Backyard Brawl - History

History

The football series was first played in 1895, and the game has historically been one of the more intense rivalries in the eastern United States. The rivalry between the two schools is due mainly to proximity. WVU's campus in Morgantown, West Virginia is only about 70 miles south of Pittsburgh (via Interstate 79), and the two schools often compete for the same recruits.

The 1921 edition of the Backyard Brawl was the first college football game broadcast on the radio when Harold W. Arlin announced the 21–13 Pittsburgh victory on KDKA.

Since 1962, the series has alternated between Pittsburgh and Morgantown on a yearly basis. Before that, the games were held in Pittsburgh on an almost regular basis, with Morgantown occasionally hosting the game. At one point, Pittsburgh hosted the game 11 years in a row (1919–29) and also hosted eight straight contests between 1938–48. (There were no matchups from 1940–42.) In contrast, the most consecutive games West Virginia has hosted were four in a row from 1895–1901, with one of those games held in Fairmont, West Virginia, now the home to Fairmont State University, and one in Wheeling, West Virginia. The most consecutive games played in Morgantown, three, were held from 1932–34.

West Virginia started out the series leading, 5–1. Pittsburgh won four games in a row from 1904–08 (there was no game played in 1905) to tie the series at 5–5. In 1909, the teams played to a 0–0 tie, making the series 5–5–1. The following year, Pittsburgh won 38–0, taking a 6–5–1 lead in the series, and has led ever since. Since the series began interchanging annually between Morgantown and Pittsburgh in 1963, the Mountaineers have held a 25–22–2 advantage over the Panthers.

On November 25, 2004, the Backyard Brawl series saw its 97th game, surpassing the 96–game Penn State–Pittsburgh football rivalry as Pittsburgh's most–played rivalry game. Pittsburgh celebrated the event with a 16–13 win at Heinz Field.

The Mountaineers and the Panthers wore Nike Pro Combat System of Dress, uniforms designed to pay respect to Pittsburgh's steel industry and West Virginia's coal mining industry, for the 2010 Backyard Brawl. According to the Pittsburgh Tribune Review, West Virginia wore a shade of white "that looks as if it has a fine layer of dust on the jersey" and has accents in university gold that "references the canaries used long ago to test toxicity in mines." The helmet has a thin yellow line, designed to look like "the beam of light emitted by a miner's headlamp." Meanwhile Pitt wore smoky college navy and black jerseys and pants with metallic team gold numerals "to represent the brilliant glow of a blast furnace," according to a Nike website, and matching helmets with a gold stripe and logo "evocative of steel I-beams" and resembling a hard hat. West Virginia won the game in Pittsburgh 35–10.

In 2011, the rivalry took on a new look with the high powered offenses of Todd Graham and Dana Holgorsen coming to Pittsburgh and West Virginia, respectively. Holgorsen, formerly the offensive coordinator at Oklahoma State, and Graham, formerly the head coach for the Tulsa Golden Hurricane, had offenses ranked 6th and 8th, respectively, in the nation in the 2010 season. West Virginia defeated Pittsburgh 21–20. For the 2012 season, West Virginia moved to the Big 12 Conference while Pitt will move to the Atlantic Coast Conference in 2013. The 2012 season was the first time the two teams did not meet since 1942.