Home Field Advantage

Pac-12 Networks’ Yogi Roth weighs in on a different confluence in Pittsburgh

Welcome to Warning Track Power, a weekly newsletter of baseball stories and analysis grounded in front office and scouting experiences and the personalities encountered along the way.

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We’re a few games into May now, and the Cincinnati Bengals still have more victories in 2022 than the Reds. After Wednesday’s 18-4 loss to the Brewers, the Reds fell to the very football-friendly record of 3-21.

While more than one AFC North baseball fanbase is already planning for kickoff, I had football on the mind this week for other reasons.

Last week’s NFL draft produced one moment that I’ve been stuck on. With the 20th overall pick, the Pittsburgh Steelers (hold for boos) selected Kenny Pickett, a quarterback from the University of Pittsburgh.

Pickett broke out this past season as a fifth-year senior. His reward? He will continue to play home games at Heinz Field.

In what other sport is this possible? Where else can this happen?

Searching for perspective, I spoke to former Pitt wide receiver and current Pac-12 Networks football analyst and reporter Yogi Roth. In addition to his expertise in football, Roth is also a filmmaker, a New York Times best-selling author, a coach, world traveler, and much more.

Given Roth’s knowledge of football and his connection to the Pitt Panthers football program, I wanted to hear his thoughts.

“When you go to college, you gain an affinity for that identity,” Roth explains. “I often tell high school quarterbacks that if I drew a tiny circle, that’s the impact you have in high school. And if you’re really good, it’s a tiny bit bigger. Then you get to college, and it gets a little bit bigger. Then you go to the Heisman, and it gets huge, and then you’re drafted in the NFL…

“But as your circle gets bigger, so does your love for wherever you are as you grow. And for Kenny, he came back [for his fifth year] to learn how to be a pro. And he came back much like Justin Herbert did.”

Unlike Herbert, though, Pickett’s college coordinates opened up a unique opportunity.

“It’s really cool at Pitt — it’s unlike any other place in all of major college football — where, when you walk into your facility, the doors to the left go to the Steelers, and the doors to the right go to Pitt.”

Roth, who grew up rooting for the Yankees as well as the A’s and Rickey Henderson, spoke about his earliest impressions of Pickett. He encountered him during the QB’s sophomore year, and Roth was struck by his focus.

“This guy was working his craft,” he says, noting that Pickett wasn’t concerned with marketing himself or any other off-field pursuits. “And I think that ideology allowed him to really glean off the ethos, which is Pittsburgh — hard-nosed, work the craft.”

“I think for him — as a guy who walked to the right everyday at that facility — I’m sure you’re dreaming about what it was like to the left… I’m sure he always thought about it, and that’s what I’d imagine he felt — that rush of emotion — when his name was called.”

Speaking with Roth only amplified my excitement over the circumstances and the story.

“This model doesn’t exist. Miami’s facility is not next to the Dolphins facility. You can go around Texas: UT is not next to Dallas; SMU’s facility is not next to the Cowboys facility. You don’t interact — you watch from afar and dream.”

When Roth says that this model doesn’t exist, he’s right. Extrapolating this paradigm to baseball only turns up dead ends.

Joe Mauer, the St. Paul native who was drafted out of high school first overall in the 2001 MLB Draft by the Twins, spent his entire career with his home team. He won an MVP, was a six-time All-Star, and he won three batting titles, but home plate at his school was still about seven miles from home at the Metrodome.

Plus, his first three years of professional baseball took him on a minor league adventure to towns far from Minneapolis.

Interestingly enough, however, the University of Minnesota’s football team played its home games at the Metrodome from 1982-2008. The Golden Gophers and the Vikings shared a home field, though that pipeline never produced any player with the pedigree or ceiling of Pickett.

As for Pickett’s proximity to his new team: “I think it’s going to help him,” Roth says. “I really do.”

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