ESPN’s Rece Davis, Desmond Howard relish college rivalries like the Backyard Brawl
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Never more so than now has money been in the face of a casual college football fan.
Of course, across collegiate athletics, dollar signs were always the straw that stirred the drink.
But nowadays, the differences between the business models of college football and say, the NFL or NBA, have become increasingly blurred.
Conference realignment and NIL have done much to peel back that curtain, exposing the financial realities that control the direction of college football.
“This is a business,” ESPN journalist Rece Davis said during a Thursday afternoon Zoom meeting with members of the media before the Pitt-West Virginia game. “It is a multi-billion dollar business. That’s just what it is, and to say otherwise, it’s just simply not true or accurate.”
Davis, alongside “College GameDay” colleague and analyst Desmond Howard, provided play-by-play coverage of the Backyard Brawl at Acrisure Stadium.
One cherished element within college football that is threatened by conference realignments are historic rivalries.
Thursday night represents the first of four planned meetings between the Panthers and Mountaineers through 2025; they also will play four times between 2029-32.
While not as satisfying to fans as an annual series renewal, it’s a start.
Amid realignments, TV rights negotiations and money grabs, the Backyard Brawl represents the pure spirit of college football.
From its historical value, the mutual disdain between each programs’ loyalists and players alike, to the proximity for fans between Pittsburgh and Morgantown, W.Va., the Backyard Brawl embodies the best aspects of college football.
“The popularity of the sport, and the reason it matters so much is not built on the money,” Davis said. “(Fans) like it, they love it, it becomes part of them, they invest their time and their money and their contributions and their emotional capital into these teams and into these games because of rivalries like this.”
The fan bases of Pitt and WVU have shed their fair share of tears because of this rivalry, with each program delivering crushing losses to the other over the years.
No matter the year, stakes or environment, the Backyard Brawl fires up the respective programs, universities and fan bases like little else.
“You still need the things that are the foundational aspects of the sport to be treasured, preserved and treated with the dignity and respect that they deserve, and I think this (rivalry) is one of them,” Davis said.
In 2022, it is the Panthers, ranked No. 17 in the Associated Press preseason poll, that have the hype behind them.
Speaking of hype, Howard even went as far to recently predict Pitt to make the College Football Playoff later this season, a hot take that generated no small amount of criticism, from fellow analysts to social media football experts.
“I think the ACC is wide open,” Howard said. “I think that Pitt can win the ACC like they did a year ago, and once you win your conference, you have a chance to make it to the College Football Playoff. It’s really just that simple for me.”