You, obviously, have an elevated and classy sense of style.
Back in 1997 Pitt decided, well, Program Killer Steve Pederson decided, to change Pitt’s uniforms. They had the big reveal at the Student Union and I even remember the players they brought out in uniform; John Jenkins in the home and Jon Marzoch in the away. They came out and I leaned over to a friend of mine and said, loud enough to be heard, “those are fucking awful”. And they were. Anyway, I was on the outside of the inner ring because I was covering the athletic department for the in-house magazine. It was fun. I knew everyone and everyone knew me.
We got rid of Script Pitt from just about everything, even the helmets. Script Pitt is based off of William Pitt, the younger’s, signature. Pitt was the youngest British Prime Minister at 24-years old. The closest to his signature was on the basketball uniforms until I think 1985 when they basically took the script from the helmet and put it on the jersey. So, we just threw away part of our history with some of the ugliest fucking uniforms - EVER.
After that, I basically developed Tourette syndrome and anytime I was within ear-shot of Pederson I would scream, “stripes on pants”. My friends thought I was an idiot but, my friends who played and wore the stripes, appreciated my effort. I continued my efforts and one day at the Big East Tournament standing outside Villa Mosconi restaurant after a Pitt Guy lunch I was with Billy Fralic, Billy Callahan and Tommy Brown. And Mrs. Pederson came out while Steve was still inside and I stood beside her and put my arm around her shoulder and said, “when you and Steve are sitting at home and just watching some TV would you ask him to do a favor for us?”. She said, “yes”. And I said, “would you ask him to put the stripes back on the pants”.
The guys started laughing but, eventually we got the stripes back, although the colors were still shit. My friends asked if I was now satisfied and I said, “no, I want the stripe on the helmet and Script”. I mentioned here before about how Tyler Palko got shit when he put Script Pitt on his helmet in place of Block Pitt for the Senior Bowl.
Eventually they put Script back where it belonged, put the stripe back on the helmet and thankfully they went back to the colors that most people associate with Pitt. It’s just a shame that guys like Larry Fitzgerald, Darrelle Revis, Shady McCoy and Aaron Donald had to play in the craptastic uniforms.
After we finally got the colors back, the uniforms back, the Script Pitt back, etc, we were playing down at Duke and I was told by our play-by-play man that I had to go to the house party everyone was going to, apparently the head of Duke Pharmacy or something like that, is a Pitt Man and he was having a party at his house.
The AD at the time, Heather Lyke, took the “new-old” helmet to this guy for his game room and he had all the helmets on display. So I sat on the couch and I asked Heather to look at the helmets and asked if she understood why Script Pitt is so important to us. She had no idea about William Pitt’s signature.
Sorry to hijack the thread but, it’s a roundabout way of saying I’d love to see Texas put the stripes back on their football pants and, like in that awesome photo, the stripes on the socks. If it was good enough for Earl Campbell’s legs it should be good enough for any current players.