While Backyard Brawl may sound like a pay-per-view professional wrestling event, it is actually the name given to the annual football game held each season between the West Virginia University (WVU) Mountaineers and the Panthers of the University of Pittsburgh (Pitt). The historic rivalry between these two close college football programs has its roots in the first meeting that took place on October 26, 1895. The opening game was played in Wheeling, West Virginia, a neutral site, and the final result was in that The day left the West Virginia Mountaineers victorious over the Pittsburgh Panthers by an 8-0 score in what would turn out to be the first of more than a hundred meetings between these two college football programs.
The phrase Backyard Brawl is hyperbole derived from the close physical proximity between the two campuses. Not surprisingly, the University of Pittsburgh is located in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania and the University of West Virginia is based in Morgantown, West Virginia. The two schools are separated by about 75 miles. The relatively short distance between the two Big East Conference schools makes the approximately one-and-a-half hour commute along Interstate 79 from one university to another a breeze for students and alumni who make the walk to games. football.
The popularity of the Backyard Brawl name has become so great in the area that it has more recently spread from the grill to the hardwood, as basketball programs have adopted the moniker for their biannual Big East Conference meetings. After 102 soccer games between them and 180 basketball games, it’s fair to say that the two schools are intimately familiar with each other. The regional rivalry that began simply as a soccer-centric issue has evolved to affect every aspect in which the two respected higher education institutions can compete.
When it comes to soccer specifically, the University of Pittsburgh leads the overall series by quite a considerable margin. As of 2009, the tally is 68 head-to-head wins for Pitt and just 38 wins for WVU (there have also been 3 draws along the way in 1909, 1985 and 1989). Although the University of Pittsburgh enjoys its current lead in the series in part due to a dominant 15-game winning streak between 1929 and 1946, the competition has been very even for the past decade. In fact, for the past ten years the series has been split with five wins for each of the story shows.