20 years ago...

[owljag]

About as far away from that OSU fiasco as you can get: Pitt retired Ditka, Goldberg, and Schmidt's numbers, and upset #22 Miami, 21-17.

Highlights:


Complete second half broadcast (posted on YouTube by Eric Kasperowicz, who had a big INT):

 

[JD1976]

That was a fun season. With the same players who lost games 72-0 and 60-6 a year earlier and a QB in Pete Gonzalez who barely played on terrible teams the previous three years, Walt led Pitt to its first bowl in 8 years. I still contend that's the best coaching job we have seen in recent memory.

Pistol Pete to Terry Murphy in OT at WVU to clinch a winning season is still in my top 2 or 3 Pitt football memories of the last 30 years.

 

[rmf05]

That was a fun game to watch. I had my first job interview that day. I drove home and saw the lights of Pitt Stadium on and figured on listening to the beat down on the drive home. The beat down never came.

Of course that ended up being the worst Miami team of the past 35 years and one of only 2 with losing records since 1980 I think. That year was one of the easiest schedules in Pitt FB history. The next season we went 2-9 which was a more accurate representation of where we were at.

 

[bwh05]

That was a fun season. With the same players who lost games 72-0 and 60-6 a year earlier and a QB in Pete Gonzalez who barely played on terrible teams the previous three years, Walt led Pitt to its first bowl in 8 years. I still contend that's the best coaching job we have seen in recent memory.

Pistol Pete to Terry Murphy in OT at WVU to clinch a winning season is still in my top 2 or 3 Pitt football memories of the last 30 years.

Walt was unreal that year, whatever he did worked. We had a bunch of seniors that had taken some serious beat downs in their career at Pitt, but they had had enough and played as hard as they could. I think we had 67 players on scholarship that year, and if we had instant replay back then we'd have beaten Syracuse, won the tied-breaker and been conference champions.