Pittsburgh and West Virginia used to be big rivals. Still are big rivals. Whatever tense you find most appropriate, the Backyard Brawl was one of college football's hottest feuds dating all the way back to 1895 through 2011, when both schools split from the Big East and stopped playing annually.
Administrators from both schools have done the "We should totally get together sometime" dance in the four years since, and that's through multiple athletics directors on both sides and multiple head coaches at Pitt. To the outside eye, the Backyard Brawl feels much closer to revival than Texas-Texas A&M or Kansas-Missouri.
But speaking to Brett McMurphy at ESPN's ACC car wash Tuesday, new Panthers head coach Pat Narduzzi used the opportunity to throw some passive-aggressive shade at the Mountaineers, straight out of the UT-A&M and KU-MU playbooks.
Pittsburgh has played West Virginia 104 times previously (Pitt holds a 61-40-3 lead) and Penn State 96 times (the Nittany Lions hold a 50-42-4 edge). The schools played annually through the early 1990's, but Joe Paterno put the rivalry on the back-burner after Penn State joined the Big Ten. They've played just four times since the 1993 season, and not since 2000. They will a four-game home-and-home beginning in 2016 and running through 2019, however. No games with WVU currently sit on the books according to scheduling clearinghouse FBSchedules.com.
Sitting in his office (or his kick ass 8,000-square foot house), West Virginia head coach Dana Holgorsen flew into the conversation with an grand slam of a subtweet.
Just figure out a way to settle it on the field, guys.