Steelers DB, West Virginia alum Beanie Bishop disrespects Pitt logo following recent practice

Beanie Bishop Jr.'s NFL career has mostly been synonymous with his two interceptions of Aaron Rodgers (and later getting Rodgers to sign both footballs) during the Pittsburgh Steelers' win over the New York Jets in Week 7 of the 2024 season. Bishop is now known for something else, though.

A proud West Virginia alum, Bishop recently posted a video of himself dragging his cleats on Pitt's logo inside the training facility that the Steelers share with the school's football team. His actions apparently didn't sit well with several Pitt players who watched the end of the Steelers' OTA practice before having some words for Bishop.

"It's a rivalry," Bishop said following practice, via the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review. "People aren't going to like me based off what school I went to, and that's fine. It's part of the rivalry. We don't like them guys. They don't like us."

While he isn't a fan of Pitt, Bishop said his actions were made in good fun while adding that he is friends with former Panther and current Carolina Panthers defensive back MJ Devonshire, who like Bishop was part of the NFL's 2024 rookie class.

"I got some guys I am cool with that I train with who went to Pitt," Bishop said. "It was toward them a little bit. They talk mess to me, and I talk mess to them."

As Bishop alluded to, West Virginia and Pitt share one of the longest and most bitter rivalries in college football. Nicknamed the Backyard Brawl, the schools first faced each other way back in 1895. All told, the Panthers and Mountaineers have met on the gridiron 107 times with Pitt holding a 63-41-3 series lead.

Adding to the intensity of the rivalry is the fact that the schools are less than 80 miles away from each other. There's a good chance that, if you live in Western Pennsylvania, you are either a fan of the Pitt, West Virginia, or Penn State, which has its own rivalry with Pitt.

The rivalry has included some epic games, most notably Pitt's shocking upset of then-No. 2 West Virginia in December of 2007. A 28-point underdog, Pitt left Morgantown with a 13-7 upset win that deprived the Mountaineers a shot at playing for a national title. Adding to the magnitude of Pitt's upset win was that it was the 100th meeting between the two schools. It was also the final game at (at the time) for West Virginia for Rich Rodriguez, who is returning to the school this year.

While there's no love lost between the two schools, Pitt head coach Pat Narduzzi expressed strongly that his team should continue to play West Virginia on an annual basis. After playing each other virtually every year from 1919-2011 (the only years they didn't play each other during that span was from 1940-43, when World War II was going on), the two schools didn't play each other for over a decade before the rivalry resumed in 2022. This year's Backyard Brawl is slated to be the final one until 2029.

"This rivalry goes probably right at the top or near the top of rivalry games I've played in," Narduzzi recently said of the Backyard Brawl. "If the people of Pittsburgh have never been to the Backyard Brawl, it is one of the best, if not the best in the country, in my opinion. What makes a great rivalry? There's a lot of hate in this rivalry. I've been around a lot of rivalries, but the hate West Virginia has for Pitt, the disrespect, to me, that makes a rivalry. Sometimes it's not clean. I know there's a lot of Pitt fans that don't want to travel down to Morgantown because of that. But it's right up there at the top."

When it comes to Bishop, he said that he doesn't regret his decision to clean his spikes on Pitt's logo. He also didn't mind some of Pitt's players decided to address it with him following Wednesday's practice.

"I looked at it as the Beanie Bishop fan club," he said with a smile. "It is what it is. It's part of the rivalry. I'm only concerned about the Pittsburgh Steelers fans and the West Virginia fans in that instance."