Sixty-one years after his final college game, Marshall Goldberg will make one last carry at Pitt Stadium.
At halftime of Pitt’s Nov. 13 game against Notre Dame, the two-time All-American running back will tote a ceremonial torch as Pitt bids farewell to one of the college football citadels of the 1920s.
“It was a great stadium,” said the 81-year-old Goldberg, who lives in retirement on Chicago’s Gold Coast. “I have so many memories, good and bad.”
Goldberg, who went on to play for the Chicago Cardinals and is enshrined in the College Football Hall of Fame, is not alone. Pitt Stadium was home to such legends as Tony Dorsett, Dan Marino, Hugh Green, Bill Fralic, Mike Ditka and Joe Schmidt.
Opened in 1925, the 56,000-seat stadium commands the campus hilltop. With its narrow arches and classic bowl configuration, it is a throwback to one of the grand eras in the campus game and is a contemporary of such venues as Michigan Stadium, Notre Dame Stadium, Ohio Stadium, Camp Randall Stadium, Dyche Stadium and the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum.
Each of those stadiums has undergone extensive renovations over the years. Pitt officials determined Pitt Stadium, with no room for lucrative suites or other modern amenities, had outlived its usefulness.
“The maintenance was killing us,” Goldberg said.
Pitt will play next year’s home schedule in Three Rivers Stadium before moving into a new downtown stadium with the NFL’s Steelers in 2001. The new facility promises better parking, solving one headache generations of Pitt followers faced, as well as better locker facilities for the players.
“They’ll be happier in the new place,” Goldberg said.
Pitt head coach Walt Harris hopes the move will boost recruiting and improve attendance. The Panthers have struggled at the gate even when they were perennial national title contenders. This is a Steelers town first and last.
“Quite honestly, we’re trying to rebuild a once-great football program,” Harris said. “One of the consistencies in this great program is that we were not ever able to get a lot of attendance consistently. That has a lot to do with what we’re doing.”
But others aren’t quite ready to say goodbye to the old bowl. The move angered merchants in the Oakland district, and students have complained about the inconvenience of the 10-minute drive downtown.
John Majors, who coached Pitt to a national title in 1976 and lives a few blocks from the stadium, said he sees both sides. Majors said he’ll miss the game-day atmosphere, when the smoke of tailgate-party grills wafted through Oakland’s cramped streets.
But Majors, who works in the school’s athletic department, understands the need to modernize.
“It’s emotional to move it off campus,” Majors said. “It’s hard to move on. People are going to really miss it. But I hope they’ll come back to us.”
Huskymania: Having lost to Brigham Young and Air Force, Washington would be an also-ran in the mighty Mountain West Conference. Good thing the Huskies are members of the Pac-10, where parity and parody dominate. Washington is the only Pac-10 team that controls its own Rose Bowl fate. The Huskies (5-3, 4-1) are headed for Pasadena if they can win at Arizona and UCLA and then beat Washington State in the Apple Cup.
“We are in a position now where the games that we play matter,” coach Rick Neuheisel said. “The games that are left in November are critical if we are . . . actually to capture the title. I say capture because in all my experiences with the Pac-10, nothing is given to you. You have to go earn it. Too many times in my memory have I recalled teams that seemingly had it and then gave it away at the end.”
Washington took control of the race in a 35-30 victory over Stanford last weekend. The hero of the day was quarterback Marques Tuiasosopo, who threw for 302 yards and ran for 207 despite suffering bruised buttocks.
Stanford is off this week, but it would leapfrog Washington if the Huskies fall in Tucson. Only in the Pac-10 could a team take over the race by not playing.
Meanwhile, back in Boulder . . . Gary Barnett, who engaged in a long-distance mudslinging match with Neuheisel after succeeding him at Colorado, has the Buffaloes in contention in the Big 12 North Division.
Whether that is a sign of the Big 12’s mediocrity or the Buffaloes’ strength is anyone’s guess. But Barnett’s team can jump into a first-place tie with a victory at No. 6 Kansas State this weekend.
“We’re in a position now where we can control our own destiny a little bit,” Barnett said. “It’s the first time in a while that Colorado has gone into November in that position.”
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Did they hear that in Seattle?
Waffle House: Pitt lost to Penn State 20-17 on Sept. 11 and lost to Virginia Tech 30-17 last weekend. But Harris took the easy way out when asked this week whether the Nittany Lions or the Hokies deserved a slot in the Sugar Bowl against top-ranked Florida State.
“I can’t do that, just because I have such great respect for both programs,” Harris said. “I will say that if they do play, it would be a great game. They have a group of players on both teams who are great college football players and quite a few future NFL players. Hopefully, that’ll happen because it’ll be a great football game.”
Pitt wide receiver Antonio Bryant wasn’t all that impressed with the Hokies–particularly their secondary, which seemed utterly baffled by the Panthers’ precision passing attack. Pitt sophomore David Priestley threw for 407 yards before the Hokies knocked him out on a sack in the fourth quarter.
“They have a great defensive line and that makes their secondary look a lot better,” said Bryant, who caught 13 passes for 215 yards and a TD.
Sidelines: Three seasons after a gambling scandal decimated its program, Boston College is bowl eligible, having improved to 6-2 with a come-from-behind 24-23 victory at Syracuse last weekend. Asked if Boston is fired up over the Eagles’ success, coach Tom O’Brien said, “I don’t get around the city. All I can say is Conte Forum (home to BC athletics) is a much happier place than when I got here in December 1996.” . . . Marshall, one of the six remaining unbeatens in Division I-A, will be without five starters Saturday at Kent, including running back Doug Chapman and linebacker Andre O’Neal, who have knee injuries. But the Thundering Herd still has a strong shot at beating the 2-7 Golden Flashes. That’s all anyone needs to know about the strength of Marshall’s schedule.
Miami’s Mike Rumph walked off the field feeling like a goat after Penn State’s Chafie Fields burned him for the decisive 79-yard touchdown in the Nittany Lions’ 27-23 victory Sept. 25 at the Orange Bowl. But Rumph was one of the Miami heroes in a 28-20 victory last weekend over West Virginia, picking off two passes and making 10 tackles.
“I think the Penn State game was probably the best thing to happen to me,” Rumph said. “I know those things are going to happen, but I have to be able to put it all behind me. I’ve been able to do that, and now I just try to be the best I can for the team.”
Nebraska coach Frank Solich said the previous week’s loss at Texas was a big factor in the Cornhuskers’ lackluster performance in a 24-17 victory Saturday at Kansas. Nebraska, which has not lost to the Jayhawks since 1968, trailed 9-0 at halftime before waking up.
“It certainly is not an easy thing to overcome when you have a loss of that nature,” Solich said. “But if you don’t overcome it, you’re setting yourself up for a loss the next week. That, to a degree, is what happened. We came out with not very much emotion in the first half.”
The Huskers had better not be flat with Texas A & M and Kansas State coming to Lincoln the next two weekends.
“People think Nebraska just steps on the field and wins automatically,” Solich said. “That’s not what happens.”