Don’t read too much into Pat Narduzzi’s latest chatter about Pitt and Penn State getting back on the schedule.
College football keeps changing underneath everyone’s feet. NIL, the transfer portal, conference realignment and the expanded College Football Playoff have already remade the sport in just a few years, and there’s nothing to suggest the pace is going to ease up. The NCAA has been pushing Congress for an antitrust exemption to slow down spending, but the proposed Protect College Sports Act, which was supposed to tackle ballooning costs and a list of other “problems,” looks unlikely to pass this fall.
That’s the backdrop for Narduzzi’s comments on Monday with Joe Starkey and Bob Pompeani on 93.7 The Fan in Pittsburgh, where he floated the idea that there have been discussions about renewing the Pitt/Penn State rivalry. On paper, sure, that sounds like the kind of thing fans would love to hear. In reality, it’s hard to treat it as much more than noise.
The rivalry did return for a four-year run from 2016-19 to get to 100 all-time meetings, and there is at least some reason to think the sides could talk again. Pitt has wanted Penn State on the schedule for years. Penn State, meanwhile, remains one of the few Big Ten programs that does not regularly line up a Power Conference opponent among its three non-conference games, so there is at least a path toward stronger scheduling.
And yet that’s where the confidence runs out.
We’re talking about a sport where nothing feels settled beyond the immediate future. Pitt’s Backyard Brawl series with West Virginia is set to come back in 2029 after a short break, but even something that close to the present still sits inside a college football landscape that could look very different by then.
A game in 2030 or later? That’s a much shakier bet.
The broader reality is that nobody really controls this thing. The NCAA doesn’t, and Congress hasn’t stepped in to do it either.
SEC commissioner Greg Sankey even floated self-governance as a real possibility at SEC Media Days this summer. If the federal government never delivers the legislation some people think it will, the Big Ten and SEC could eventually decide to carve out their own path, whether that means a breakaway super league, a scheduling partnership to juice TV money, more conference games, or an expanded playoff that eats into the regular season.
If that kind of restructuring ever happens, maybe the top 68 or 72 teams in the FBS get reorganized geographically and Pitt and Penn State are paired up every year. That would be the cleanest way to preserve old rivalries.
But that’s a long way from reality right now. For the moment, Penn State has little reason to play Pitt, and college football has given everyone even less reason to believe anything locked in for the future will still look the same when the future arrives.
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Penn States 2025 season never really recovered from the kind of moments that can tilt an entire program, and the quarterback play at the center of it keeps looking worse in hindsight. Drew Allars interceptions in big games became part of the story as the Nittany Lions slid from playoff hopes into a stretch of losses that ultimately ended with James Franklins firing after the Week 7 defeat to Northwestern, a result that sent shockwaves through a team built to contend.
The collapse was not about one bad afternoon, but the memory that lingers is how often Penn State found itself undone in the biggest spots. After a 54-day search, the program turned to Matt Campbell as its new head coach, hoping to reset the direction of a team still trying to move past the decisions and missed chances that helped define the end of Franklins run. [Read more 🡒]
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The most interesting early camp developments have come in the places where Penn State still needs answers, especially on offense, where receiver depth and quarterback depth are always under the microscope. Eskildsens transition has been one of the louder storylines, while Manskes return after missing spring practice has added another layer to the quarterback picture, and both players are part of a group that appears to be pushing for bigger responsibilities as camp continues. [Read more 🡒]
Penn States Kalani Sitake Pursuit Looks Different After BYUs Costly Bet
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Still, Sitake has not sounded entirely comfortable with the gap he sees around him, pointing to the financial limits BYU faces compared with other programs in the Big 12 and across the power conferences. For Penn State, that matters because the school was part of the conversation once upon a time, and the bigger question now is how a program with its own deep resources would have framed the chase if it had pressed harder before Campbell took the job. [Read more 🡒]