If this is the case then our fanbase is pretty soft.
The core fan base is pretty small, comparatively. I mean by that the people that donate to the Panther Club, buy season tickets, tailgate, and make an effort to get to as many games as they can when they don't otherwise have scheduling conflicts with other aspects of life. It's enough to mostly fill the lower bowl of Heinz, which is better than a lot of schools, but worse than most of the Power 5. It's always been that way. Part of it is the smaller alumni base. Part of it is the years of mediocrity dotted with down right awful football. A big part of it is the pro sports mentality of the region, and that extends to alumni whose sports mindshare is also dominated by their local pro teams. And for Pittsburgh, you compound that by having some of the most iconic pro clubs in US sports history. Most people are just Steeler, Pirates, and Penguin fans first, and these teams, especially the Steelers whose season overlaps with Pitt's, are the undisputed flag-bearers for Western Pennsylvania.
Pitt is definitely part of the local sports scene. It's not like Pitt is an afterthought like the Riverhounds currently are (no offense), and Pitt is absolutely the top of the college heap in Pittsburgh metro, but to generate enough interest where people that aren't plugged into the Pitt game day/tailgating culture or other aspects of the university to actively make the effort to buy a ticket and show up (like a couple select years in the past), Pitt games have to have the sense of importance or spectacle. There's nothing you can do about that other than win more. But the overlap with the general Pittsburgh sports fan will cause a lot of TVs to be tuned in, which has a much lower threshold for a general Pittsburgh sports fan to overcome, as long as Pitt isn't terrible (which admittedly is where we may be heading right now).
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