‘Pandemonium’: Pat Bostick recounts classic ‘13-9’ Backyard Brawl

The rivalry between Pitt and West Virginia is one with absolutely no love lost. Since 2022, the bitter archnemeses face off once a year in a matchup packed with history, excitement and hatred.

Former Pitt quarterback Pat Bostick led the team under center for a few Brawls during his tenure in the blue and gold, and remembers the scorn between the two football teams throughout. 

“You knew they [West Virginia] didn’t like you much,” Bostick said. “There’s not a whole lot of love lost in the rivalry…they came into that game to ruin your season, and that kind of was the spirit of it.”

“More than anything you just knew it was going to be a game that had a different tenor to it in terms of the back-and-forth, the trash talk and the physicality,” Bostick said.

The rivalry between fans in the stands is just as extreme as the distaste between those on the field and the vibe is contagious. 

“I think it can’t help but permeate fans, players, coaches. The energy is just so real, the emotion is so real in the game,” Bostick said. ”I do think that the logo, whether you got a West Virginia logo or Pitt logo on your helmet or your shirt, in the games like that, it means more to you than who you are personally or what your background is.”

Despite the intensity in each recurring episode of the two teams’ meetings, one Backyard Brawl game stands superior to the rest. Bostick, who started in the game, remembers each moment like it was yesterday. 

The year was 2007 and the unranked 4-7 Panthers were away in enemy territory as 28.5 point underdogs for the 100th rendition of the Backyard Brawl. Their archrival West Virginia was ranked second in the country and one win away from a national championship berth. 

Bostick and his pack of Panthers had this game circled on their calendars from the get-go.

“Throughout the course of the week building up to a game like that, you know as a player, everyone in the community knows, that this will be a moment in time that you remember forever being a part of,” Bostick said. “Legends are made in it, stories are built and told about it and you kind of feel the gravity of that … and it all gets cut loose on game day and you let it all hang out there.”

Bostick spoke to the David and Goliath theme that filled the game’s aura and fueled Pitt’s strategy heading into Milan Puskar Stadium. 

“We knew that we were playing a team that A, was really good, B was playing in a spot for the national championship game and C, probably thought they were gonna run through us like a knife through butter,” Bostick said. “As the week went on we embraced the underdog mentality.”

Bostick knew the immense importance of the rivalry and how much the game had riding on it.

“What makes the rivalry is that everybody feels like the other 364 days of the year are either going to be made great or ruined based on one game … it’s the talk of the rest of the year, so that all comes to a head on one day when the game takes place,” Bostick said. “You’ve got the rest of the year to talk about it or look forward to the next one.”

When the game kicked off, Bostick said he and the team “played like we had nothing to lose.” 

“Everything seemed to be going right. Every calculated risk we took paid off,” Bostick said. “Our confidence just grew as the game went on. As we entered the fourth quarter and it got under ten minutes … we realized at that point … the game was ours to lose and we were able to hold on.”

The former quarterback knew that he and his team had to give this game their all if they wanted a shot at the near-impossible win.

“We felt like that was going to be for our seniors’ bowl game,” Bostick said. “We didn’t want to leave that stadium having left anything for chance or any stone unturned … The clock hit zero and that was one of the best wins that I’ve ever been associated with.”

Bostick describes the celebration from him and the rest of the players as they pulled off the upset that would hold recognition for years after, 

“It was the most special time I had as a player at Pitt,” Bostick said. “We sang the country roads song repeatedly on the bus. Leaving Morgantown, it was a ghost town. People couldn’t believe what they had just witnessed.”

Bostick also remembers the environment as the team returned to campus as heroes. 

“The scene in Oakland that night was pandemonium,” Bostick said.”The celebration was like nothing I had ever seen … Damnit if it wasn’t a cool sight to see when we pulled into Oakland.”

The team did not realize the history it had just made, and the sentiment took time to set in. He shared how the historic game held an effect for years to come.

“It took a minute … I think the immediacy of it was just elation, but you can’t contextualize it immediately after,” Bostick said. “I’m not sure that you could point to a time in the history of college football that a rival that had such a down season and had little to no reason to believe they could win that game could go in and ruin their rival like we did that night.”

But Bostick eventually warmed up to the level of reverence Pitt fans hold the 2007 game to.

“There was history,” Bostick said.