Pitt adds new partner in quest to fix environment
people tailgating, tons of tents. That’s kind of the college football atmosphere.”
Bain said the North Shore setup has hindered Pitt’s ability to match that kind of atmosphere, but the athletic department wants to make the most of the space they have.
“We do have some green space, and this is an opportunity to take advantage of that and to be able to provide our fans and seasonticket holders the opportunity to go from the parking lot or parking garage and be able to not worry about having the sun beating down on them out in the parking lots.
“That was the biggest thing. Where’s a good space we could be able to hold this and have this? We have ideas. Hopefully in the next couple of years, that space is filled up, it’s sold out on a game-by-game basis. We’re going to have to put a plan in place to be able to provide more space and be able to provide this experience.”
With its seven-year deal with Tailgate Guys, Pitt has aligned itself with a business recognized by Inc. magazine as one of the fastest-growing companies in the country, one that has aggressively expanded beyond its Alabama roots. This year, Pitt was one of 10 schools to partner with the company. It’s a group that includes traditional powers like Penn State and Oklahoma, as well as schools such as South Florida and Connecticut that, like Pitt, have struggled to consistently draw large crowds to off-campus stadiums.
At Pitt’s home games this year, beginning with a Sept. 16 matchup against Oklahoma State, the school will have a designated area on the Great Lawn, across North Shore Drive from Heinz Field, for fans to utilize Tailgate Guys’ offerings, which can accommodate groups ranging from 10 to 60 people (packages start at $250 for up to 20 guests).
A service that began with a pickup truck and two trailers has rapidly grown, in some part because of schools searching for what Pitt is.
“When we started this, the gameday experience and fan experience was not a topic of conversation at all,” said Parker Duffey, Tailgate Guys’ president and CEO. “We’ve all obviously seen that become a huge talking point. I’d be willing to bet 75 percent of the athletic departments of Power Five programs have an assistant AD or fan experience or fan engagement specialist now when four years ago or five years ago, that might’ve been 10 percent, if that.”
On Friday, Pitt announced additional gameday measures, a list that includes new banners and branding, a new 5,000square-foot scoreboard, new concession offerings and, maybe most notably, moving the playing of ‘Sweet Caroline’ from between the third and fourth quarter to various points during the game.
It’s not the university’s first attempt at trying to enhance the game-day experience. Under former athletic director Steve Pederson, Pitt lowered per-game ticket prices, staged student tailgates on the Great Lawn complete with bands and a DJ, had family tailgates along Art Rooney Avenue, pushed for later start times for games and revised student shuttle schedules.
Last year, spurred by a fan survey conducted after the 2015 season and a fan experience committee, Pitt followed the lead of several major-conference schools by instituting stadium-wide beer sales.
“The main emphasis was to enhance the fan experience and provide them with something they were asking for,” Marcus Bowman, Pitt’s senior associate athletic director for sport administration, said of the decision to sell beer.
Without the charm and nostalgia of a campus, Pitt’s biggest obstacle remains trying to sculpt an unmistakably collegiate atmosphere in of a sea of parking lots, office buildings and restaurants.
That chore is complicated by an array of factors, namely the growing presence of parking garages, which provide a less-thanideal tailgating scene if tailgate accessories, such as grills, are even allowed in them at all. Other hurdles are more cosmetic. For some time, there was a lack of Pitt signage around Heinz Field or, as was the case with the midfield logo, the branding wasn’t large or distinct enough. Some fans bemoaned the lack of Pitt merchandise inside the stadium, of how there would be a Panthers shirt hanging in the store window, but directly behind it would be dozens of Steelers jerseys.
Fans like Anson Whaley, a Pitt graduate and former member of the fan experience committee, have noticed improvements in recent years, but at the same time acknowledge Pitt’s challenges.
“When I think of what I liked about those games [at Pitt Stadium] or what I think made it feel like a college atmosphere was walking around campus beforehand, whether it was going to pick up friends or going to eat beforehand,” Whaley said. “Some of that just can’t be replicated. There’s nothing you can do to get that same feel because it’s not on campus. The biggest hurdle to me is the aesthetics of the stadium, trying to make it not look like the Steelers’ stadium on game day.”
Whether initiatives such as the Tailgate Guys partnership will change any of those overriding drawbacks remains to be seen.
Bain said his office has been receiving calls about the services daily. But for all that falls under its control, there’s only so much the athletic department can do to attract and retain fans in a city with so many sports and entertainment options. Lively atmospheres are fostered by tradition, innovation and creativity, but, as athletic director Heather Lyke noted, nothing does that job quite like a consistently successful on-field product.
As the program has reeled off consecutive seasons with at least eight wins for the first time since 200810 — a period in which the Panthers averaged nearly 52,000 fans per game — there’s a belief that Pitt’s efforts on and away from the field may start to pay off.
“It’s a great location, it’s a great space for everything,” said Justin Acierno, a northeast region director for Tailgate Guys and a former assistant athletic director for ticket sales at Pitt. “Once coach Narduzzi gets that consistency together, that’s when you’ll really see it take off.”