Friday evening’s Pittsburgh-West Virginia game is the 102nd meeting of the teams, colloqiually known as the “Backyard Brawl.” The game has been well-contested in recent years, but there was a time when it wasn’t really a backyard brawl so much as a kid piddling around the lawn with a magnifying glass and looking for ants to fry.
‘Backyard Brawl’: The One-Sided Early History
↵Between the years of 1904 and 1946, 33 editions of the Backyard Brawl were played. Pittsburgh won 29 games, West Virginia won three, and one ended in a scoreless tie. During this period, Pittsburgh put up 760 points, while West Virginia managed only 126. In fact, the Mountaineers went seven consecutive Backyard Brawls without scoring a single point.
↵Wikipedia notes that the rivalry owes itself to the fact that the two school are fairly close together geographically, which is the only reason I can think of for it to be christened with its own namesake and tradition. It’s the early 1900s, after all. It’s not much of a rivalry...but at least you can get from Morgantown to Pittsburgh by locomotive. What, are you really going to drive the Pittsburgh Panthers to Ohio State? You can have a scout guide them through the mountains, you can make them pump their way there on the train line via comical push-cart, or you can float them via a flammable, deadly dirigible. Knock yourself out.
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