The game ended with nine seconds left. Fans had flooded the football field. The public-address announcer pleaded with them. The game is not over! Please get off the field! The game is not completed! His words drowned in the noise. An avalanche of fans was pouring over the barrier wall and onto the field. The goalpost at one end of Pitt Stadium already was teetering, and soon it crashed into the crowd and was carried across the field toward the stadium exit.



Everyone wanted a piece of Pitt Stadium.



Fans tore into the AstroTurf with carpet cutters and scissors. At the top of the stadium, people dismantled bleachers with the wrench sets they’d brought from home, then lifted the bleachers over the back wall and out of the 75-year-old concrete bowl. In the bathrooms, men tugged on porcelain troughs, old-school urinals that would later become hot items in internet auctions. The scoreboard, too big to carry away, survived to tell the story: Pitt 37, Notre Dame...