PITTSBURGH — In a thrilling tribute to the ancient art of arguing with geometry, Pitt escaped Blacksburg with a 35-33 win over Virginia Tech on Friday night after the Hokies’ last-second field goal somehow became the center of a full-blown college football philosophy seminar.

John Love lined up a 36-yard kick that looked, from at least one angle, like it had enough altitude to clear a small mountain range. From another angle, it looked like it drifted just inside the left upright. From the only angle that matters — the one with the official standing right under the goalpost like the final boss of the end zone — it was no good. And because college football has decided that kicks can apparently be too high to review, the Panthers walked away with the kind of win that makes one sideline cheer and the other one stare at the sky like it personally betrayed them. Pitt improved to 5-0, while Virginia Tech was left to process a loss that included four turnovers, a furious comeback, and the sort of ending that makes grown adults start measuring uprights with their eyes.

The rest of the game was plenty chaotic on its own. Pitt built a 35-24 lead, lost quarterback Mason Heintschel to what appeared to be a serious right knee injury, and still held on behind Holden Geriner and a defense that, at times, seemed to be surviving by pure spite. Virginia Tech outgained Pitt, moved the ball well, and still ended up with the sort of final scene that belongs in a math teacher’s nightmare. It was the perfect college football game: messy, dramatic, unfair, and somehow still legal. Pitt got the win, Virginia Tech got the heartbreak, and somewhere in the rule book, a tiny paragraph about upright height just became the most famous thing in the ACC.

Pitt’s first road trip of the season comes with the kind of extra seasoning college football loves to pretend it doesn’t care about: two unbeaten teams, an ACC race already starting to smell important, and James Franklin making his first trip to play Pitt as Virginia Tech’s head coach. That alone would be enough to make this one spicy. But add the old bad blood between Franklin and Pat Narduzzi — the whole "running up the score" era of eye-rolls, clipped remarks and general football pettiness — and suddenly this isn’t just another Friday-night conference game. It’s a home-and-home with receipts.

On paper, the football is serious. Pitt is 4-0 and has absolutely flattened people, outscoring opponents 157-34 and coming off a 59-0 demolition of Bucknell. Virginia Tech is also 4-0, just survived a scare at Boston College, and will try to lean on a rushing attack that has been pretty solid against a Pitt defense that has been downright nasty against the run. That’s the actual chessboard here: Pitt’s defense trying to choke off the Hokies’ ground game, Virginia Tech trying to keep the game from turning into a Mason Heintschel showcase, and both sidelines acting like they’re above the drama while everybody in the building knows better. If Pitt has any pride — and let’s not be rude, of course it does — it should keep its foot on the gas, because Franklin’s return to the pit is the kind of matchup where the scoreboard tends to get loud and the feelings get even louder. Sarcastic? Sure. But also extremely football.

Pitt did the football equivalent of walking into a restaurant, ignoring the menu, and ordering the same dish over and over until everybody at the table just accepted fate. On Thursday night, the Panthers beat Syracuse 27-13 by doing what old-school teams do when they’re feeling rude: they ran the ball, they ran it again, and when that got awkward for the Orange, they ran it some more. Pitt’s first touchdown came on La’Vell Wright’s two-yard burst, and after halftime the Panthers opened with a four-play, 76-yard drive that never once bothered to pretend the pass might be part of the conversation. Damon Ferguson Jr. ripped off 18 yards, then 33 more, and Mason Heintschel finished the whole thing with a nine-yard read-option score. If you’re Syracuse, at some point you have to ask the obvious question: were they even planning to throw it, or were they just trying to prove the ground still exists?

That’s the part that makes this win feel so satisfying for Pitt and so annoying for everybody else. The Panthers are 3-0, already 1-0 in ACC play, and the identity is getting clearer by the week: the defense is holding up its end, the rushing attack looks mean, and the offense is comfortable winning ugly if that’s what the night asks for. That’s not glamorous, but neither is getting bullied by four straight rushing plays like the game is being decided in a driveway pickup match. The weird little truth of football is that nobody ever plans to be the team that gets shoved around, and yet here we are — Syracuse left with 13 points, Pitt left with another convincing win, and the rest of the ACC left to wonder whether the Panthers are building something sturdier than a cute September story. If the run game keeps doing this, Pitt may not just be winning. It may be making a very old-fashioned argument that the loudest thing in football is still a good offensive line moving the wrong people backward.