Logically of course that isn’t true. There were many games left, it hadn’t meant anything mathematically for winning the division or even the ACC itself. But sports fandom by definition is about emotion. Why would any of us bother with this unless we had a chance for the “thrill of victory?” And with a conference championship under our belt and high expectations coming in, “victory” no longer meant the typical Pitt 7-5 ceiling. The next level was a Top 10 showing.
Losing to TN narrowly was “ok” because we recognized that TN was a very good team, we likely win the game if not for QB injuries, etc. And we knew that if we went through the season with that loss alone, we’d at least be the neighborhood we wanted to be in as long as we could TCB against what seemed like (and still does) a group of underwhelming gibrones in our division.
But the GT loss demolished so many of those notions. We blew our chance at the original dream, which was bad enough. And we played (and coached) so poorly in it, lost to a team that is so bad, that it seemed to blow even the consolation prize of winning the ACC championship… or heck, even the lowly division. We weren’t just playing lowly gibrones, we learned in the GT game the painful truth that WE are lowly gibrones ourselves. All these games we thought before the GT game that we could be safely confident to win, are actually 50/50. At best. And maybe less, given additional injuries and defections.
Mathematically it was only one game, but it exposed that the team (and coaches) have gaps probably too extensive to run the table in the rest, which we probably will have to do now to recover from losing the most obvious gimme. That’s why it was so costly.