Pitt Fan 101: A new student’s guide to rooting for the Panthers

I’ve been here for three years, and I’m still not sure that a lot of Pitt students know what… I’ve been here for three years, and I’m still not sure that a lot of Pitt students know what to do once they get tickets in their hands. Thus, it’s time somebody laid out some of the more important rules for being a legitimate Pitt sports fan.

First and foremost, cheer at football games. For the love of Jock Sutherland, cheer until your vocal cords cling to the sides of your throat and refuse to vibrate anymore. I’ve been to a lot of football games, and at the big ones (Virginia Tech, Nebraska, etc.), the crowd gets loud. But we play 11 (soon to be 12) games a year.

Get out your bullhorns at the early games, which are often as quiet as the French military. Holler as Pitt takes on the Ohios, the Akrons, the Youngstown States. The football team is playing these games just as hard as the other ones — we owe it to them to cheer just as hard.

Next, I’ll deal with getting a basketball season ticket. Don’t believe the athletics department when it says the ticket system works. If you manage to get one, consider yourself blessed, and use every ticket that you can. Don’t skip classes (after all, you’re paying five digits a year for this place), don’t miss weddings, and if you have to go to the hospital for something, by all means, go. Otherwise, you’re in possession of the Holy Grail of the undergrad sports fan. You’re obliged to use it.

If for some reason you can’t use it, you’re equally obliged to give it to someone who can. I haven’t floated the idea on Athletics Director Jeff Long yet, but I’m sure he’d agree that the mandatory punishment for letting a ticket go to waste should be getting locked in a room for 24 hours with Skip Bayless.

Another important matter dealing with season tickets: If you sit in the student section, you need to have an Oakland Zoo shirt. It’s somewhere around 10 bucks, slightly more or less depending on where you get it. You can spare that money, and the fear that a sea of Zoo shirts strikes into the hearts of opponents is worth every cent.

In donning the shirt, you’ve signed an unwritten contract to stand the entire game, get louder than you’ve ever been every time the opponent touches the ball, and — this is the most important — stay for the entire game. I don’t think anything ticks off a team more than seeing their student cheering section shrink toward the end of a contest. If you leave early, you have to walk by the pep band. May the basketball gods douse you with every bit of moisture that comes out of the brass section’s spit valves.

But there’s more to it than just football and basketball. You’ve got a plethora of other sports to go to that have free admission. Stop by a swim meet and see the men’s team, which has more Big East titles than any team in any sport at any school in conference history. Go see the volleyball team, the friendliest group of athletes you’ll ever meet, provided you’re on the Pitt side of the net.

Not your bag? Try the baseball team, then. Any time this team gets a full house for an entire three-game series, they’re spectacular. This year, they won two of three against Villanova in a series that featured two huge comebacks. Against West Virginia, games one and three featured rallies capped by game-winning heroics in the last inning on the way to a Pitt sweep.

The mention of West Virginia brings us to another important matter: the Backyard Brawl. You should make it your goal to get to every event in which Pitt plays WVU. Pitt-Penn State is gone. The here-and-now rivalry is Pitt-WVU. I don’t care if it’s soccer, softball, football, wrestling, anything. As a true Pitt fan, you should try to get to as many battles in this rivalry as you can. No matter what the sport, the athletes are giving a little bit more. We need to be right there with them.

So, new students, make us veteran Pitt fans proud. Root for every sport you can, and let every athlete here know you’re cheering for them.

Brian Weaver is the assistant sports editor at The Pitt News. Say hello to him at games, or e-mail him at bweaves_pittnews@hotmail.com.