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To call it such is to call Ali and Frazier's three fights just boxing matches. The records don't matter. The weather doesn't matter. The arena doesn't matter. It is a blood feud as bitter as the Hatfields and McCoys, a shootout each year as memorable as the old West showdown at the OK Corral.

It has 104 previous renewals and an 11-year gap during which football fortunes of both have ebbed and flowed but emotions about the game have not waned.

True, players from sides had not experienced playing in the Backyard Brawl, but they have heard about it now since the final tackle of last season and they have childhood memories that have stayed with them.

That was what brought on the question to Stills, WVU's All-American defensive tackle, whose brother, Darius, played as a Mountaineer with him and whose father, Gary, played in the event in 1996 and 1998, having two sacks and five tackles for loss in the '98 game.

"I've been waiting on this my whole life," Stills answered. "This game is big for all of us. This isn't a team thing; this is a state thing. As a whole state we're looking forward to this game. Me and my guys, we're amped up."

Why would West Virginians dislike their neighbors to the north? Maybe in part because, as historian John Antonik points out, Pitt public address announcer Don Ireland once made a pregame announcement that there was no smoking allowed in the stadium including "corncob pipes" and followed that up by announcing "there's a tractor in the parking lot with West Virginia license plate E-I-E-I-O. Your lights are on!"

It's all in good fun, of course, and the fun flows both ways, as when WVU fans interrupt the playing of "Sweet Caroline" with the verse "EAT S--T PITT!"

The truth is, things are always on the boiling edge.

"I was at the 2007 game," WVU placekicker Casey Legg, recalled, that being the infamous 13-9 Pitt upset of a WVU team favored by four touchdowns and needing only to win to get a shot at the national championship. "I was a 7-year-old, and it's still vivid to me.

"I remember leaving that game and people throwing rocks at our car. I remember how emotional people were about it, and I was 7. That's what I'm coming into it with, the remembrance of how important it is to the people of West Virginia."

It's no different 80 miles north of Morgantown on the Panthers' campus.

Take Pitt outside linebacker Bangally Kamara, who grew up in Akron but has learned that there is more to rivalries than Ohio State-Michigan.

"I'm from Ohio, so this rivalry is not the thing over there," Kamara was quoted as saying recently in the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review. "What I've learned is really that it's a very deep, deep, deep rivalry between West Virginia and Pittsburgh. And the rivalry is there, back from a long time.

"There's a lot of hatred between these two teams."

Emotions run deep, and hatred certainly is one of the strongest emotions you can feel.

Jared Wayne, a Pitt wide receiver, grew up in Petersburg, Ontario, and has heard the talk among his teammates.

"We've developed some of that hatred, I guess you can say," he did say.

Not a whole lot of West Virginians head north to play at Pitt. Stills was offered by them, but there was no chance of them getting him.

"I was in high school, so I was like, this is exciting," Stills recalled. "But at the time I knew about the rivalry, so I wasn't going to go there."

WVU offensive guard James Gmiter is from Bethel Park, a Pittsburgh suburb, but he never had Pitt on his radar thanks to his grandfather, who was a Notre Dame fan, a school that often battled with the Irish.

Does facing Pitt now inspire him?

"One hundred percent," he answers. "Even if they would have offered, I wouldn't have given it a thought."

On the other hand, WVU quarterbacks Major Harris, who played his way into the College Football Hall of Fame, and Rasheed Marshall came south to play for the Mountaineers, among so many others.

Juices always flow on opening day, but not like this. Both coaches have done all they can to educate their teams of the rivalry ÃÛÁÄÖ±²¥” and there are many reasons to dislike each other going both ways.

Among WVU coach Neal Brown's invited speakers was former Don Nehlen defensive line coach Bil Kirelawich, a native of eastern Pennsylvania who never had any love for Pitt and who can really get that point across.

"He pumped us up," Legg admitted. "It was great to hear him. I joked with him and told him we needed to have him come speak to us 15 minutes before the game."

There have been uplifting wins on both sides as well as heartbreaks.

For WVU, there was quarterback Chad Johnston hitting Zach Abraham deep after a scramble for the winning touchdown with 15 seconds left; there was Bill McKenzie's game-winning field goal; there was Amos Zereoue's first collegiate carry that went 60 yards for a touchdown, Garrett Ford Sr.'s huge day of 341 total yards.

But there was that 2007 loss and blowing a 31-9 lead in the fourth quarter of what became a 31-31 tie and Bobby Bowden's WVU team that had a 35-8 lead in the second half only to lose 36-35 in what Bowden called the toughest loss of his Hall of Fame career.

It is a series made up not only of great moments but great players. Antonik tells us there have been 36 first-team All-Americans, 37 College Football Hall of Famers, 12 Pro Football Hall of Famers and more than 450 future NFL players to play in the game.

Names like White and Harris, Zereoue and Slaton and Cobourne and Huff and Howley and Curtis and Irvin on the WVU side and Marino and Dorsett and Ditka and Fitzgerald on the Pitt side have turned this border war into a national event that hopefully will not have go through any more interruptions as college football reshapes itself in the modern era.