WVU football is set to welcome Pitt this weekend for The Backyard Brawl. The Mountaineers and the Panthers will meet for the 108th time this Saturday, and it is one of the biggest rivalry games in all of college football. WVU head coach Rich Rodriguez views it as the "most intense" rivalry he's ever coached in – don't tell Michigan and Ohio State – and coach Zac Alley also holds it alongside some of the greatest rivalries in the sport. The fans are passionate and rowdy when Pitt comes to Morgantown – though there may not be any batteries or beer bottles thrown, despite what you hear from Pitt quarterback Eli Holstein.
It will be the final edition of the rivalry until 2029, and the Mountaineers will want the bragging rights over the next four seasons. WVU also needs to bounce back from a heartbreaking Week 2 loss that sent their season off the rails, at least for a moment. To do that, the fans in Milan Puskar Stadium need to set the tone. And one easy way to do so is with a new tradition recently introduced by returning head coach Rich Rodriguez, who got the idea from his daughter Raquel – playing "The Stroke" by Billy Squire before each kickoff and having the players and fans clap along to the beat of the song.
"Typically when you’re kicking off, it’s after something good — it’s beginning of the half, beginning of the game, or after you score a touchdown. The only time it’s not is if it’s after a safety, so everybody should be in a good mood when we do a kickoff," Rodriguez said.
"She had the idea to play the Chazz Michael Michaels video from Blades of Glory," said WVU video production crew member Sean Merinar. Watching some of the players do it, we knew some of the fans would (clap). Nobody needed trained. If you go back and watch, it wasn’t even to the part where he was trying to get them to clap. People in the stands were already clapping. It was crazy. It worked like gangbusters.”
With the new tradition now in place and the Mountaineers needing a huge win in the program's biggest rivalry this weekend in a home contest, it's the perfect time for fans to cement this new tradition.
Anything and everything that fans can do to keep the crowd as rowdy as can be this Saturday in an attempt to shift momentum to the old-gold-and-blue should be done, and this new tradition is just one more prominent way Mountaineers fans can make it happen. And if Rodriguez's offense returns to it's traditional form, there will hopefully be plenty of opportunities to make it happen.