How about a new Pitt Stadium?

[PIT2MAD]

The weak non conference schedules really hurt attendance as well...I'd love to see more of an emphasis on playing quality teams early in the season just like I'd like to see in basketball. Granted the small schools deserve their shot at knocking off the Goliaths, so perhaps a requirement that all interleague series are home-and-home and some sort of structure a la the Champions League where schools can move up or down in eligibility based on their performance over time.

No one is going to pack the house for Akron or Youngstown State, even if those games usually end up being intense showdowns for the Pitt teams of the 2000's. What it would do is allow those schools to pack THEIR stadiums when Ohio State comes to town, and for Pitt to do the same when big names come (remember one of the big factors leading to the end of Pitt-PSU was that JoePa wanted a 2-1 deal instead of a home-and-home).

As far as an on-campus stadium, as an alum who's read countless posts on the Panther football forum over the years on this issue, I've accepted it's something we will not see in our lifetimes. The only conceivable place to put it is in Panther Hollow and that is a pipe dream.

As someone else said, football may not be the best idea for long term investments. I hear you, erieguy, but there's no denying that less young people are playing the game and that momentum is slowly but surely growing. I really expect that over time we will see an overall dilution of talent as those talented kids grow up focusing on other sports instead of the default which has been football for so long now. This kind of changing of the guard sounds unfathomable but it's fact that the popular sports change with time. If my reading memory serves me right, 100 years ago the most popular sports in the US were boxing, baseball, and horse racing or something along those lines. Football has been at the top for a while now but CTE and other damaging effects on the body really seem to have most parents shunning it.

[erieguy]

Football played with flags will still be more popular.