Backyard Brawl loses luster of BCS dramatics

Pitt’s loss to Cincinnati has damaged West Virginia’s major bowl hopes.

PITTSBURGH (AP) — West Virginia must be wondering if Pitt ruined its big bowl plans for the second season in a row.

Last year, Pitt’s remarkable 13-9 upset in Morgantown prevented then-No. 2 West Virginia from playing in the national title game.

Now, a Pitt loss the weekend before its rivalry game against West Virginia may end up costing Mountaineers a BCS bowl bid.

Pitt’s 28-21 loss to No. 16 Cincinnati on Saturday effectively ended the Panthers’ chances of winning the Big East Conference — and likely doomed the Mountaineers’ hopes well.

If Pitt (7-3, 3-2 in Big East) had beaten Cincinnati (9-2, 5-1), the Panthers could have won the conference by defeating West Virginia (7-3, 4-1) and Connecticut (7-4) in their final two games. West Virginia could have won by defeating Pitt and South Florida (7-4, 2-4) on Dec. 6.

With Cincinnati needing only to defeat Syracuse (3-8, 1-5) to play in a BCS bowl, Friday’s Backyard Brawl may end up deciding only whether West Virginia or Pitt goes to the Sun Bowl, the likely destination for the conference’s No. 2 team.

Rather than being done in by a big-yardage game by Pitt’s LeSean McCoy, West Virginia may find itself playing in a relatively minor bowl because of a sub-par game by McCoy.

McCoy, who ran for 148 yards against West Virginia last year and was averaging 142 yards in his previous five road games, was held to 82 yards by Cincinnati. The Panthers couldn’t find enough offense to compensate.

“We were thinking Big East championship and the Orange Bowl, so it’s difficult to change our mind-set,” Pitt defensive end Jabaal Sheard said Monday. “But we’ve still got to compete. It’s our big rival and we still can go to a good bowl game.”

Just not to a major bowl. This will be the first West Virginia-Pitt game since 2001, former West Virginia coach Rich Rodriguez’s first season, that neither team will be nationally ranked.

West Virginia was No. 2 last year, No. 8 in 2006, No. 12 in 2005, No. 21 in 2004 and No. 24 in 2002, while Pitt was No. 16 in 2003.

Still, West Virginia coach Bill Stewart, who grew up listening to Backyard Brawls on 1,000-watt radio station WETZ in his hometown of New Martinsville, W.Va., said revenge won’t be an issue.

Either for 2007 or 2008.

“They whupped us. That’s as plain as I can say it,” Stewart said of Pitt’s 13-9 win last season. “I’m not going to elaborate on that with the team, I’m not going to talk about that with the team because that was ’07. We’ve done some good things since then and some not-so-good things since then.”

Pitt was coming off successive blowout losses to West Virginia before last year’s game, the biggest upset by either team in the 101-year rivalry.

“It needs to go back and forth for it to really be a rivalry,” Wannstedt said. “Last year’s game, if there’s such a thing as reigniting a rivalry, that sure as heck did it.”

The playing field for this year’s game not only has been leveled, it will be brand new.

A new layer of grass was laid atop the previous surface at Heinz Field following four district high school championship games on Saturday. The West Virginia-Pitt game will be the first played on the new sod.