“Here’s how to fight: You fight until they kill you, until they kill you and stop your heart, and then you let them carry you out of the room. But you fight until they carry,” Peggy Noonan, a columnist for the Wall Street Journal, wrote in 2004.
Noonan’s writing and the intensity, passion and persistence it conjures has stuck with E.J. Borghetti, the chief spokesperson for Pitt athletics and the Sports Information Director for Pitt Football, for over two decades. It drives him in everything he does.
“The quote should be viewed figuratively, of course.” Borghetti said. “[Noonan’s quote] is about emptying the tank—intellectually, passionately, physically—in pursuit of a noble or higher cause. It kind of sums up, in my view, what Pitt people do.”
Borghetti knows the makeup of Pitt people better than anyone. He was born into it. His father, Ernie, was an All-American tackle for Pitt in 1963. He met his wife in Pitt Athletics circles, and his brother also graduated from Pitt. After leaving Grove City College and its football team due to a chronic shoulder injury, Borghetti transferred to Pitt, where he graduated magna cum laude with a bachelor’s degree in communications in 1992.
As a student at Pitt, Borghetti worked as a student assistant in the Sports Information Office. He fell in love with the experience but considered law school post-graduation until Borghetti’s father put him on the right track.
Borghetti’s father asked him, “What do you really want to do?”
Now, over 20 years later, Borghetti knows he made the right decision by following his passion of working with Pitt Athletics.
“You hear it every commencement — pursue your passions,” Borghetti said. “I ask, why do so few people do that? Why was I apprehensive of pursuing them? I don’t know. But I will say, if you’re passionate about what you do and believe in what you do, it will help you be the very best you can be in that given endeavor … You have to be driven by something deeper.”
Not long after graduating, Borghetti landed a job as the lone member of Carnegie Mellon’s Sports Information Office, an experience Borghetti cherished due to the fact that Division III athletes do not receive scholarships and typically compete for the love of the sport. He returned to Pitt in June of 1997 and is still serving “the great people of Pitt,” as Borghetti often puts it.
As a major program, journalists from publications of various sizes cover Pitt Athletics. From beat writers who may as well live at Pitt’s facility to members of national media outlets who might only get to a Pitt home game every couple of years, Borghetti gets to know them all professionally and personally.
“I can tell you that from the first impression, to today, E.J. has been the same person,” Andrea Adelson, a senior writer for ESPN who has known and worked with Borghetti for over a decade, said. “[He’s] friendly, professional, personable, always willing to do whatever it takes to get the job done. That is a hard thing to do sometimes when you are working for the university, trying to keep your coach and program happy while also dealing with members of the media, who may have requests that are at odds with keeping the coach and program happy.”
Don’t ask Borghetti who his favorite Pitt Athlete is. He can’t do it just like he can’t pick his favorite son. But Pitt running back James Conner and his battle with cancer sticks with him every day.
“I was at [Conner’s] last chemo treatment,” Borghetti said. “I saw that up close. I had never seen anything in person like that before. Watching James from the time he got his diagnosis to the time he got all clear, certainly provides one of the deepest and most indelible experiences I’ve had during my time here.”
“I will never forget where I was when E.J. called to tell me the diagnosis,” Adelson said. “As a journalist, I try to not get emotional. But whenever you have a connection with someone, it’s hard to put that aside. Here’s a young man just starting out on his life journey. To get a diagnosis like that, I think it’s only human for your heart to just break a little bit.”
Adelson stayed in touch with Borghetti to let Conner know the Adelson family was thinking of him. After it was clear Conner would beat cancer, Adelson got in touch with Borghetti to see if Conner wanted to share his story.
Adelson talked to some of the hundreds of people who sent cards to Conner to help tell the story of what his battle meant to them.
“I feel like we were able to tell his story uniquely and differently through the eyes of other people who could explain what it meant to them to be so moved to write to James,” Adelson said. “That would not have been possible without E.J. being there every step of the way. I don’t have access to James without having a good relationship with E.J., without having E.J.’s trust to know that I would be able to tell the story the way it needed to be told.”
In 2017, Borghetti and his wife decided in the emergency room to name their third son Conner to pay homage to James Conner, the fighter, not just the star football player. Royal and Gold is in the Borghettis’ blood.
Stephen Thompson, a writer for the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, first got to know Borghetti at a Pitt football practice he attended with The Pitt News. Thompson, then a sophomore, said that “[Borghetti] went out of his way to make a young student journalist feel like they belonged in a room full of other professionals.”
“E.J. tries to do right by people every day,” Thompson said. “The consistently kind way he treats the people he works with is what stands out. He treats everyone, from a student writing their first article and veteran journalists, the same way.”
Borghetti takes time to get to know the media members he works with. He acknowledges that the relationship between communication people and the media can sometimes be “adversarial,” but in his view, “it doesn’t have to be.”
From players who went on to the NFL to journalists who cover the team today, Borghetti has helped foster hundreds of careers. One of those is Yogi Roth, a storyteller in all mediums and an on-air college football analyst for the Big-10 Network.
Roth walked on to the Pitt football team in the summer of 2000. With NFL-level teammates and friends such as Antonio Bryant and Andy Lee, Roth saw the power of the media first-hand. In his sophomore year, Roth learned a career in media was obtainable and got closer to Borghetti.
“During my sophomore, junior and senior years, I sat in on Friday production meetings with on-air talent and producers,” Roth said. “E.J. was just always cultivating my dreams and aspirations, so I owe him my career, to be honest with you.”
Borghetti connects hundreds of Pitt athletes and staff to the media. The media’s interest in writing objectivity — good or bad — conflicts with Pitt athletes and staff preferring favorable news to dominate headlines. But Borghetti wants every athlete’s story told and to give every Panther the chance to tell their own story.
“We can’t turtle,” Borghetti said. “When things aren’t going well, it provides an even greater incentive to go out there and tell the general public that we aren’t going away. We’re going right back at it the next day and the next game. I think it builds credibility as well. We don’t change our media regiment based on a win or a loss.”
Sending a player to a press conference or the podium is certainly tougher after a loss. But, according to Borghetti, “every job has challenges.”
“My professional challenges certainly aren’t greater than those across the street at Presbyterian Hospital,” Borghetti said. “Those are challenges. I think you have to understand and embrace the fact, particularly in a business like this, that there are going to be adverse times.”
Borghetti won’t take credit for the Panthers’ play on the field, but he serves in almost every other way. He finds that serving the people of Pitt internally and acting as an ambassador for people externally is “a wonderful duty, obligation and something I wholeheartedly embrace.”
“When you are in a rough spot, lose a few in a row, or lose one people thought you shouldn’t have lost, I think that is when the people I work for and with really need me,” Borghetti said, “If only to provide encouragement and provide them with that pat on the back. That’s why I think relationships are so important … I serve that locker room from player one to player 110.”
Another huge part of Borghetti’s job is getting productive athletes the national attention they need to turn pro. By October of 2011, Borghetti campaigned for defensive tackle Aaron Donald to end up on ballots for major defensive player awards despite Pitt’s middling record. According to Adelson, Borghetti spent all last season preaching that linebacker Kyle Louis was a national defensive player of the year candidate. It was a similar story for quarterback Kenny Pickett in 2021 when he finished as a Heisman finalist.
Although Borghetti spends much of his time on the phone with coaches, voters for end-of-year awards and journalists to pull for his best players, people receive his attention and care regardless of their ability.
“What separates [Borghetti] is he isn’t one of those guys that just stays connected to the best players,” Roth said. “I wasn’t an elite player by any stretch. I’m in the media, but it’s really about our relationship, our friendship.”
Now that Roth is in the media, his relationship with Borghetti has not gone anywhere. “I go to [Pitt] practice, and E.J. meets me in the parking lot,” Roth said. “We hug it out, talk about life and it probably takes 20 minutes to just get to the practice field.”
Those who know Borghetti describe him as the ultimate Pitt man. He makes Pitt’s press box one of the most well-run and best-regarded in the country. He helps writers and storytellers craft their best possible pieces and lets the subjects of those stories tell them their way. He holds a perspective and understanding of Pitt that few others possess and that other schools struggle to find.
“Pitt provided me something at a very early age, and I feel like I’m still paying off the debt,” Borghetti said. “Pitt doesn’t owe me — I owe Pitt. Hopefully, over my career, I’ve been able to pay it off a little bit.”
Stephen Thompson previously worked for The Pitt News.