WVU photo
Zach Abraham scores the game-winning touchdown in WVU’s 47-41 win over Pitt in 1994.
MORGANTOWN — As the Big 12 was settling into its Media Days this week to kick off another season, the newspaper/website known as The Athletic was throwing a flag on the festivities as it printed its own ranking of the top football rivalries in the country and left the Backyard Brawl out of the Top 25.
This was a slap that could not go unchallenged. West Virginia vs. Pitt matches up well against any rivalry you can find, be it Michigan-Ohio State, Alabama-Auburn, Army-Navy, Steelers-Ravens, Yankees-Red Sox or Ali-Frazier.
The author of the article and the man who placed the Backyard Brawl at No. 26 is Scott Dochterman, who took time to explain his logic to Justin Walker this week on the West Virginia based podcast “Couz’s Corner.”
He had his reasons for the ranking. They just were misplaced.
A rivalry isn’t for all America, despite what ESPN might have you believe. There’s not a soul who lives in West Virginia or Pittsburgh and the surrounding western Pennsylvania area who gives a hoot whether anyone in Rome, Georgia, or Rome, Italy, cares about the Backyard Brawl.
Rivalries belong to their fans and college rivalries are unique.
I can speak to this. As a kid, my dad took me to the Army-Navy game, I’ve covered Ohio State-Michigan games, not the pansy rivalry they now play but when it was Woody Hayes tearing up first down markers on the Ohio State sideline.
When Oklahoma and Nebraska played “The Game of the Century” in Norman in 1971 with Barry Switzer going against Tom Osbourne, the stadium was filled with more energy than I’ve ever experienced in World Series games, Wimbledon finals, Masters and U.S. Open golf tournaments or NFL Championship games.
It wasn’t because the nation was caught up in it. It was because the two schools, the two states and their residents, they came not only with flasks full of whiskey but with hearts full of love for their team and hatred for their opponents.
That is the Backyard Brawl and you don’t measure it with anything less than a “Passion Meter.”
The problem with Scott Dochterman’s rankings of college football rivalries grew out of the problem that plagues us most today in society. He tried to break it down into numbers so he could feed it into a computer and come up with a final rating.
He was trying to figure out what a rivalry was through the brain when real rivalries are driven from the heart.
As he did it, he started from 100 and worked backwards but found when he got “around 35ish, how do I find ways to differentiate them,” he said. “I’m not just going to rank them on cool nicknames.”
Dochterman rattled off figures at this point, like number of meetings, but most of them had 100 or more renewals.
Did it matter? Not to him.
“The Backyard Brawl is crazy. All of them are crazy. But how do I get it to some workable order without being a milk toast and saying I’m just not going to rank them, just say all of them are great rivalries. Nobody wants that,” he said.
The thing is, that’s exactly what they want. Numbers aren’t going to convince them. In their heart, the rivalry they are wrapped up in is the world’s best.
Dochterman said he came up with 11 principles to rate without one taking precedence,” he said, not realizing that was the fatal flaw in his technique.
One does take precedence and its passion.
This week at Big 12 Media Day West Virginia’s Rich Rodriguez was asked about the Backyard Brawl. Think that isn’t on everyone’s mind in both schools? If not, why then did they notice the game is to be played on September 13.
That’s right. That’s 9/13, which is exactly the score that Pitt beat WVU by, 13-9, 17 years ago in Rodriguez’s last game as WVU coach, costing him a spot in a national championship game.
“I get reminded about it every other day,” Rodriguez said of that game. “It is one of the greatest rivalries. I’ve been part of some big ones in my career, but there’s no question … the intensity … they both hate each other. Hate may be a strong word, but not in this case.
“It’s one of those things that makes college athletics so unique and makes it what it is. We’ll have a day in camp dedicated to Pitt. We’ll have a day during the summer dedicated to Pitt. We’ll talk about it quite a bit as a staff.”
Think about that for a moment. In the summer, there is a day dedicated to playing Pitt. In pre-season camp it’s the same thing.
You want to beat Robert Morris. You want to beat Baylor. You want to beat Arizona State.
But, at WVU, you have to beat Pitt.
Rodriguez put it this way on the day he returned to WVU:
“I say too many four-letter words, but there’s none worse than P-I-T-T.”
He put data into his selection methodology.
“What do the numbers say? How many times have they met as ranked opponents? What is the won/lost disparity?” Dochterman said. “I’m not dismissing the passion.”
But, is WVU vs. Pitt any less of a rivalry because they have been met with both ranked teams just six times?
Dochterman also took note — probably too much of it — on the fact that when the two schools left the Big East and went in different directions there was a decade-long hiatus in the series.
He took that as a negative, for a rivalry without meetings, isn’t really a rivalry … but the passion was such that it had to be reinstated and both schools know that is the jewel in the schedule each year.
And now, with Rodriguez back in the mix, it has to jump higher in the rankings.
OK, isn’t Ohio State-Michigan, Texas-Oklahoma, Army-Navy … but it has so much going for it in immeasurables that to think it isn’t Top 15 — probably Top 10 — in college football rivalries is unimaginable.
How many rivalries have books written about them? How many have upsets like this one? How many saw a Hall of Fame coach like Bobby Bowden blow a 35-8 halftime lead to lose 36-35, a game that changed his coaching philosophy on blowouts.
How many saw a placekicker account for all the points in a 15-0 victory as Ken Juskowich did in 1957 with five field goals to account for the scoring?
Would it help if they met as No. 1 vs. No. 2 on occasion? Of course it would, but as it turns out, whenever they meet it is No. 1 vs. No. 2 on the field at that moment and that is what makes it one of the great rivalries in American football.
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