Pitt, Penn State mired in mediocrity

... and the future is not bright 

Earlier this year, I watched the replay of the 1981 Pitt-Penn State football game on You Tube. What a setting! What excitement!

Pitt Stadium rocked with music and enthusiasm as their top-ranked Panthers hosted their despised rival, coached by a man whom they despised then -- and still do in perpetuity.

As a rabid Penn State fan at the time, it was a great victory, a 48-14 win over the Dan Marino-led Panthers, who were number 1 in the country at the time and had been all through November. [I had been a Pitt fan until enrolling in PSU in the late 1960s, and still follow both programs today.]

The Nittany Lions of Joe Paterno were ranked no. 9 at the time, but after being thoroughly outplayed in the first quarter, they took advantage of some key turnovers by Marino, who simply collapsed after the first quarter. [This was due to a great defensive effort by a coordinator named Jerry Sandusky.]

I remember as a teacher at Blacklick Valley High School how energized and enthusiastic the students were prior to this game. It was a big deal in the state at that time.

The Panthers had three future college football hall of fame members on the team: Marino (also NFL HF) and linemen Jimbo Covert and Bill Fralic, both of whom had distinguished NFL careers.

So, they were loaded, more talented than Penn State.

Sherrill choked

This was Jackie Sherrill's great opportunity for a national title. Neither he nor Paterno had captured a title at that juncture, so this was his opportunity to shine.

Sherrill -- and his team -- choked, and the Panther program never recovered from that loss.

Sherrill put together successive records of 11-1 in 1979-80-81, but was not able to win the national title.

After the 1981 season, Texas A & M offered him a $1.7 million contract over six years, then a record, and he departed the Oakland campus.

Had Pitt won the national title or even played for one, that excitement would have carried over to the next season and perhaps beyond that.

Penn State 80s

Joe Paterno used the Pitt win as a spring board to his first national title in 1992. That gave him a good showing in the mid 80s.

Paterno won two titles in the 1980s, after the 1982 and 86 seasons with teams that were not rearly as talented as those in the late 60s and 70s. Paterno won only two national titles in his 46 years, not exactly Bear Bryant or Urban Meyer-like. Penn State has won just the two national titles in its existence, and the last was in 1986, 30 years ago.

Still, Penn State fans believe that the program remains a national power.

Pitt had a great past

Pitt won two AP national titles and seven more before 1937, but their last was in 1976 when the Tony Dorsett-led Panthers compiled a 12-0 season.

Some question those early national titles, but are we supposed to ignore football until 1937 when the AP started to declare national titles? Of course not.

Still, that last national title is 40 years ago.

PSU Record since 1994

Penn State remained a national power after those two titles until 1994, and then became an also-ran in the Big Ten and on the national stage, with occasional good seasons but not a traditional national power like they had been in the 1970s and 80s.

Penn State has won only one Big Ten title outright since joining the conference in 1993. Not exactly the record that Paterno envisioned when he engineered the Lions into the conference.

Pitt falls from national prominence

Pitt faltered after Foge Fazio could not continue that Sherrill excellence when he took over in 1982, falling from a preseason number 1 ranking in 1982 to a 9-3 record and then to mediocrity by the mid-1980s.

Pitt still hopes for a return to those years, but that is not likely on the horizon particularly since they cannot sell out their stadium more than once a year.

Programs in 2016

So, now the two teams are ranked numbers 40 [Pitt] and 41 [Penn State] in the USA Top 128 rankings. That is not exactly where the fans of the two teams had hoped they would be at this stage of the 21st Century, but the likelihood of moving up significantly from that over the next year or two is not promising.

Pitt managed to sneak by the Lions by three points earlier in the season, one of only two losses by the Lions [the other pummeled by Michigan].

The Panthers are also 4-2, but they could / should have won both of those two losses to Oklahoma State and North Carolina. Coach Pat Narduzzi's defense gave up an inexplicable pass play of almost 80 yards in the final two minutes of the Oklahoma State game when they were playing some kind of bump and run instead of a type of prevent zone that would allow OSU underneath routes.

The Panther defense also allowed North Carolina to charge from behind in the final minute to defeat them by one point. At that time, UNC looked like a good team in the ACC Coastal, the much weaker section of the conference.

However, after their woeful showing against Va. Tech last week, that Pitt loss to NC looks pretty bad. In fact, the Panthers have a three-game series coming up that could end up in their going 0-3, which would probably leave them with a 5-5 record if they beat Virginia this week.

Oct. 27 Va. Tech

Nov. 3 @ Miami

Nov. 10 @ Clemson

If so, Pat Narduzzi's honeymoon at Pitt will officially have ended.

Nittany Lions have some hope

The Penn State faithful are excited by last week's convincing victory over Maryland, which was preceeded by an overtime win over Minnesota. These are teams in the middle or bottom of the pack in the Big Ten overall. 

Now the Ohio State Buckeyes will enter Beaver Stadium to face James Franklin's squad after this week's open date. My belief is that there are only three good Big Ten teams this year -- OSU, Michigan, and Wisconsin -- and the Buckeyes will probably put a licking on the Lions. [Nebraska has played a weak schedule.]

However, Penn State did catch a break with two teams that I thought prior to the season would easily defeat them: Michigan State and Iowa. Both have demonstrated that neither deserved the lofty national rankings that they received earlier in the season.

The Lions could conceivably beat both of those teams.

Still, the Lions may struggle against Indiana, which has a good offense.

Conclusion

In short, neither of these programs has given fans anything to get excited about for the future. PSU fans argue that once the lethargy caused by the NCAA sanctions are gone, they will again be competitive in the Big Ten.

They are living in La-La Land, the same place that the Pitt fans are who argue that Narduzzi's squad has a chance to make a run at the ACC title in the future.

Have they seen Louisville's true sophomore QB Lamar Jackson, who is now the leading candidate for the Heisman Trophy? Have they seen Clemson? Not yet, but they will. The talent disparity will be evident.

Compare Jackson to any quarterback in the Big Ten. He is an awesome physical specimen who can run and pass, and when thinking about the future, compare him to PSU's Trace McSorley and Pitt's Nate Peterman.

The contrast is emblematic of the problems in the two programs.

Week Six Top 128

http://www.usatoday.com/story/sports/ncaaf/2016/10/10/ncaa-1-128-re-rank-college-football-alabama-ohio-state-michigan-clemson-washington/91843986/