The BIZARRE CONTROVERSY at the 1997 Liberty Bowl | Pitt vs. Southern Miss
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- Опубликовано: 5 сен 2024
- Prior to the 1997 Liberty Bowl between Pitt and Southern Miss, the Liberty Bowl, which was contractually obligated to invite Pitt because of their finish in the Big East, tried to do everything in their power to prevent Pitt from playing in the game, going as far as asking them to play in a different bowl game. And Pitt's response to the request was about what you'd expect. This is the story behind the 1997 Liberty Bowl, and the chaos that ensued because of it
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#ncaa #pitt #pittsburgh #cfb #sports #highlights #libertybowl #southernmiss
I don't know what the hell the Liberty Bowl was thinking. If it wanted a Mississippian team outside C-USA, it should've already made a deal with the SEC, not the "old" BIG EAST. I side solidly with Pitt on this despite the disastrous result on the field.
Now, you need to take a good look at the 2011 Southern Miss bowl fiasco, that had C-USA champion Southern Miss playing in the lowly Hawaii Bowl.
Oddly enough, 1997 was also the only year the Pittsburgh Steelers played a regular season game in Memphis, as the then-Oilers were using Memphis as a temporary home while waiting for Nissan Stadium to be built. The majority of the crowd consisted of Steelers fans, though of course, the Steelers have one of the widest-spreading fanbases in the NFL.
I was there. It was a weird, wild scene, man. Love the name BTW 😊 Glad to see you out of prison after being arrested by the Beastie Boys.
I was also there and it was one of the reasons they left Memphis early if I remember right. From outside it looked bad but not many outside of Tennessee know how much Memphis and Nashville hate each other and for us to lose a team to Nashville out of the blue, after trying for 20 years to get a team made us bitter to a degree no one could understand outside of Memphis. At that point I think most people in Memphis were cheering for whoever the visiting team was
I think the NFL fans in Memphis knew the Oilers/Titans stop was transitory and stayed away in droves. Heck, I think the WFL Memphis Southmen drew more fans than the NFL did.
Living in Memphis I remember my dad took me to this game as a kid and sadly it would be the last game he took to. He died in August of ‘98
I love the hat tip to Marc Cohn's Walking in Memphis.
I finally googled the lyrics of "ten feet off..." Man, this channel helps me research more than just football.
This unofficial Jaguar Gator 8 historian will remind everyone you made a video about how Pitt all but ended UConn’s bowl hopes in 2005 after Huskies Coach Randy Edsall outsmarted himself.
Interestingly (to me, at least) the 1997 Ole Miss team ended up playing in the inaugural Motor City Bowl in Pontiac, Michigan. Their opponent was Marshall, a school that is located in West Virginia.
Huntington is a cool town in WVA, I grew up watching Randy Moss light up college ball, I lived an hour from Marshall an hour and a half from Columbus Ohio and 2 hours from Morgantown, I was in Appalachian Ohio, Meigs county
🐯WHO-DEY🏉 Go Herd! Just graduated from Marshall.
it probably would've been a better fit for both parties
WVU and Ole Miss: AWK-WARD
My father was the photographer that Pitt sent down to the Liberty Bowl to cover it and I always try to find him on the sideline whenever I watch clips of it.
Never can, though. Odd since he's 6'4" with red hair and a massive beard, lol.
I so remember this game. Got tickets to it
This was another unbelievable story--What tremendous research and story-telling on your end. This has become an awesome channel.
Dude you sound like a bot.
The irony is that Ole Miss had dodged playing Southern Miss for years (this is back when Southern Miss was actually kinda sorta good) so they likely would've refused the invite anyway. After playing them every year from '66-84, Ole Miss has refused to play Southern Miss ever since.
You would think they want to play them now that they have been sucking for at least the last half decade.
So i got season tix to Pitt in 97 because notre dame was on the schedule and i was a big notre dame fan. The miami game is what sold me for life on pitt. I havent missed but 1 home game since that 97 season. I even have a pylon from that Virginia Tech game when the fans rushed the field. The 97 panthers will always be my favorite Pitt team.
As a Syracuse fan, man I miss us going to the Fiesta Bowl.
Speaking of which, after, Jim Boeheim, wins, #1K, next year, he'll, literally, have no excuse to hang around, at all.
@@matthewdaley746 My mind is blown that this corrupt boomer is actually still coaching. He couldn't get #metoo'd like all the other geezers in his age group? Come on, man.
Yeah I miss you guys being relevant also.
@@dustinsindledecker154 More, baggage, than, Samsonite.
I don't remember Syracuse in the fiesta Bowl much...
bowl tickets are usually bought by students or alumni. With Pitt a lot of students and a lot of alumni live in Western PA, but like any school there are students and alumni from other parts of the country. One other point I want to make is the bowl officials probably saw the attendance of Pitt home games and thought there was no way the school would bring fans to the game when Pitt Stadium was half empty much of the time.
As a West Virginia fan, I don't blame them. I wouldn't want Pitt either.
That’s why your hillbilly school ducked Pitt for so many years. Enjoying your bottom feeder status in the big 12?
6:27 Nice touch. Marc Cohn would be proud.
Pitt: "Were going to Memphis!"
Liberty Bowl: "we don't want you"
Dude, another solid vid.
But might I suggest something?
You use the same intro and outro for these videos as you do on your primary channel. I think you oughta just record one specifically for JG8.
Pitt's lack of a fan base is a big reason why they are normally stuck playing in minor bowl games even when they have good seasons - unless they win the auto bid to a NY6 game like they did last year. And last year they drew the smallest crowd in Peach Bowl history so even a great year like they had last season will end up hurting their reputation even more.
walterlv01 You realize all bowl attendance gags been down right. Yeah only 43,000 showed up to the 2021 Peach Bowl maybe because the NY6 have lost their prestige. The reason we’re stuck playing in mealiness bowl games is because we suck every year. Stupid comment
And after all of that the attendance was 50,000.
I’ve got family in the Memphis area, and some of them are big fans of Mississippi State, so the high attendance numbers aren’t surprising.
Every single Mississippi St. alum I have ever met has been a cool and good person. Ole Miss alums, on the other hand...
I lived in Memphis, and this crazy story of how stupid some of the people in Memphis can be is entertaining. Wanting Ole Miss, an SEC school that's an hour and a half away driving legally (which about 80% don't), over a Big East team in which they were contractually forced to invite is funny.
The 1990’s were a hotbed for bowl controversies huh
I was waiting to hear what the attendance was and I had to look it up. 50,000+ is pretty good isn't it?
Well considering the FACT that Pitt AND Old Miss are WAY BELOW a 39.6 and shouldn't EVEN BOTHER to SHOW UP for their GAMES this does NOT SURPRISE me ONE BIT.
Ole Miss is a snob school. Even worse, there's no reason for them to be a snob school. They basically think they're Harvard without the actual pedigree.
William Pitt, obviously, did something truly bad to have, "The, Oakland, Of, The, East," named, after, him, from what I've heard, he had even more to do, with, the founding of Pennsylvania, than, William Penn, and, yet, the names stand.
@@DolFan316 That goes back to the, 1960s, when the worst states, for, race relations, were, Alabama, and, Mississippi, absolutely nobody can really agree which state, was, the worst, except, for, the residents of their respective states, (it, was, the other one).
@@matthewdaley746 The worst part is that people still see those states as racist today. True story: I grew up in Mississippi and in the late '70s went to a school with a black principal. My kindergarten and first grade teachers were black, as were half my classmates. Even at that time the narrative had already become false.
@@matthewdaley746 I will tell some tales about Ole Piss...I mean Miss, though. The student body there is so snobbish, so stuck up, that I knew multiple people were were in the popular crowd in multiple high schools who went to Ole Miss and got run off after a semester for not being up to "their" social standards.
Great use of the song lyrics
(That Guy Alert) The footage from the Pitt-Rutgers game had too much flashing screens. Can you please try to limit that in the future?
Will do. Unfortunately, that was the best quality footage available from Pitt/Rutgers. Had another game in mind for those spots instead, but it got copyrighted
The Liberty Bowl had a unique opportunity to match up 2 Mississippi schools that had not played one another in years… Southern Miss fans would have walked across broken glass to have a shot at Ole Miss. I’m not sure why it’s controversial for the bowl to try & make it happen.
Pitt literally hasn't been the same since Marino left. In fact they started declining even before he left during his senior year. Three straight 11-win seasons between '79 and '81, and last season was the first time they've won that many since, with just a single 10-win season in between.
Foge Fazio was the coach during Marino's senior year. He was nearly as bad as Gerry Faust was at Notre Dame.
@@ricknibert6417 To Marino's credit he's never complained about this (that I know of) even though Fagio was so bad he wrecked Marino's draft stock in just one season. And to Fagio's credit he told everyone who would listen that Marino was in fact not using drugs. Back in the early '80s adults sometimes still acted like adults.
Maybe they last season is the start of a Renaissance for the program.
@@dustinsindledecker154 You think the Pitt players will all suddenly become really smart and skilled at multiple things, to the point where they start inventing stuff? 😉
@@dustinsindledecker154 i think last year was an aberration. they'll probably be competitive in the coastal and maybe be ranked, but i dont see them becoming titans by any stretch
I was at this game. The Pitt fans were singing "i got a feeling, that Pittsburgs gonna win the Liberty Bowl!"
As a USM fan, I was satisfied to see that they did not
Pitt doesn't bring fans. At the 2013 BBVA COMPASS Bowl, 50K of the 59K fans were pulling for Ole Miss.
I attended that game. In fact we played in that game 3 yrs in a row. Living in Atlanta at the time I was at all 3. Hail to Pitt
Southern Miss is in Hattiesburg not Oxford.
Correct. Ole Miss is in Oxford, which is the team I was referring to that the Liberty Bowl wanted to have play instead of Pitt
As a fan of both Ole Miss and Southern Miss, there was no way in hell that Ole Miss would have agreed to play USM. They haven't played each other in football since 1984, and to this day, Ole Miss has 0 interest in ever playing USM again. It's ridiculous to even think that Liberty Bowl officials thought they had a chance to set that game up.
I mean, judging by the score the Liberty Bowl committee wasn't wrong. Just sayin'. But it always seems to come down to attendance concerns, doesn't it? The only real mistake they made was giving the wrong reason instead of just being honest and Pitt was plain not good enough. If they'd just said that, maybe Pitt would've gotten fired up and it would've been a better game.
When Air Force had to play Ohio State in the Liberty Bowl one year, Ohio St openly admitted they didn't want to go to Memphis. Air Force was delighted. I went to the game and everyone outside of Ohio State fans were booing OSU and pulling for air force. There are a few thousand people that just go to the game from Memphis but don't really care who wins and they all pulled for Air Force that year. People were throwing things at Ohio State and it was starting to get ugly. Air Force upset Ohio State, actually pretty easily that year as well. I remember they lost to Michigan and the loser had to come to Memphis in the winner got a really big bowl, so I get it, but you don't dis the city and the bowl that you end up at even if you aren't happy because it's not your first choice
Technically Southern Miss is the Golden Eagles.
Tell a Penn State fan they are the Lions and see how well that goes.
Penn State fans defended Joe Paterno even, after, they learned the depths of his depravity, to say that they have no, Moral Compass, is being polite.
@@matthewdaley746 This is the best comment about anything you have ever made. Not only on RUclips, but in your life, period. That is all.
@DolFan316 Thank You, Immeasurably, You, Sir, are, a, credit to your race, The, Human Race.
Well to be honest I think people choose winning sports teams over a moral compass.
@@dustinsindledecker154 To, seriously, everlasting, detriment.
Nice video
25 Years Ago
The year is 2022 and we're coming for the Natty - signed a Pitt fan
But what were the attendance numbers?
In other words, we don't want poor folks at our bowl game...
Yet they wanted fans from Mississippi which usually ranks among the poorest states in the US...
To be fair to Pitt, this bowl game attendance did break 50k
I'm a Rutgers fan so no comment on our 1997 season.
It's always going to be about money.
Pitt would of been better off not going
Morality Testing!
SMTTT!
#SMTTT
You are nuts
BTW anybody who thinks people from Pittsburgh won't travel to Memphis to attend a football game obviously doesn't know about the Titans-Steelers finale in the LB that same season. There were so many Steelers fans in the stadium that Bud Adams got pissed and moved the team to Nashville a year earlier than he was supposed to.
There’s a difference between Steelers fans and Panthers fans (I’m sure).
Difference between Steelers and Pitt panthers.
@@CTubeMan How sure are you? I'm sure there's at least some overlap. Why wouldn't there be? At the time both the team and the fans sure seemed excited to go to Memphis, at least according to the video.
@@DolFan316 im a steelers fan not from PA... theres not much of an overlap. most of the steelers fans i know are fans of other college teams (myself included... but i go to another college)
@@UserName-ts3sp Exactly! I am from Pennsylvania and Penn State is THE school in Pennsylvania, bar none, for college football! they aint got a LOT of money in the Burgh, so if you were gonna spend money to watch a football team would you rather spend it to see the perennially good PRO team, or the perennially bad college team? I rest my case!