It’s a rivalry as old as time – well, for at least the last one hundred years! Pitt and Penn State have been rivals since 1893, locked in a battle to be the superior school. Football players have left it all on the field to defend our title as football champs… or something like that. Students who definitely do not use this as an excuse to shamelessly day drink watch the players from the stands. However, the big game this year did not go as many thought it would as the rain kept coming.
With clever planning there were not one, but two sports games occurring at the North Shore on this day. Thus, tailgating was banned until 5 p.m. that night. Although rules are meant to be broken, the day did not start as many students imagined. Tailgates began eventually, though, as a Pitt fan cannot be deterred.
My fellow Pitt students and I stood in the rain in cheap ponchos barely keeping our bodies warm even with several drinks in us. We wondered if it was too late to sell our tickets. Those people in the Facebook groups must have made at least a hundred dollars a ticket.
But it was too late: it was finally game time. Pitt students made their way to the student entrance, which was clouded with old people coming to relive their glory days of college. Wristbands were nowhere to be found, and to our delight they had actually run out of them. This makes sense as they totally did not presell these tickets months ago and had no idea how many people would be coming to this game. Oh wait.
Anyway, as the rainstorm, which interrupted a week of 95-degree weather, continued on, there was only one logical option: the covered nosebleeds. We all made our journey up, like a swarm of wet rats escaping a storm drain. Spirits were low, but the game had started and we hoped to see those comforting victory lights glow later that night. Little did we know that was not going to happen.
The game started with a touchdown from Penn State, a sign of the worst to come. Finally I felt solidarity with our football team, as neither of us seemed to know the rules of football. As the teams ran down the field, I ran out of patience. But, maybe I spoke too soon, as Pitt’s first touchdown soon came and the score was 6-7. We were finally making progress, but then Penn State scored. And they scored and they scored. I waited for the sweet release of Sweet Caroline and in that moment the first dun nuh nuh played, I thought maybe there was a god. There was still a glimmer of hope that Pitt could pull through, but as we all waited in the stands, things grew duller and waves of students began to rush out around the third quarter.
As I waited for the shuttles Pitt tried to provide, despite the line of at least 300 people, I wondered if the bigwigs at Uber and Lyft where laughing at us while we debated paying surge pricing. With Four Rivers Casino lingering in the distance, I wondered if I could turn the day’s luck around. But I bravely toughed it out in the rain and even gave my poncho to a colder student. As 60-year-old men walked by chanting “WE ARE,” I knew the game had finished. They left me with a question though: who are you? No one was there to finish their chant, so the first half of the chant just went unfinished.
The score may have crushed our buzz, but not our spirit. As the shuttles to campus pulled up Pitt students cheered knowing we could return to our hallowed grounds.
At the end of that soggy day, the score and our impending pneumonia was unimportant. Instead, we realized that we must ask ourselves what we’re really measuring when it comes to football games. Last time I checked, Pitt still ranks number one in our hearts and in the rankings of Northeast Public Universities by the Wall Street Journal. We may not be a football school, but hey, at least we have Cathy.