’s a West Virginia boy, born within the mountain city of Clarksburg and raised to despise one college.

“I hated Pitt earlier than I knew what Pitt was,” he says with amusing.

He attended his first Yard Brawl in 1959 at age 15. Practically 50 years later, in 2007, Patrick received assigned to name his first and solely Brawl recreation as ESPN’s lead play-by-play announcer. He was overcome with pleasure. What’s higher, he thought, than broadcasting his dwelling state college’s largest second to the world?

“It was going to be the most effective recreation I’ve ever performed. Personally, it turned out to be the worst,” he says. “I waited my entire life, my entire profession for it. It’s a great factor I didn’t have a allow to hold a gun. I don’t know that I’d have made it out of the stadium that night time.”

The 2007 West Virginia Mountaineers crew was a bunch of “misfits,” McAfee says. They outsprinted everybody with swagger and athleticism, and benefited from the schematic genius of their coach.

Rodriguez, a former West Virginia defensive again and homegrown West Virginian then in his seventh 12 months as coach, puzzled defenses by using working again Steve Slaton and quarterback Pat White in a zone-read unfold idea that’s now a part of nearly each offensive playbook. Outdoors of a Week 5 hiccup towards a ranked South Florida crew, the Mountaineers had been near-perfect with a ten–1 report and ranked No. 2 within the nation behind the nation’s most electrical offense (the unit averaged 41.6 factors a recreation).

The 2007 school soccer season, dubbed the Yr of the Upset, was one of many wildest within the historical past of the game. Prime 5 groups misplaced to unranked opponents a report 13 occasions, and applications ranked No. 2 within the AP ballot misplaced seven occasions within the closing 9 weeks of the common season. As groups faltered, the Mountaineers saved creeping up the polls and entered the ultimate week of the season in place to achieve the BCS championship recreation towards, in all probability, Ohio State.

One crew—an unranked, 4–7 squad from Pittsburgh—stood of their manner. “It was the final hurdle between us and immortality,” says Jed Drenning, West Virginia’s radio sideline reporter.

The Mountaineers had been 28-point favorites and had posted a mixed 90 factors and 1,133 yards towards Pitt the earlier two seasons. The Panthers had been beginning a real freshman quarterback, had but to win on the highway and misplaced to Rutgers, UConn and Navy.

Confidence was so excessive in Morgantown, the daddy of WVU fullback Owen Schmitt ordered 100 celebratory T-shirts earlier than the sport. The BCS title recreation that 12 months was in New Orleans, so the shirts featured a court docket jester with the phrases “Bayou Certain!”

Scott McKillop, Pitt’s standout linebacker in 2007, doesn’t blame anybody for doubting the Panthers. “We sucked,” he says. “If we play 100 occasions, we in all probability solely beat them one time.”

As Pitt arrived on the stadium, West Virginia followers pelted the crew bus with beer bottles and rocks. “It gave the impression of hail,” remembers Pat Bostick, the rookie quarterback who began that night time.

Bostick didn’t get a lot sleep the night time earlier than. It wasn’t nerves, however fairly an an infection so dangerous he says blood oozed from his ear. Issues received worse. Within the third quarter, Bostick scored Pitt’s solely landing on a one-yard sneak. He flipped into the tip zone, smashed right into a defender and was punched from beneath his chin.

“I noticed stars,” he says. “I used to be completely concussed, however I wasn’t popping out of that recreation.”

Pitt’s defensive stress, in the meantime, knocked White out of the sport with 5 minutes left within the second quarter, produced an important sack-fumble on his backup within the fourth and held Slaton to a season-low 11 yards, roughly 80 beneath his common. Panthers working again LeSean McCoy led the night time with 38 carries for 148 yards, and Pitt’s protection blitzed nearly each down utilizing the identical rover again zero play with variations that had been designed to clog each working hole and get into the backfield to harass White and Slaton.

White missed roughly two quarters with a dislocated thumb on his nonthrowing hand, however returned for the ultimate two drives of the sport, each of which ended on failed fourth downs in Pitt territory.

“You are feeling helpless,” says White, now an offensive assistant for the Los Angeles Chargers. “Pondering again on it, I in all probability ought to have stated, ‘Overlook that thumb.’”

White’s damage got here almost twenty years after Lou Holtz and No. 1 Notre Dame beat Don Nehlen’s third-ranked Mountaineers within the Fiesta Bowl to win the 1988 nationwide championship. In that recreation, WVU’s star quarterback, Main Harris, separated his shoulder on the very first play.

“It’s one tear-inducing second after one other,” Patrick says.

The 2007 final result affected LSU greater than another crew, paving its solution to the title recreation. Late that Saturday night time, the rating reached the Tigers as they had been returning to Louisiana after profitable the SEC championship in Atlanta. Because the crew aircraft descended into Baton Rouge, the pilot introduced the rating. Gamers and coaches erupted with such power that the jet dangerously dipped.

“We had a celebration at nonetheless many thousand toes up we had been,” remembers Michael Bonnette, the crew’s longtime sports activities info director. “We broke a number of FAA violations.”

For weeks, Wannstedt obtained cigars and thank-you letters from LSU followers. The Tigers finally beat the Buckeyes, 38–24, delivering coach Les Miles his solely nationwide championship.

White has by no means watched a replay of the sport and gained’t except tied down and his eyes are taped open, he says. His recollections are considerably misplaced. “You understand how folks undergo traumatic stuff they usually neglect about issues?” he asks.

Many from that West Virginia crew nonetheless dwell within the state. Schmitt, the fullback whose father had these shirts made, is a UPS supervisor residing in Dawson. Williams works at a poultry and beef farm in Morefield.

“We simply should dwell with the most important loss in our historical past. That’s all,” Schmitt says sarcastically. “It’s not like I by no means suppose, ‘I’m wondering what would have occurred had we gained the natty?’ Lives would have modified.”

Drenning attended the sport with a buddy who was so distraught that the person determined, in the course of the night time after the sport, to stroll dwelling. It was 12 miles away. “He was in a darkish place. He’s informed me in regards to the issues that went by way of his thoughts that night time,” Drenning says. “These are the type of tales you hear from West Virginians.”

Excessive above the stadium, Patrick, who painstakingly remained neutral in the course of the broadcast, waited for everybody to go away the press field earlier than he slipped right into a aspect room, closed the door and screamed on the high of his lungs. “I received to provide myself credit score,” he says. “I held it in.”

For McAfee, Dec. 1, 2007, was a debilitating occasion. The crew’s place-kicker and punter entered that recreation having made 10 consecutive discipline objectives. On West Virginia’s first drive, he hooked a 20-yard kick left. On its third drive, he pushed a 32-yarder proper. McAfee, a fan favourite, took delight in being a Mountaineer and was identified for celebrating victories with informal followers throughout Morgantown. Every August at their dwelling, he and linebacker Reed Williams hosted a barbecue occasion for the crew and followers.

Everybody knew the place they lived.

“We had been sitting round our kitchen desk speechlessly taking a look at each other, and our home was getting bombarded with bottles all night time lengthy. You’d hear the thud of the bottle and glass shatter,” Williams says. “You’d see the remnants of beer and liquor bottles. The remainder of the semester, Pat was receiving loss of life threats. The man received torn down.”

Wealthy Rodriguez lives with regrets. First, he acknowledges utilizing a too-conservative recreation plan on the night time of Dec. 1, 2007. And secondly: “It was a mistake to go to Michigan,” he says. Two weeks after the Brawl loss, on the night time of Dec. 15, a day after interviewing for the job in Ann Arbor and a day earlier than accepting it, Rodriguez held a heated dialog with West Virginia college president Mike Garrison. He was looking for causes to remain. He received none.

Garrison reportedly informed him, “We’ve performed all we will; take it or go away it.”

“I used to be like, ‘Gee whiz,’” the coach says now. “Most individuals don’t know that. I don’t suppose I’ve informed anybody that earlier than.”

Garrison lasted simply 14 months as WVU’s president after his hiring was introduced in April 2007. His workplace was consumed with controversies over favoritism earlier than the school voted to name for his resignation, which he gave in June 2008.

Rodriguez, in the meantime, says he has by no means spoken publicly about why he left his dwelling state and alma mater. He claims to have 3 times caught college directors misappropriating donations meant for soccer. These donations, for amenities enhancements and the like, had been made, partly, as a result of Rodriguez turned down the Alabama teaching job a season earlier than.

And lots of have puzzled whether or not these occasions would have performed out in another way if the Dec. 1, 2007, Brawl resulted in West Virginia’s favor.

“It’s the most important ‘what if’ in our historical past. Little question about it,” says John Antonik, the director of content material for West Virginia athletics and writer of a e-book detailing the Pitt–West Virginia feud. “I’ve had folks ask me this as just lately as only a month in the past: Did Wealthy Rod throw that recreation?”

When requested about it, Rodriguez scowls along with his response. No, he says, he didn’t purposely lose what was an important recreation—and self-described “largest nightmare”—of his skilled profession, one which led to him vomiting within the locker room afterward. He’s offended, perhaps even harm, that so many West Virginia followers nonetheless consider his departure for Michigan two weeks after that recreation was related to his crew’s efficiency that night time.

“It pisses me off. That’s complete bulls—. Bulls—,” says Rodriguez, now coach at FCS Jacksonville State. “These conversations didn’t happen till per week after that. Anyone who says that doesn’t know what the hell they’re speaking about.”

Says Drenning: “Wealthy needed to do issues for this system, and he felt resistance from the administration. Ever since I knew the man, West Virginia was his dream job. I feel he had a imaginative and prescient of what we might be, and others didn’t suppose we might be that.”

Rodriguez’s exit did profit one participant, no less than.

“I don’t know if it took the goal off my again and put it on him,” says McAfee, “however I do bear in mind, like folks telling me, like really telling me round campus, ‘I hated you for all of it till Wealthy went to Michigan.’ I’m like, ‘O.Ok., thanks. I admire that!’”

The 2 males had been bonded perpetually over missed discipline objectives and messy exits. They went with out speaking for greater than 10 years earlier than McAfee was on a broadcast crew for considered one of Rodriguez’s video games in 2019 whereas he coordinated the Ole Miss offense. They spoke then, exchanged numbers and developed a relationship over texts.

Nonetheless, the ache stays for McAfee. He has returned to campus solely as soon as, for a 2015 halftime ceremony to honor the ’05 group that beat Georgia within the Sugar Bowl and launched the most effective three-year stretch in Mountaineers historical past—three convention titles, three top-10 closing rankings and 33 victories. McAfee flew in that morning, drove on to the stadium and didn’t keep for the tip of the sport.

“It’s powerful. I let down lots of people. Do you wish to pop again in and go to a spot the place you actually made each human there depressing and upset? That’s not my vibes,” he says. “I let down mainly all people I care about—my household, myself, my teammates, my coaches, all people who’s invested time in me at West Virginia.”

After the 2007 recreation, ensconced in his dwelling, he made the error of opening his Fb web page.

“I had a bunch of individuals I assumed I used to be buddies with sending me DMs to by no means present my face, kill myself or that, if they might, they’d attempt to kill me,” he says. “I cried for in all probability seven or eight hours straight. I bear in mind listening to what folks had been screaming into the home. It was at that second I used to be like, ‘I ought to disappear in all probability.’”

Williams has tried to persuade his former roommate to return to campus once more. It’s not like McAfee hates West Virginia. On the set of his radio present, he proudly has his West Virginia jersey on show. He roots for the Mountaineers. He desires them to beat Pitt “by 1,000,” he says.

“He’s cherished right here,” says Williams. “I don’t suppose he feels that reciprocated. It’s been onerous for him to reopen his coronary heart.”

As for Rodriguez, many West Virginians loathed the coach for that two-week stretch in December 2007 and neglect in regards to the 60 video games he gained over seven years. Patrick jokes there are probably armed guards on the West Virginia border anticipating his return, and when requested whether or not time will heal such wounds, the previous broadcaster quips, “We’ll all be lifeless by then.”

Rodriguez returns to the state, and Morgantown, each couple of years to go to his brother and 83-year-old mom. To at the present time, although, he’s by no means returned to campus, visited the amenities or been invited again for a recreation. He says it bothers him. “I hope we will return, all of us sooner or later.”

He’ll perpetually contemplate West Virginia dwelling, however is aware of there are scars. They observe him in all places, even to tiny Jacksonville, Ala. Upon taking on the Jacksonville State program this spring, he had his new gamers full an info sheet. One of many questions: Inform me one thing fascinating about your self.

A solution from one participant, a West Virginia native: My dad took an image of you and set it on hearth if you left West Virginia.

The heroes of the 2007 Brawl recreation rolled into Pittsburgh on the crew bus whereas singing John Denver’s “Take Me House, Nation Roads.” Gamers sang, on and off, for the reason that recreation had ended. Their voices may even be heard within the background throughout Rodriguez’s postgame information convention, booming from the opposite aspect of the wall.

Nation roads, take me dwelling
To the place I belong
West Virginia, mountain mama
Take me dwelling, nation roads

At 3 a.m., the Panthers returned to a metropolis alive. Bars stayed open late, welcoming gamers and coaches for beer and pizza. Couches burned on the road.

“There have been no guidelines,” McKillop says. “We may have performed about something, and nobody would have cared.”

McKillop, the Pitt linebacker who famously stopped Slaton on a fourth-down run within the fourth quarter, is notoriously outspoken in regards to the feud between the 2 applications. He as soon as informed a reporter for a broadcast story of West Virginia, “I f—— hate the college and I f—— hate the state.”

Years later, he now lives within the state, married right into a household of Mountaineers with two youngsters born within the state, and West Virginia College is considered one of his most distinguished shoppers for his medical system gross sales job. “They bear in mind my final title,” he says. “It took a bit of further to win them over.”

The impacts of the upset had been far reaching. West Virginia held an enormous recruiting weekend for the Brawl recreation, with no less than a dozen prospects watching from the Mountaineers sideline. Some selected between the 2 colleges. Pitt signed roughly eight of these gamers. Some even left their WVU official go to to affix Pitt in its postgame celebration. That December, the Panthers despatched prospects Christmas playing cards with the brief message: “13–9.”

Pitt followers typically confer with that recreation by the rating and discover any solution to insert it into conversations or images. In Might, Pitt coach Pat Narduzzi posted a message on Twitter that counted down the times till the season opener with a photograph of Pitt gamers charging onto the sphere.

You may guess which two helmet numbers had been most prominently featured.

However why, in spite of everything these years and nice video games, did the sequence go dormant for greater than a decade? The reply facilities on the game’s typical suspect—convention realignment, a money-grabbing endeavor that has consumed school sports activities and, to some, has shattered the sport’s historical past and custom.

In 2013, the ACC completed off the Huge East by taking Syracuse and Pitt and leaving West Virginia scrambling. “The ACC denied us,” remembers Luck, AD at West Virginia from ’10 to ’14. “The SEC was a perhaps, however it relied on Missouri’s choice. We could have had a possibility [to join the SEC] if Missouri wouldn’t have gone.”

Missouri’s transfer in 2012 opened a spot for the Mountaineers within the Huge 12 and disrupted the Brawl’s annual date. In considered one of his first acts as athletic director in ’15, Shane Lyons opened communication with Pitt to restart the sequence. They may play eight occasions over the subsequent 11 years.

With their closest convention recreation 800 miles away, the Mountaineers have revived different outdated rivalries with their neighbors, equivalent to Penn State, Virginia Tech and Maryland. In a world the place such video games are disappearing due to realignment and guaranteed-win video games, Lyons is bucking the pattern. West Virginia has performed or will play 11 Energy 5 video games from 2018 to ’24, excluding the COVID-19-impacted ’20 season.

“Why aren’t all of us taking part in 11 Energy 5 video games?” Lyons asks. “Are we doing what’s proper for school soccer? The TV offers are profitable and essential to all of us in working our departments, however you’re breaking apart these geographical rivalries.”

The rivalry’s revival has followers buzzing. The common ticket worth on the secondary market is at greater than $200, rating among the many highest-priced video games of the season. Lyons is aware of of West Virginia followers who purchased Pitt season tickets simply to safe entry to the Brawl, he says. The sport offered out weeks in the past, and Pitt offered one other 200-plus standing-room-only tickets inside 5 minutes of opening gross sales.

Many of the gamers competing Thursday night time had been in elementary college when the 2 groups final tangled on that chilly night time in Morgantown, and only a few individuals who had been a part of the applications in 2007 stay. Bostick is the colour analyst for Pitt’s radio broadcast, and every crew employs an assistant coach from the ’07 staffs—Jeff Casteel is a defensive analyst who was West Virginia’s defensive coordinator for that recreation; and Charlie Partridge, then Pitt’s particular groups coordinator, is now a defensive position coach.

McAfee, in the meantime, has developed into the most important movie star from that recreation. A number of folks have invited him to Thursday night time’s recreation. He says he’ll unlikely attend however will likely be watching, rooting on his Mountaineers, 15 years after that lengthy, lonely drive with a vacation spot he’s nonetheless in quest of.

“Hopefully, [coach] Neal Brown will have the ability to win a natty so I can get this weight off of me.”

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