Don’t hold your breath for a renewal of the Pitt-Penn State rivalry anytime soon beyond its current agreement.
As it stands now, the Panthers and Nittany Lions are scheduled to play this season and next; after that, the in-state rivalry will again go dark. Late last month, Pitt athletic director Heather Lyke told stated publicly that she had proposed a four-year home-and-home series beginning in 2026 to her Penn State counterpart, Sandy Barbour, but that athletic department had not yet responded to the offer.
Speaking Tuesday, Barbour indicated that a renewal likely isn’t the cards for at least a dozen years. From the Centre Daily Times:An extension of the storied series might be revisited at some point after 2030, Nittany Lions athletic director Sandy Barbour said Tuesday at Penn State’s first Coaches Caravan stop. But in the short term, relatively speaking, another renewal isn’t in the cards.
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“We’ve had conversations,” Barbour said at The New Yorker Hotel. “I think at this point we’ve both agreed that based on Big Ten and ACC scheduling principles — and it’s a complicating puzzle nowadays — that we’re probably not going to do anything at this point.
Th two football programs have met 98 times previously, including every season from 1935 through 1992. A four-year renewal from 1997-2000 gave way to a decade-and-half sabbatical that ended with the current four-game series kicking off in 2016.
This year’s game will be played Sept. 8 at Heinz Field in Pittsburgh. In 2019, the last game of the current contract will be played Sept. 14 in State College.
