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In 1981, Jackie Sherrill capped his five-year run as Pitt’s head coach with an 11-1 record and a win over Georgia in the Sugar Bowl.

That was Sherrill’s third consecutive 11-1 season with the Panthers, and the stretch from 1979 through 1981 represents arguably the high-water mark of Pitt football in the last 80 years.

Since Sherrill’s departure following the 1981 season, Pitt has struggled to get back to that level. Former Pitt player and assistant coach Serafino “Foge” Fazio replaced Sherrill in 1982 and led the Panthers to a 9-3 record that dropped to 8-3-1 the next season before finishing under .500 in his final three seasons.

Pitt slogged through the next four decades in a procession of coaching hires and fires, venue adjustments, administrative moves and just about every other change imaginable. And with each year, Sherrill’s final 11-1 faded further and further into memory.

Finally, 40 years later, Pitt has achieved at least one of the accomplishments of 1981:

10 wins in the regular season, which the Panthers pulled off Saturday night with a 31-14 defeat of Syracuse at the Carrier Dome.

How long have those 40 years been? Consider what the Pitt football program experienced in the stretch from 1982 to 2020:

39 seasons
468 games played
238 wins
224 losses
6 ties
An average of 6.1 wins and 5.7 losses per season
19 winning seasons
17 losing seasons
3 even record seasons (6-6, 6-6 and 7-7)
3 nine-win seasons (1982, 2002, 2008)
1 10-win season (2009)
20 bowl games
4 bowl wins
16 bowl losses
13 head coaches
3 interim head coaches
2 conferences