16In16: #15 – PITT Retro

The #15 moment during the 2016 season is a pretty obvious choice and I’m surprised I don’t have it higher, but it has to be the return of the “PITT Retro”Colors for the homecoming game.  Everyone was wondering how PITT would build off the momentum of a very good first year under Head Coach Pat Narduzzi. Well, just weeks after the PITT Script reveal, the athletic department revealed these uniforms and it just got the fan base even more excited for the upcoming football season.

And then the next reason why this reveal helped the football program:

The reveal of the “PITT Retro” uniforms not only excited the current players, coaches and staff.  Recruits take notice of this because uniforms do play a role in recruiting and the cooler and more historic a teams’ uniforms may be, may play a role in what helps a recruit decide where to go.

Personally, I would love to see an alternate uniform that is these colors, but instead of the PITT Script, the helmet has the crawling Panther next season. This logo:

But, I can see this season’s PITT Retro jersey’s becoming the main jerseys sooner rather than later.  But, I can also see PITT becoming like Oregon with their jersey’s and just surprise fans each week with what they will wear in that game.

Now, came the first game fans got to see the uniforms and the players got to wear them:

Could there have been a better game and ending for PITT in the first game of wearing the PITT Retro uniforms? I don’t think so, I mean you have Blewitt hitting the game winning FG in the final seconds. And in the game you had Ollison and Henderson scoring on the end around and lineman Brian O’Neill scoring on the throwback pass. It was just an awesome Homecoming Game experience.

And guess what, fans and players got to see them again later in the year:

PITT just upset #2 Clemson one week prior and it was decided that it was time to break out the PITT Retro again.  And once again fans saw a great game for the retro uniforms. James Conner looked like the Conner of two years ago, Nate Peterman continued a very strong senior season and the defense showed up when it had too and carried PITT to a 7th win before closing out the regular season against Syracuse.

But, the fact that PITT wore these uniforms twice tells me that inside the athletic department and university, they are thinking about bringing these colors back full time.

It also tells me that they could also secretly be discussing ways to bring a football stadium back on campus like fans, boosters, students and most likely the players want.

Now that is the biggest tease I could do, I am working on a story of where I could see a stadium being built in Oakland.

And just to squash the location that every fan wants them to build a stadium at, the locations I am thinking of do not include “Panther Hollow”. Nothing will ever be built in “Panther Hollow”.

*All Videos Courtesy of PITT LiveWire