MORGANTOWN, W.Va. – This Backyard Brawl had it all: two not-so-good football teams, unseasonably hot temperatures for mid-October, blocked kicks for touchdowns, a public address announcer that was fired on the spot, and the star of the game being a walk-on wide receiver that just happened to get left behind after the game.

	Zach Abraham glides into the end zone after one of his two touchdown catches against Pitt in 1994. WVU Sports Communications

Yep, it was just another West Virginia-Pitt game.

The year was 1994 and this particular Backyard Brawl had little bearing on life beyond the confluence of the Allegheny and the Monongahela. Neither team was close to .500. Johnny Majors The Sequel was already unraveling and West Virginia was still licking its wounds after the beating it took in the Kickoff Classic to Nebraska. Two key WVU players in that Nebraska game didn’t even make it past warm-ups having been injured as the team ran onto the field.

What people witnessed that afternoon at Pitt Stadium was simply beyond comprehension. If he were alive Dante couldn’t have adequately described what took place.

Things began to get weird even before the game started when Pitt’s witty public address announcer Don Ireland tossed out a few barbs to the West Virginia fans in between his scheduled reads.

After one message he added, “The owner of a tractor with West Virginia license plate number E-I-E-I-O please report to the parking lot – your lights are on.”

Later he expanded on Pitt Stadium’s smoking policy by ad-libbing, “Fans are not permitted to smoke inside Pitt Stadium – that includes cigarettes, cigars and corncob pipes.”

Many West Virginians thought his spiel was hilarious, except of course those that owned tractors and actually used corncob pipes.

Then the game got bizarre.

Early in the first quarter West Virginia’s Harold Kidd scooped up a blocked Pitt field goal attempt and ran 60 yards for a touchdown. Minutes later, Aaron Beasley stepped in front of a John Ryan pass and raced 50 yards for another score. And just before the end of the half after Ryan had hooked up with Deitrich Jells for an 80-yard bomb, West Virginia was the recipient of two points when linebacker Matt Taffoni intercepted Ryan’s two-point try and returned it 100 yards for a score.

A halftime’s worth of planning by both teams delivered even more mystery.

Following another long Ryan pass to Jells for a touchdown, Pitt got some charity of its own when Bryan Baumann’s field goal try was blocked. Defensive tackle Tom Barndt picked up the football and methodically weaved his way 53 yards down the field toward the end zone. It took about five minutes for Barndt to score, and he was actually pulling away from Baumann and holder Bryan West at about the 10.

Meanwhile, two more kicks were blocked - a punt by West Virginia’s Todd Sauerbrun and another field goal try by Pitt’s David Merrick. Today Sauerbrun is kicking touchdowns to Chicago’s Devin Hester. I don’t know what David Merrick is doing.

It looked like West Virginia had finally taken control of the game with 1:32 remaining when quarterback Chad Johnston completed an 81-yard touchdown pass to Rahsaan Vanterpool. Pitt, of course, had other intentions.

The Panthers marched right down the field and scored on Ryan’s 5-yard pass to Chad Askew. Not to be confused with Frank Ryan – or even Pat Ryan – John Ryan finished the game with 480 yards passing. He also successfully ran the conversion to give Pitt a 41-40 lead with just 38 seconds left.

“The thing about it was we had a heck of a secondary,” Zach Abraham correctly points out. “We had Beasley, (Mike) Logan and Vann Washington. Those were good players.”

Twenty two seconds after Ryan’s run, the game took one final epic turn. Pitt’s secondary, defending against a game-deciding field goal, let Abraham get behind it and the walk-on from Wheeling forever attached his name to Backyard Brawl lore by hauling in a 60-yard touchdown pass with 16 seconds left. The scoreboard read: West Virginia 47, Pitt 41.

“All we needed was a field goal really,” Abraham said. “I remember Coach calling streaks down the field. Chad had scrambled a couple of times and it forced them to come up.”

The finish left everyone speechless.

I was a green assistant sports information director then assigned with the task of fishing players out of the locker room for post-game interviews. However, I was having a bad experience with a Pitt Stadium hot dog and had spent the entire fourth quarter doubled over in pain in one of the end zone bathrooms. Having a feel for these things, I detected something positive might have occurred when a stadium security guard took his frustrations out on a garbage can located next to the bathroom when Abraham scored the TD.

It took 10 minutes after that to get all of the details. Thirteen years later, I’m still trying to piece it all together.

When everything was finished, the reporters unsuccessful in their attempts to pry explanations out of those responsible for what had taken place, it was time to pack things up on the bus and return home.

Unfortunately, there was one small problem: there were no busses to get on. Three of them had left Pittsburgh without Abraham, Vanterpool and Johnston – the game’s three star players.

“I couldn’t believe it because they usually take a pretty good head count,” Abraham recalled. “The busses were lined up in the back of the stadium and we came out and talked to our parents for a few minutes and I asked someone where the bus was. He said, ‘What bus?’ I said the bus that was going to take us home.”

Johnston got a ride back to Morgantown with his parents and it was up to me to give Abraham and Vanterpool their heroic drive down I-79 in my beat-up Honda Civic.

Vanterpool, his body aching after a 9-catch, 205-yard performance and his bare feet dangling just inches from my face, and Abraham, seemingly content despite having a stack of game programs piled between his legs, both napped the hour and 15 minutes it took us to get back to the Milan Puskar Center. I napped a little, too.

By virtue of his game-winning catch Zach Abraham today is mentioned in the same breath with guys like Marino, Dorsett, Hostetler and Talley when people around here begin talking about the Backyard Brawl.

He will forever be one of my all-time favorites.

“I remember talking to (late Wheeling News-Register sportswriter) Bill Van Horne after the game and he told me, ‘You will always be remembered for that catch.’ “He was right.

“You don’t know how many people have come up to me over the years and said they were there to see that game,” Abraham said. “When I caught the ball that place was virtually empty. All that were left were the diehards.”

Today, about 150,000 are claiming to be among those diehards.

Yes sir, just another West Virginia-Pitt game.