If you spend any time on Twitter, you no doubt have seen people posting certain Pitt players wearing uniform numbers that correspond with the number of days left until the football season kicks off. Jim did it last year and this year, Pat Narduzzi has been doing it.
I know we have a lot of younger readers here and also some folks that may not have spent their entire lives following Pitt sports. For that reason, I thought it would be cool to not only do the countdown here, but also give a brief writeup on the player to potentially help fans connect a little more with some of the all-time greats.
Quick disclaimer – this isn’t necessarily about picking the best player for each number. Not only is that disputable in many instances, but it’s not really the point of the exercise. So don’t be offended if your favorite player doesn’t make the list here. I’ll probably mirror Narduzzi’s list for the most part but may go off the board in a few instances.
These will also be brief, folks. It’s the offseason and we all use this time to wind down a bit. These won’t be theses or anything, but we’ll cobble together a few facts for each guy.
Finally, feel free to add on to a player’s accomplishments in the comments section. Some I’ll leave out due to space/time and some I may not even know about. But this will be a good learning exercise for all of us.
Our countdown to the start of the season continues with … another defensive lineman. Going back into the archives a little, today’s player is defensive lineman Burt Grossman.
Grossman was a three-time All-Conference defensive end and while younger fans might not have heard of him, he was one of Pitt’s highest draft picks of all time. He was a first-round pick (eighth overall) of the San Diego Chargers in 1989 and also went on to play with the Philadelphia Eagles. Grossman made an instant impact in the NFL with ten sacks in each of his first two seasons. Unfortunately, he had a relative short NFL career playing from 1989 – 1994 after suffering a neck injury.
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