MORGANTOWN, W.Va. – Did he really say that?

Pitt's talented sophomore quarterback Eli Holstein, from Zachary, Louisiana, was asked about making his first-ever visit to sold-out Milan Puskar Stadium in Morgantown this Saturday.

According to Nathan Breisinger of Pittsburgh Sports Now, the sister site to WV Sports Now, Holstein made the following statement in advance of Saturday's 108^th Backyard Brawl.

"There's going to be little kids flipping me off; I'm going to get batteries and beer thrown at me on the sidelines, all types of stuff like that."

Really?

Holstein added, "I think our team's got that mindset to feed off that energy, to feed off the hate and the pure venom and poison from there."

Since Holstein has never experienced playing a college football game in Morgantown, you wonder who is feeding him this stuff?

His provocative comments are reminiscent of those once made by Panther end John Kuprok way, way back in 1961, although Kuprok's were spoken innocently in a private setting.

As the story goes, Kuprok, from Duquesne, Pennsylvania, was sitting on the team bus after the Panthers' 10-7 victory at Miami discussing some of the other college football scores he had heard on the radio while the team was traveling to the airport for the return flight to Pittsburgh.

When one of the players mentioned West Virginia's 35-26 loss to Richmond, and another remarked that the Mountaineers were rebuilding, Kuprok remarked, "Sure, they're rebuilding with garbage."

Unbeknownst to Kuprok, sitting within earshot of him was Jim O'Brien, the editor of Pitt's student newspaper. A couple days later, O'Brien decided to dust off Kuprok's juicy quote and use it as filler in his weekly  "It Goes On ..." column.

In those days, student newspaper coverage was considered more of a nuisance than a necessity, and probably viewed somewhat similar to the "troll squads" that we see on social media today.

Never, in a million years, did Kuprok think his remarks about West Virginia rebuilding with garbage players would ever see the light of day.

But it did, thanks to O'Brien, and West Virginia sports information director Eddie Barrett happened to catch wind of Kuprok's comments while he was advancing the game at Frankie Gustine's restaurant in Oakland.

Once Barrett was finished with his speech, he walked over to the Cathedral of Learning where The Pitt News was located, asked someone at the front desk if they could spare a half-dozen copies of the Wednesday, Sept. 20, edition because his kid brother was in it (a lie, of course), and he flipped immediately to the sports page.

His eyes soon grew as big as saucers after he got past O'Brien pointing out Miami quarterback George Mira's Mexican heritage to read Kuprok's quote.

Did he really say that?

Barrett put the newspapers in his attaché case, keeping them concealed for the remainder of the week and not mentioning Kuprok's comments to anyone.

Kuprok's "garbage" statement was destined to become a little innocent Shadyside shade only to be enjoyed by a small cadre of Pitt faithful.

That is until Barrett's discovery.

"I was so excited that I couldn't sleep," the late Barrett once recalled many years later. "But I didn't want to let it out too early because it could have boomeranged."

Finally, following Friday's walk-through practice in Pittsburgh, the WVU sports information director pulled out the newspapers and showed them to coach Gene Corum.

Standing next to Corum was assistant coach Russ Crane, once an All-American guard at Illinois and a gruff, rough-and-tumble customer. A smile forming on Corum's face, he handed the paper to Crane.

"Whoa, ammo!" was Crane's response.

Corum and Crane had Kuprok's "garbage" remarks plastered throughout the locker room for all of West Virginia's players to read, including those from Western Pennsylvania.

And there were some pretty good ones in the locker room that afternoon, including Portage's Steve Berzansky, Charleroi's Pete Goimarac and Keith Melenyzer, Windber's Gene Heeter, Munhall's Ken Herock, Tarentum's Joe Kiselica, Greensburg's Larry Niedzalkoski, Isabella's Bill Schillings and Rogersville's Jerry Yost.

"I was never garbage," Herock, a seven-year NFL veteran and later longtime personnel director of the Oakland Raiders and general manager of the Atlanta Falcons, once stated.

"We were all pissed," he added.

The beating Pitt took that afternoon on its home field in Pittsburgh paled in comparison to the beating poor Kuprok absorbed by those "garbage" Mountaineer players.

All afternoon, West Virginia ran sweeps right at Kuprok, sometimes sending as many as four and five players at him. Late in the game, when WVU was running out the clock on the way to a 20-6 upset victory, Kuprok was slow getting to his feet after another punishing Mountaineer running play.

Halfback Eli Kosanovich, from Weirton, West Virginia, in the state's Northern Panhandle, about 35 miles west of Pittsburgh, stood over top of Kuprok and couldn't resist remaining silent any longer. 

Pointing up toward the scoreboard, Kosanovich said, "Hey Kuprok, if we're garbage then what in the hell are you guys?"

As for O'Brien, Pitt's student troll-squad leader, he doubled down in 1962. While attempting to make amends for his '61 story that led to Pitt's stunning defeat, he wrote another story titled "Dump the Garbagemen" leading up to the next WVU-Pitt game.

Corum put that article up on the team bulletin board, too, and West Virginia defeated Pitt 15-8, making it just the third time in more than a 40-year span that the Mountaineers had topped the Panthers in back-to-back games.

In part because they were called "garbage."

And people outside the region wonder why West Virginians are not too fond of the Panthers!