1976 Pittsburgh Panthers football team The 1976 Pittsburgh Panthers football team represented the University of Pittsburgh in the 1976 college football season and is recognized as that season ' s consensus National Champions . Pitt was also awarded the Lambert - Meadowlands Trophy as the best Division I team in the East . Regular season . The previous season , 1975 , saw Pitt win the Sun Bowl over Kansas to cap an 8 - 4 record highlighted by wins at Georgia and Notre Dame . The stage was thus set in 1976 , with Pitt ranked 9th in the AP preseason poll , for the Panthers to make a run for the National Championship . In the first game of the 1976 season , the Panthers faced off against Notre Dame in South Bend , IN . A year earlier , Tony Dorsett had finished with 303 yards rushing in Pitt ' s 34 - 20 victory over the Irish . " They even grew the grass high " said Carmen DeArdo , a diehard Pitt alumnus , " and everyone knew Tony would get the ball . " " They didn ' t let that grass grow long enough , " Dorsett said later . He darted 61 yards on his first run of the season and tacked on 120 more by the end of the 31 - 10 Pitt win . The season continued with a 42 - 14 win at Georgia Tech and a 36 - 19 win over Miami . On October 23 , the Panthers travelled to Annapolis to face Navy during which Dorsett broke the NCAA career rushing record on a 32 - yard touchdown run in Pitt ' s 45 - 0 victory . Dorsett ' s achievement prompted a mid - game celebration in which even Navy saluted the feat with a cannon blast . Pitt won a tough , hard - fought battle against rival Syracuse . On November 6 , the number two ranked Panthers hosted Army at Pitt Stadium and won handily , but the significant action was taking place several hundred miles west , in West Lafayette , Indiana , where the Purdue Boilermakers held off the number one ranked Michigan Wolverines , 16 - 14 , in the closing seconds . The Pitt Stadium crowd erupted in celebration when the stadium public address announcer dramatically gave the final score from Purdue . For the first time in the modern era , Panther fans could legitimately claim , " We ' re number one ! " Pitt defended its ranking in a close Backyard Brawl against West Virginia to go 10 - 0 heading into the regular season finale against instate rival Penn State . At a packed Three Rivers Stadium on the day after Thanksgiving , the Nittany Lions held Dorsett to 51 yards in the first half and had the game tied 7 - 7 . Majors adjusted for the second half by shifting Dorsett from tailback to fullback , enabling him to explode for an additional 173 yards as Pitt rolled to a 24 - 7 victory that capped an undefeated regular season . In December , Dorsett became the first Pitt Panther to win the Heisman Trophy as the nation ' s best college football player . Dorsett also won the Maxwell Award , the Walter Camp Player of the Year Award , and was named UPI Player of the Year . He led the nation in rushing with 1 , 948 yards and was selected as an All - American . Dorsett finished his college career with 6 , 082 total rushing yards , then an NCAA record for career rushing . The 11 - 0 Panthers accepted an invitation to the 1977 Sugar Bowl to face second ranked Georgia . Pitt defeated the Bulldogs 27 - 3 and was voted number one by both the Associated Press and Coaches polls , claiming their ninth national championship . This was Pitt ' s first undefeated national championship since 1937 . The American Football Coaches Association ( AFCA ) named Majors the 1976 Coach of the Year . Following this historic season , Majors returned to his alma mater , the University of Tennessee , to take the head coaching job . External links . Video