"It just means more" is the motto of the Southeastern Conference, the richest and the best college tackle football conference in the land. Of course, my beloved Pitt "Panthers" are not a member of the SEC on accounta we aren't in the Southeast part of the land but rather straddle the Northeast and the near Midwest. Pitt is a member of the Atlantic Coast Conference, which we aren't on the Atlantic coast either. One illustration, not nearly the most important, of the various meanings of "It just means more" and how all the meanings distort things in higher education throughout all the land.
"It", preeminently, means money. It means more money for you to be an SEC member. It also means football. Football games in the SEC just mean more because of traditional rivalries and because the best collegiate football talent plays in the conference. The SEC acts as a black hole does in space. Even if you don't get sucked in a black hole distorts time and space for everything else in its vicinity. The SEC does the same. Colleges are not for-profit enterprises, their truck is education not money. Tackle football is one of many sports that colleges offer their students for their recreation. Tackle football is infinitely the most popular sport on college campuses, but, and this is key, most popular to spectate, not participate. College football is infinitely the most popular campus sport off campus too. People who have never attended alma mater purchase tickets to seats to see the games. In many cases, on top of that they donate immense sums of money to have their name affixed to the stadium the football team plays in. "It" is all about the money.
The University of Pittsburgh is one of the oldest universities in America, a well-respected university, a university proud of its history and accomplishments in education; it is one of the most fabulously endowed universities on the entire planet, and it has a long tradition of playing tackle football on a high competitive plane, and occasionally has fielded the best team in the land. Pitt doesn't pay players, it doesn't break rules, it plays the game ethically. The "it" in Pitt is education. Not money, not sports generally, not football particularly.
However, as its locale straddles regions of the country, Pitt straddles priorities. SEC people were taken aback that Pitt officials were almost apologetic for the football team's participation in the Sugar Bowl in 1977, the last year the team won a national championship. "We're more than football," Pitt officials repeatedly emphasized. Well, they haven't had to correct perceptions since. In the forty-one years from 1980 through 2020 Pitt is an average, in both meanings, six wins and five losses on the football field. The ACC fits Pitt in this sense: the conference's nickname is the "almost competitive conference."
Pitt has the money to pay whatever it takes to hire Nick Saban, Dabo Swinney, Jimbo Fisher, the best tackle football coaches in the country. But it sorta don't wanna. It wanna pay a more modest sum to get a more modest coach to fit its more modest football ambitions and if it gets a national championship in the bahgin that's fine too! Pitt, however, is not going to get into a bidding war with Alabama or Clemson or Texas A&M in paying top dollar for a top flight coach. It did not in 1982 when its last great coach, Jackie Sherrill, left for more money in College Station; it did not in 1997 or 2010 or 2011 or 2012 or 2014 or 2015. Pitt has its priorities and does not have to be "It" in tackle football. It wants to be "competitive', or almost. As a consequence Pitt has not been It in college football in four decades. But it sorta wanna.
When you sorta wanna and sorta don't you always meet forks in the road where you've gotta make up your two minds all over again. The Southeastern Conference's gobbling of the biggest, bestest football schools in recent years has constantly forced Pitt to straddle the two diverging paths, education and football, and a fella's legs can only straddle so far, know what I mean? The undersigned does not know how SEC expansion with Texas and Oklahoma is going to affect Pitt. I think it's going to affect the ACC somehow or other but I don't know how. All I know is that we're not at the end. For Pitt though it's straddle time again.
Writing as just one alum I do not want to see another "Major Change" in Pitt's prioritizing of football. The ACC will play on and Pitt can muddle along with it, but I don't want to see Pitt spend any more money in hiring a top coach than it is wasting on Pat Narduzzi for an average 7-5 record. There are oodles of coaches out there who can give you 7-5 for a lot less than Pat's $3.2M per year. The overwhelming likelihood is that the ACC will not materially change and Pitt will ho-hum along. If, a long shot to be sure, the SEC's gravitational pull becomes so strong that the fork in the road this time for Pitt is to get sucked into the black money hole and pay more money to compete with the Alabama's and Texas's and Oklahoma's, I hope Pitt takes two steps back and brings both legs together on a lower football plane, not in a "Power Five" conference or even a "Group of Five" but in the Football Championship Subdivision. I'd rather us play Villanova than Vanderbilt, or even Temple. You don't have to apologize for that.
