Are you a Pitt fan? Prepare to be surprised

I thought Pitt football was going to win the national championship.

It was my freshman year…. I thought Pitt football was going to win the national championship.

It was my freshman year. I sat four rows up the end zone sideline in the Heinz Field student section, my Dan Marino throwback jersey the flag of my pretentious Pitt fanhood. Notre Dame – Dave Wannstedt’s first game.

First quarter, first drive. Tyler Palko drops 30 yards of pass perfection into Greg Lee’s mitts. Between two Irish defenders.

Bam. A touchdown easier than landing a Cessna.

It’s the type of play that makes you delusional.

“Dude,” I said to my friend, after I hugged some other kid, “Greg Lee is on pace to catch like 1,000 touchdowns.”

My dad was there, too. My family’s had season tickets for years. Even though he was up in the nosebleeds (he likes to watch the whole play develop from atop his perch), he saw it from the same angle.

“That was easy,” he thought. “Maybe they are as good as people think they are.”

Pitt was then ranked No. 23 in the preseason, coming off a Big East championship and a BCS bowl. Palko-to-Lee might as well have been Young-to-Rice.

Seven points into the season, Pitt was building a program stronger than the Nile is long.

“Then,” as my dad deadpans years later, “the dam broke.”

The final score: 42-21, Notre Dame. Pitt’s 2005 season record: 5-6.

It was tough on all of us. I called my dad after the third quarter of that fateful game against Brady Quinn and the Pretty Boys.

“I don’t want to be here anymore,” I said.

He paused on the other end.

“Neither do I.”

The next year, the 2006 season that Pitt opened 6-1, it finished 6-6.

The things I did to vent my frustration made Darrell Strong’s “obscene gesture” to South Florida fans look like a thumbs up.

This past season, per my mom’s request, my dad moved their season tickets from the upper decks to the lower level. Back down to Earth – where the Pitt program settled before a 13-9 spectrum in the Morgantown, W. Va., sky launched high hopes for Pitt football yet again.

Thus goes the cycle. And as an incoming Pitt fan, you’ll know it better than any of the generic gen-ed material you’ll inevitably be forced to memorize.

See, I’ve had it this way my entire life. My dad went to Pitt. My mom got her teaching master’s from Pitt. They were both here the last time the Panthers won a national championship – in 1976, in the thick of Pittsburgh’s glory days.

It seems like I was born wearing a royal blue Pitt sweatshirt, which switched to navy blue in 1997, which I wore on the field in 1998 when Pitt lost to Temple.

Think about that.

Remember Matt Lytle? If you do, you get it.

If you don’t, well, you don’t want to get it.

But you just might. One thing I’ve learned over the years is to never be surprised. With anything any Pitt sports team does. For familiarity’s sake, I’ll say “expect the unexpected.”

I use football as my main example because Pitt football is my favorite team anywhere. I’ll watch Pitt over the Steelers, and anybody who grows up in Pittsburgh knows the gravity of that enthusiasm or concern or love, whatever it is.

That said, I’ve followed this program for years and have been there through times both murky and clear. And believe me, there have been plenty of both.

But for every loss to Ohio, there’s a historical upset of the No. 2 team in the country on its coronation night. Your bitter rival speechless – there’s no better feeling.

Mike McGlynn was right, if a bit jazzed on that cool night in Morgantown.

“We shocked the world,” he said.

And we did. Maybe not the whole world, but our world.

It’s certainly not the first time, and I know it won’t be the last. Pitt will shock our world once again. And again. And again.