 
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||
              
|
School spirit soars before The Game
Saturday, September 16, 2000 By Steve Levin, Post-Gazette Staff Writer
The promise of lasers, fireworks, marching bands, huge retail sales, a media horde, 61,000 people and the Penn State University football team were not enough to keep Matt Weinzierl in Pittsburgh today.
The 18-year-old University of Pittsburgh freshman, laundry bag in hand, waited yesterday afternoon on Forbes Avenue for a ride home to Johnstown. With an indifference bordering on sleep, the information science major ignored the other students swirling around him as they prepared for today's sold-out homecoming football game between Pitt and Penn State.
His mother would do his laundry, Weinzierl said, and he'd get some home-cooked meals. As for The Game, he said, "I'll watch it on TV."
The traditional gridiron rivalry, dating back more than 100 years and infused with the kind of generational biases usually reserved for politics and meat loaf, is going on hiatus for at least the next eight years. That may have contributed to the frenzy yesterday afternoon at the Pittsburgh Stop Outside Vendor at Forbes Avenue and Bigelow Boulevard, where a long line waited in the intermittent rain to purchase all types of clothing emblazoned with Pitt logos.
"Look," said Chas Bonasorte, a 1976 Pitt grad who has manned the cash register at the tented emporium for 12 years. "We've had the busiest Thursday and Friday ever. Business is 10 to 15 times normal.
Panthers harbor hopes of ending seven-game losing streak to Lions
"They don't care if it's raining. It's hate [of Penn State]. It's the greatest."
You can also blame the rivalry for jacking up ticket prices. General admission for Pitt's season opener with Kent State were $20; the same ticket cost $35 for Penn State.
Outside the William Pitt Student Union, Harold Gerdes of Centrak Lasers put the final touches on his laser-and-pyrotechnic extravaganza.
A 50-foot-wide and 36-foot-tall screen was hoisted above Bigelow Avenue upon which two lasers, choreographed to what Gerdes called "rock-oriented collegiate music," danced last night.
After the laser show, fireworks erupted from the fifth, 10th, 25th and 40th floors of the Cathedral of Learning. The entire show lasted 28 minutes.
"I've been all over the world and I've never seen any university do anything of this magnitude," Gerdes said. It's the 11th consecutive year Cleveland-based Centrak Lasers has participated in Pitt's homecoming. Gerdes said Pitt's budget for last night's show was between $30,000 and $35,000, or more than $1,000 per minute.
As for the media, the university's athletic office reported that 230 press passes were issued for today's game, about 100 more than usual. Pitt is providing as many as four dozen buses to shuttle fans to the 3:30 p.m. game at Three Rivers Stadium from campus and north and south Oakland.
Traffic is not expected to be a problem, even with the various roads closed or narrowed near the stadium. Still, there could be some delays. Pitt fans can console themselves with lines from the alma mater: "Thou shalt conquer as of yore. ... God preserve thee evermore."
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||
