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In this week's 3-2-1 Column, we're thinking about Heinz Field attendance, help in the post for Pitt basketball and a lot more.
THREE THINGS WE KNOW
There’s no simple answer other than the simple answer
We had a chance to sit down with Pitt Athletic Director - or Director of Athletics, as it were - Heather Lyke on Wednesday for a discussion about a variety of topics. Mostly, she wanted to stress the importance of Pitt fans and other ACC fans calling their cable companies to demand that they carry the ACC Network.
The network’s launch is set for Aug. 22nd, and a number of providers, primarily Comcast, have not yet signed on to carry it. There’s still plenty of time and these things apparently often go to the 11th hour, but Lyke and her colleagues in the conference would like the fans to get involved.
Anyway, that was Lyke’s priority, but I was more interested in asking about that most pressing and omnipresent of issues:
Selling tickets to Pitt football games and, more importantly, getting people to go to Heinz Field.
We all know that’s a long-standing issue for Pitt. Absent a marquee matchup, Pitt’s attendance at its home stadium tends to lag. The Panthers averaged 5,000 more per game last year than they did in 2017, but the difference between the two is easy to see:
In 2018, Pitt hosted Penn State. In 2017, Pitt played at Penn State.
Similarly, 2016 saw Pitt average 46,000 per home game - 10,000 more than it averaged in 2017 - again, with Penn State on the schedule. And in 2015, with Notre Dame at home, Pitt averaged 48,150 per game - the most since 2013, when Pitt averaged 49,741 with Notre Dame and Florida State on the schedule.
By contrast, there’s 2014 and 2012, when Pitt averaged 41,000.
Now, opponents aren’t the only factor in attendance. 2015 had Notre Dame, to be sure, but it also had a schedule with Power Five opponents in five out of six home games and some decent momentum in Pat Narduzzi’s first year. 2013 was definitely about the schedule, but 2014 and 2012 both lagged not just for the quality of the schedule but also for the team’s performance - like losing to Youngstown State in 2012 or the multiple multi-game losing streaks in 2014.
So there’s more to it than opponents, but more often than not, the attendance numbers tend to follow the “star power” of the schedule.
“It’s been so much focused on a marquee matchup and, ‘That’s the game that we’ll all go,’ and then the rest of the season is just kind of your diehards that come,” Lyke said Wednesday. “How do we make it more consistent?”
And that’s the question that has vexed Lyke, Scott Barnes, Steve Pederson, Jeff Long and Steve Pederson again. Just as every president since Kennedy tried to get rid of Castro, every Pitt Athletic Director since Pederson has tried to fill Heinz Field by a means other than over-scheduling with marquee opponents.
To answer her own question, Lyke said that “there’s probably not one simple answer,” and she’s right. I mean, kind of right. There is a simple answer and we all know it: Winning. Win games and be relevant nationally, which means staying inside the top 25, frequently inside the top 20 and preferably dancing around the top 15. Do that and more people will come. The diehards will be joined by the more casual fans and, in the utopian dream of Pitt Athletic Directors dating back to the last century, eventually the general Pittsburgh sports fan.
If it sounds repetitive to say that winning is the answer, well, it’s also repetitive to say that 2+2=4; some things are just truths. And that’s Pitt’s truth. But winning, for this program at least, is unreliable, and that means that Athletic Directors and marketing people have to work extra hard to do whatever they can to sell tickets without the guarantee of on-field success.
That’s not an easy task and it’s a thankless job. I don’t envy them at all.
A fast start would help
There was another theme Heather Lyke touched on while talking about season tickets and getting people into Heinz Field. This one wasn’t as overt, but I picked up on it (which may mean I imagined it, but I don’t think so).
I think Lyke is really looking for Pitt to get off to a hot start this season. She talked about having four of the first five games at home and how the team has an opportunity to start strong, especially since that one road game in the first five is at Penn State - obviously, that’s a big opportunity in and of itself.
If I had to guess, Lyke is hoping that the Panthers can take that five-week stretch and turn it into that most precious of commodities:
Momentum. And not just momentum for future success - although that’s at stake, and we’ll talk about it in a minute - but momentum for fan interest.
Win more than a few of those first five games and those next two ACC road games (Duke and Syracuse) and Pitt will have some momentum with the fans when the Panthers return to Heinz Field for what should be a pretty big conference game against Miami on Oct. 26.
The final two ACC home games - North Carolina on Thursday, Nov. 14, and Boston College in the finale on Nov. 30 - could have a whole lot riding on them as well, and getting a packed or nearly-packed Heinz Field could go a long way in giving Pitt some home-field advantage.
And I imagine that the attendance for those games is going to depend a whole lot on what happens in the first half of the season. Last year, the tickets were sold well in advance due to the Penn State game, but I don’t think this year will have the same built-in advantage. Lyke kind of acknowledged where things are with season ticket sales on Wednesday when she said they were “comparable” to 2017 - i.e., the last time Pitt had a season without a marquee home game like Penn State.
“Comparable” sticks out to me. If the ticket sales were ahead of 2017, she would have said so - athletic directors never shy away from talking about better ticket sales. And if this year’s sales were on pace with 2017, she probably would have said that or even something like, “We’re trending to be ahead of two years ago.”
Calling them “comparable,” though…maybe I’m reading too much into it, but I would guess that means they’re behind 2017. Even if they’re right on pace, that’s not good. Pitt’s high-water mark for that season was 41,124 in the N.C. State game, which stands as the second-lowest season high in attendance since Pitt moved to Heinz Field (in 2007, attendance topped out at 40,145 for a loss to UConn).
But there’s that momentum issue again, because Pitt was awful in the first half of the 2017 season. The Panthers opened the schedule 2-4, so it was no wonder that they topped 35,000 just once in the final three home games (they drew 35,978 for the finale against Miami).
So Lyke is counting on momentum. She’s counting on Pitt opening with wins against Virginia and Ohio at home, counting on a strong showing at Penn State in Week Three, counting on beating the McKenzie Milton-less UCF squad at Heinz Field and then wrapping up the first five with a win over Delaware in a rare midseason FCS game. She’s counting on it for building wins but also to try to get more tickets sold and more butts in the seat for the second-half stretch against Miami, North Carolina and Boston College.
And it wouldn’t just be good for tickets
Starting off strong would help Pitt’s ticket sales and attendance, to be sure, especially if that strong start includes a win over Virginia and a win in State College. But it sure wouldn’t hurt for the team’s season-long prospects if they came out of the gate hot.
Looking at those first five games, Virginia and Penn State obviously jump out. The former is the season opener but it’s also, more significantly, an ACC contest against a Coastal foe who will be one of the better teams in the division this year.
Just like 2018’s win over the Cavaliers was a big moment in that season, beating Bronco Mendenhall’s squad in 2019 would be a big moment for this season as well.
And then there’s the trip to State College. No, it doesn’t affect the ACC. No, it won’t change the Coastal standings. No, it won’t have a bearing on whether or not Pitt is playing in Charlotte in December.
But it’s pretty damn big on its own.
This is the last game in the series for the foreseeable future (and hey, human civilization is probably going to hit the expiration date in 2050 or something, right? That’s a short timeline to resume the series). I can’t imagine there’s one Pitt fan, coach or player who wouldn’t love to go into that undetermined and indefinite stretch with a win as the most recent memory in the rearview.
Just like Pitt entered the last hiatus in the series with a win, the Panthers would do well to enter this next hiatus on a high note, too. And doing it in State College? That would be the icing on the cake.
I think the other three games are on three different levels. There’s the must-win FCS game; that has to go in the W column. There’s the should-win against Ohio; the Bobcats might be a sneaky good non-Power Five team this year, but if Pitt is turning some kind of corner or taking a next step or something, that one should be a win, too. And there’s the maybe-win of UCF; the Knights lost their best player, but they return some top-flight athletes and a pretty darn staff on the sidelines.
The toughest question is what would be acceptable from those five games. What record would you like to see Pitt carrying at the end of that stretch?
Truthfully…it should probably be 5-0. I know I specified Ohio as the “should-win” - a game that Pitt should win if the Panthers truly have turned a corner - but really, I would put all three non-Power Five games in that category. And then Virginia is a should-win as a key conference game. And Penn State is a should-win just because it is.
The tough thing about that question is, if 5-0 isn’t the record to shoot for, how do you make 4-1 acceptable? You don’t want a loss to Virginia on the record, you’d hate to lose to Penn State in this one and you really want to come out of the non-conference schedule without any losses to non-Power Five teams. So I can’t find an “acceptable” loss in the group.
Maybe Penn State. That’s about as good an answer as I can come up with. It gives Pitt a 1-0 start to the ACC and avoids any non-Power Five losses. Losing to the Nittany Lions would be tough to stomach, but not as tough as losing to Ohio, in my view.
Either way, starting 5-0 or 4-1 (provided the loss isn’t to Virginia) would be a huge boost for this team. Then, if they can cap the first half of the season with a win at Duke in Week Six and hit the off week at 6-0 (and ranked) or 5-1 with a 2-0 ACC record…yeah, that would be a pretty good spot.
It would also be a change from the last two seasons, when Pitt posted a combined 5-7 first-half record. Turn that around a little bit and I think you could see some real momentum in the second half - momentum that would be reflected in on-field performance as well as attendance.
TWO QUESTIONS WE HAVE
So that’s an issue too?
Heather Lyke talked to us for about a half-hour on Wednesday, which was a pretty long time for one of those sit-downs (for context, that worked out to roughly six pages in Microsoft Word with an 11-point Calibri font, or about 4,000 words - not counting Jerry DiPaola’s digressions into his preferred tailgate foods, which were, and I quote, “chicken wings and potato salad”).
We covered a lot of topics in the conversation with Lyke, ranging from the ACC Network to the reception Pitt has gotten from the new uniforms and branding images to - my own personal points of interest - selling football season tickets and filling Heinz Field.
Somewhere along the way in that discussion, right after Jerry brought up tailgates, Lyke started talking about a topic I didn’t expect to encounter that morning:
Tents.
Yes, tents.
If you do a CTRL-F for “tent” on that transcript, you’ll be able to find six instances where that word was used. Six times Lyke made reference to tents - and, more specifically, the fact that you can’t put up a tent in the parking lots at Heinz Field.
Lyke understands why you might want a tent at your tailgate, you know, since it tends to either be hot or raining with little in between. So she seems to trying to resolve that for Pitt fans - “We have to work on that issue,” she said Wednesday - and you’d like to think she could make some progress in time for the Panthers’ tailgate-in-the-middle-of-an-August-afternoon opener against Virginia on Aug. 31.
But the fact that this is even an issue made me think of something even broader. Sometimes, it just seems like things are harder for Pitt than they need to be. I’m not talking about the oft-levied fan complaint that Pitt makes things harder than they need to be; I’m talking about how this University and, more acutely, this Athletic Department often seems to run into hurdles and stumbling blocks more often than it needs to.
I don’t know, maybe it’s just me, but doesn’t it feel like Pitt faces difficulty and challenges at virtually every turn? Nothing’s simple, and the matter is only compounded by the challenges Pitt creates itself (and there are plenty of those).
This isn’t about an on-campus stadium. We wouldn’t be talking about tents if Pitt played in Oakland because there would be nowhere to tailgate if Pitt played in Oakland. This is just about general obstacles that don’t seem like they should be in the way.
Tents? These are the kinds of battles Heather Lyke has to fight?
It’s a wonder she gets anything done.
Who is the pressure really on?
I think we talk about Kenny Pickett and/or Mark Whipple and/or Pitt’s passing game in the 3-2-1 Column at least twice per month, so I figured we’ll get started for June right now.
I was thinking about a question this week: Who is the pressure with Pitt’s offense really on?
I mean, obviously Pickett has a ton of pressure. He’s the quarterback, and it’s always going to be on his shoulders. Especially when he’s a quarterback who failed to top 2,000 passing yards in 14 games. Especially when he’s a quarterback who led a passing offense that failed the team miserably in at least three losses, if not more.
But let’s not put it all on Pickett just quite yet, because it’s occurring to me that while Pickett himself has been a prominent scapegoat for the poor performance of the offense last season, there’s a bigger scapegoat, a bigger entity who has taken the entirety of the blame - or at least 98%, with 1% reserved for Pickett and 1% reserved for Pat Narduzzi - and that’s Shawn Watson.
He’s the real loser here. He’s the one who had a hand in the offense last year but isn’t here to either defend himself or try to do better. He’ll go down as arguably Pitt’s worst offensive coordinator of the 21st century, and that book is written. There aren’t going to be any revisionist retrospectives; nobody is going to look back in a few years and say, “You know, that Watson wasn’t so bad.”
It’s a clean break, and that’s a good thing. It allows Narduzzi and Pickett and the rest of the offense to wash their hands of the 2018 offense entirely.
Watson’s gone, and he took the soiled linens with him.
Except there’s this one thing:
Now Mark Whipple has to make it better.
Because all the scape-goating, all the blame on Watson - that’s all good and fine as a place to put the blame. But if we’re going to say it was all Watson’s fault, then that means Whipple is getting just as much responsibility to fix it, to make the offense work better.
Pickett certainly has his detractors. So does the offensive line. So do the receivers. And those groups will get plenty of blame if things don’t work in the passing game this season. But just like Watson took the brunt of it last year, so too will Whipple have to eat it this season if things don’t improve.
A lot of people are assuming that Whipple is going to have an immediate and positive impact on Pickett. I’ve even given into those thoughts from time to time and think there’s a decent chance of that happening. But if everything’s not better…well, Whipple could be the next target.
JUST ONE MORE THING
Hamilton commitment
Last things first here…
The biggest news of the week came on Thursday when Eric Hamilton announced that he’s going to attend Pitt as a graduate transfer from UNC Greensboro. A few thoughts on that:
- First off, Pitt needed a body in the post and Hamilton is 6’9” and 240 pounds. No matter what, Pitt needed to add depth with Kene Chukwuka sidelined for who knows how long.
- Second, Hamilton is a pretty good depth piece. That was the role he played at UNCG when he averaged 6.1 points and 4.5 rebounds in about 16 minutes per game. Those numbers compare pretty well to Terrell Brown (5.7 points and 4.5 rebounds in 19 minutes per game) and Chukwuka (3.9 points and 3.5 rebounds in 17 minutes per game). So if Hamilton maintains his numbers from last season, he’ll statistically be an upgrade.
I realize that there’s a big jump from the Southern Conference to the ACC, so comparing numbers to numbers isn’t exactly perfect. But it’s a comparison point to consider.
- Third, Hamilton has a pretty interesting perspective on things, if you ask me. When I interviewed him after he announced his commitment, we talked about his role at UNCG (and the role he filled for two years at Wichita State) and what role he expects to fill at Pitt. To paraphrase, he said that he has always done what his team needed him to do. So at UNCG, they needed him to play 16 minutes, score 6 points and grab 4 or 5 rebounds. That’s what they needed - and it worked out pretty well, because that team won 29 games.
For his final year of eligibility, Hamilton once again wants to do what his team needs - but this time, he wants to find a team that needs more from him than 16 minutes, 6 points and 4 rebounds per game. He wants a team that needs significant minutes and significant production.
Pitt certainly has a need for that, and Hamilton is confident he can do it.
I don’t know what Hamilton will accomplish at Pitt. I’m not smart enough to predict it. But if he can have a baseline of something approaching the numbers he put up at UNCG and possibly go above that, I think it’s a win for the Panthers and definitely a strong return on a one-year scholarship investment.
I know fans wanted Pitt to find an impressive instant-impact center this offseason. But if you take this Hamilton addition in a vacuum, I think it’s hard to find much to dislike.
