PITTSBURGH (AP) — Antonio Epps’ childhood growing up in Pittsburgh’s southern suburbs was dotted with Saturday afternoons spent at what is now Acrisure Stadium watching the Panthers.

There was a brief stretch during Epps’ junior year at South Allegheny High when it looked like the defensive back might have a chance to follow in the footsteps of some of his cousins — longtime NFL wide receiver Tyler Boyd included — and run out the tunnel as the marching band blared “Hail to Pitt.”

Epps remembers talking “a little bit” with longtime Panthers coach Pat Narduzzi. When a scholarship offer didn’t materialize, Epps moved on and he eventually signed with Duquesne, where the two-time captain has carved out a career as a sure tackler for a program that’s annually a threat to make the FCS playoffs.

Don’t get Epps wrong. He’s happy with how things turned out. Still, the redshirt senior would be lying if he said he didn’t feel a familiar twinge after learning Duquesne and Pitt would start the 2025 season by meeting on the field for the first time in 86 years, a long wait that will end on Saturday.

“It kind of brought back those memories a little bit of like what it was like talking to them and everything,” Epps said, then added with a bit of a shrug: “Everything just kind of happened the way it did. I’m not going to be too focused on that.”

Maybe, but that doesn’t mean the idea of making a huge play while pulling off a stunner and having local bragging rights indefinitely — this year’s game is currently the only one on the books between the two schools — hasn’t crossed his mind.

“I like to imagine things before they happen,” Epps said. “To make it come true, the more I think about it and process it happening, then it will happen.”

A tall task

The odds are long. Duquesne hasn’t come within 38 points of the handful of Power Four opponents it has played in recent years. Yet the stakes this time are a bit different than they were when the Dukes played at Boston College or Florida State or even West Virginia.

Yes, there’s a paycheck involved for the Dukes, but also something personal involved, not just for players like Epps, but the community at large.

“It’s an interesting opportunity, unique and special for me to be able to walk on that field and coach a football team,” said Duquesne coach Jerry Schmitt, a Pittsburgh native entering his 21st season with the Dukes.

Schmitt knows as well as anyone that while Pitt and Duquesne might only be separated by two miles and maintain a competitive rivalry in some sports (though the men’s basketball version of the “City Game” is currently on hiatus), in football things have changed considerably since the Dukes pulled off a 21-13 upset of the top-ranked Panthers in 1939.

The modest school atop a bluff overlooking the Monongahela River finished 10th in the final AP poll that year. Two years later, the Dukes ended the season at No. 8. By the beginning of the 1950s, however, they had stopped offering football as a varsity sport.

And while the program eventually found its way back to the NCAA and moved from Division III to the FCS in 1993, facing Pitt was never on the table, leaving a roster filled predominantly with western Pennsylvania kids to catch a glimpse of Acrisure Stadium in the distance and wonder how they might measure up.

One and done?

The wondering will stop on Saturday afternoon. Epps plans to take a minute during pregame to lie on the field, look up at the sky, and take in the moment. He plans to ask his teammates to do the same.

Particularly because it could be fleeting. Not just for the Dukes, but other FCS schools that take the annual early-season step up in class against bigger, deeper and in most cases, more talented FBS programs.

If the ACC follows in the footsteps of the the other three power conferences and expands to nine conference games going forward, games like this between FBS and FCS teams — even teams with close regional ties like Pitt and Duquesne — could become increasingly rare.

Narduzzi, who played and coached at the FCS level earlier in his career, knows how important games like the one that awaits Saturday are, both fiscally and otherwise, to schools like Duquesne.

“If we did drop it, I think it hurts FCS ball,” he said.

He is also aware that there will be some players on the other sideline, players like Epps, who will lean into the chance to show Narduzzi what he missed.

“They will be cranked up,” he said. “They get to go play in that stadium, whether they played there in high school in the championship or they’re getting their chance. This is their championship game. This is their opportunity to come out and show who they are, no doubt, (and) prove some people wrong.”

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