Trending
MORGANTOWN -- There are rivalries in college football and there are Rivalries, those with a capital R.
Put the Backyard Brawl in the latter category, where the winners celebrate hardy while the losers feel as if they have suffered capital punishment.
In fact, put it near the top of that category. From the arrival at the stadium, from the march in at Army-Navy to the Man Walk during which West Virginia enters, there is a different feel. The tailgates smell better, start earlier.
The alcohol is top shelf, the pepperoni rolls tangier and the conversation spicier, as are the signs fans bring.
Mostly, by game time, the shops selling Mountaineer gear are picked clean, especially as 60,000 fans stripe the stadium in gold blue.
The rivalry took a decade for conference realignment but renewed last season in Pittsburgh, and the void the fans had felt from missing the game was filled by the biggest crowd ever to attend a sporting event in the city of three rivers, 66,000 attending not a Steelers' playoff game but the Backyard Brawl.
Oddly, those who played in the 105th Brawl had never played in one before and, with the fluid nature of college football these days, there is a new cast of characters on hand, the newbies about to experience something beyond their expectations.
Those from West Virginia will have the benefit of the home field and the crowd and the revenge motive after letting last year's game slip through their fingers, 38-31, as they blew a late lead. Had they won, it likely would have changed a losing season into a winning one.
West Virginia offensive guard Brandon Yates was there for the 2022 edition of the Brawl.
But he knew it was special before he played in it.
"As a kid, you always want to watch the biggest games and this has always been a big game that you watch," he said.
It took little or no time to realize that he was like a kid being brought up to the major leagues from a Class A baseball team.
"It was different than other games," he said. "Going up there in Pitt territory, it was very different. It was kind of surreal; a different atmosphere, a different kind of energy. You feel like you were a part of history. Everyone who has been in that situation understands the atmosphere of the Backyard Brawl. The energy was always there. It was loud, everyone screaming."
But that was there, now he is playing the host; a not-so-cordial host, he hopes.
"I always imagined what it would be like here. I think it will be a lot different than when we were at Pitt. Our fans definitely will show out. Our fans, for sure, are the craziest fans in America and they will be that way for this game."
Beanie Bishop, a Mountaineer cornerback and one who after two games looks like he can make a difference, last year was playing for Minnesota against Wisconsin in what they wouldn't admit it but is a Tier II rivalry.
It has history, but not the venom that there is in the Brawl.
"It's one of the longest rivalries, but I don't think there's as much hate," he said, proving he's a fast learner. "The fans cared, but it wasn't like this, though. You know, we hate Pitt all year round."
Yates found out how different it really is from other games last year.
"It was completely different," Yates said. "You're like, 'OK, it's a rivalry', but you've never really been in it. I'm a guy from Delaware, so I didn't understand the rivalry until I got here and talked to some past guys, they gave us some speeches, talked about past years and how they lead up to this moment.
"But being there was completely different than you expected. You kind of felt it, you kind of felt that past energy, that past rivalry when you are there in that moment. We felt it. It was pretty much a brawl. We went out there and fought hard. It was gritty, hard-nosed football. It was rivalry, a real rivalry. It isn't one of those rivalries you say because it's a regional thing. We really want to beat each other."
Interestingly, Bishop's biggest rivalry wasn't that Minnesota-Wisconsin game but came instead when he was at Western Kentucky and they played Marshall.
"That would be the biggest rivalry we had. My last year we played those guys for the Eastern Division championship; whoever won would go into the championship game. Obviously, we won that game," Bishop said.
"Every year before that there was bad blood. Guys were talking to each other, trying to inflict pain on each other. When we played those guys in green, there was a lot of hate between us."
If only he could have seen WVU play Marshall when Randy Moss was there.