West Virginia AD Shane Lyons says Backyard Brawl with Pitt a 'priority'

Yeah, I'm not trolling at all with that photo. Not. At. All.

A few months ago, West Virginia athletic director Shane Lyons said that once Pitt settled their athletic director position, he would reach out to them about restarting the Backyard Brawl. That time has come and Lyons is hot on the pursuit of trying to get a deal done.

He even called it a 'priority' recently:

"It’s one of my top priorities in scheduling," Lyons said in an interview Monday with the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. "I think it’s a great thing for us as a university, it’s a great thing for Pitt and it’s a great thing for college football as a whole."

The Pitt stance here is well documented. The Panthers have pretty much avoided restarting the series under the old regime. Most recently, new head football coach Pat Narduzzi has been non-committal and while athletic director Scott Barnes has said it's a possibility, his sights appear set towards getting Penn State on the schedule first.

Lyons is, of course, doing his job here. As I've written several times, the Mountaineers were really left without a rival since their jump to the Big 12 and the end of the Backyard Brawl. The game, though, is attractive from Pitt's perspective, too, in terms of adding a guaranteed sellout (or close to it) to the schedule and bringing back a hated rival.

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