How does this Pitt team compare to the best in program history?

When old friends and former University of Pittsburgh football standouts Dan Marino, Jimbo Covert and John Pelusi get together to recall their playing days — perhaps rattling ice cubes in a glass or enjoying an after-dinner cigar — an argument often arises.

Pelusi was the center on Pitt’s undefeated 1976 national championship team that set a school record with 12 wins. Marino and Covert played on Pitt teams that went 42-6 from 1979-82 — including three consecutive 11-1 seasons and two seasons in which the Panthers rose to No. 1 in the country.

“We’d have these knock-down, drag-out arguments over which team was better,” Pelusi said. “Marino says, ‘We’d beat you guys on Wednesday and come back and beat you on Friday.’ ”

Pelusi concedes this much: “Truly, those guys had, player for player, more talent than us.”

The discussion of all-time great Pitt teams now must include the 2021 squad.

Led by Heisman Trophy finalist quarterback Kenny Pickett, Pitt has won 11 games for the first time in 40 years, is in a major bowl for the first time in 17 years and owns its highest ranking (No. 12) in 12 years.

This year’s team is one of only four in school history to win 11 games and the only one to win a conference championship: the Atlantic Coast Conference. It is also the first since 1982 to have three first-team All-Americans: Pickett, wide receiver Jordan Addison and long snapper Cal Adomitis.

To further cement its legacy, and with a chance to match the ’76 team’s victory total, No. 12 Pitt (11-2) will play No. 10 Michigan State (10-2) on Thursday in the Chick-fil-A Peach Bowl. Kickoff on ESPN is at 7 p.m.

What has made this season so special, in part, is all the lean years in between.

For instance, from 1992-95, Pitt won a total of 11 games.

From 1979 into the early 1980s, there might not have been a college program with a better collection of players anywhere in the country, said veteran broadcaster Bill Hillgrove.

Hillgrove, who has called Pitt football games since 1970, said, “I think Pitt was the Alabama of (that era),” referring to the national powerhouse Crimson Tide teams of today.

Three Pitt players were selected in the first rounds of each of the 1981 and 1983 NFL Drafts. After Tony Dorsett was chosen in the first round in 1977, the next Pitt player selected from the ’76 national champion was punter Larry Swider in the seventh round.

Yet, Pelusi won’t budge from an important point.

“Your team had more talent,” he told Marino, “but our team would never quit. We would kill every one of you guys to win.”

That said, the argument needs to be brought up to date to include the current Pitt team that (with apologies to the 9-1 Panthers of 1963) might be third behind the Johnny Majors’ 1976 team and — considered collectively — those four Jackie Sherrill/Foge Fazio teams from 1979-82.

This year’s team has talent across the board, Pelusi said.

Pickett, named a first- or second-team All-American by five different services, finished third in the Heisman Trophy voting, the highest slot for a Pitt player since wide receiver Larry Fitzgerald was second in 2003. Pickett also won the Johnny Unitas Golden Arm Award that goes to the nation’s top senior or fourth-year junior quarterback, and was a finalist for the Maxwell, Walter Camp, Davey O’Brien, Manning and Senior CLASS awards. Not to mention, he was named ACC Player of Year, both overall and offensively.

Addison won the Biletnikoff Award, presented annually to the country’s most outstanding receiver.

“Pickett and Addison are special,” said Pelusi, a member of Pitt’s Board of Trustees who often has addressed the school’s current athletic teams at the request of their coaches. “As a group when (the offensive linemen) were all healthy, I think they played very well.

“I think they would play and give any of those (great Pitt teams) a game. I think Pitt can play with anybody when everybody does what they’re supposed to do.”

Author and Pitt historian Sam Sciullo Jr. has followed Pitt teams since the 1960s. He said the previous winning teams were “superior up front … with NFL talent all over the offensive and defensive lines.”

“I don’t know if that’s the case with this team. I guess time will tell,” he said.

He also acknowledged that those teams had the advantage of playing an independent schedule.

“People anguish over that 48-14 loss to Penn State (in 1981),” he said, referring to the Panthers’ only loss that season. “Look at who they played in November prior to that game: Rutgers, Army and Temple.”

In 1976, only Notre Dame and Penn State among Pitt’s 11 regular-season opponents finished with a winning record.

“This team (2021) is locked into a conference schedule. So it’s tougher,” Sciullo said.

Still, the 2021 Panthers didn’t play an opponent that was ranked at the time until meeting No. 16 Wake Forest in the ACC championship game. Even now, only Wake Forest (No. 17) and Clemson (No. 19) are currently ranked.

Another advantage for this year’s team was the return of 13 “super seniors,” including Pickett, because of the covid interruptions of 2020 that led the NCAA to offer an extra year of eligibility to anyone wishing to take it.

“What if he hadn’t (returned)?” Scuillo said of Pickett. “Pitt would have had another six- or seven-win season. Everyone would have been down in the dumps, same old Pitt.”

But it’s also more difficult for today’s coaches because players habitually leave early for the NFL or transfer without penalty. That didn’t happen 40 years ago.

“If it were now, who’s to say Tony Dorsett wouldn’t have left (for the NFL) after his junior year? The whole landscape has changed,” Sciullo said.

The difference between the three teams might be defense. The ’76 team allowed more than 20 points only once. The ’79 team surrendered an average of 8.3 points per game.

This season, defense made the difference against Wake Forest, but Pitt also allowed a total of 82 points and 1,007 yards in losses to Western Michigan and Miami — games that kept Pitt out of the College Football Playoff discussion.

“I guarantee you,” Pelusi said, “these kids, 10 years from today, 20 years from today, will look back at this season. In my opinion, they’re going to remember they were 11-2, and they’re going to look back on the two games they lost and think about ‘what if.’ ”

Nonetheless, Hillgrove senses a thread that connects them all.

“That’s the fact that they believe in each other,” he said.

That belief — and trust in the coaches — came with the culture built by Majors and maintained by Sherrill and stability forged by Pat Narduzzi, whose seven seasons make him the second-longest tenured Pitt coach in the past 56 years. Before Narduzzi arrived the day after Christmas 2014, Pitt had six head coaches — including three interim head coaches for bowl games — in 10 seasons.

“That trust is contagious,” Hillgrove said. “He trusts the players. They trust him. They trust in his system.”

Players play a key role, too, he said.

“I really think, especially the ’76 team, Tony was able to pick that team up and put it on his back,” Hillgrove said. “I think, to a degree, Pickett has been able to do that with this team.

“If you have linchpin player, I really think that belief comes a little easier. That’s the difference between, especially this Pitt team, and the ones we’ve seen in the past 15-20 years.”

The only exception, Hillgrove said, is this: “I’m not sure (Pickett) is an NFL Hall of Famer (like Dorsett and Marino). I hope he proves me wrong. But Dorsett was a once-in-a-lifetime athlete.”

Pickett has opted out of the Peach Bowl to safeguard and prepare for his NFL career, but the game matters because Pitt has a chance to match the ’76 team in victories and finish a season ranked in the top 10 for the first time since 1982.

“It would mean a whole lot to these guys, especially the contingent that’s from Pittsburgh who are a bit more aware of Pittsburgh history and the deep roots of Pitt football,” said Pitt’s All-American long snapper Cal Adomitis, a Central Catholic gradute. “To put ourselves in the same tier as that 1976 team would be a lot to be proud of.”

Even now, the Pitt name has resonated throughout college football for the first time in years.

“This season has really done a lot to re-establish Pitt nationally,” Sciullo said, “but I don’t know if it’s had the same impact locally.

“The big thing you’re going to hear in the offseason from the sports media will be, ‘Can they sustain it? They had one good year. Can they do it three or four years in a row?’ ”

Narduzzi has no interest in looking that far ahead. He offered only that this season is “history being made.”

“When I got here, I knew we could win championships,” he said. “Things come in circles, and it’s coming back around where Pitt is very, very relevant. It’s kind of why we came here.”