If Pitt were a person, he would probably be a vertically challenged former placekicker from Philadelphia.
I don't want to rib on DJ too much.
Once, about 30 years ago, two of my brothers and I were at the Henninger football field in the middle of summer. We all played soccer at Henninger but were not playing it that day. We were practicing kicking field goals. By this point, I think we were all done with high school. But we liked to kick balls around and it was fun to compete against each other kicking field goals. So we did it from time to time.
Anyway, we were there kicking away. We had our ridiculous poodle there too, and he went off barking at some random dude who showed up after us, running laps on the track surrounding it. We ignored the dog and the guy and were immersed in our competition.
Suddenly our dog stopped barking. We looked up and there was the dude was standing next to us. Asked if we minded if he took a couple tries.
He was a little guy but you could see he was athletic. His legs were jacked.
'Sure dude. Go for it'.
We had been kicking in the 30-35 yard range. Struggling some. Our limit was about 42 or 43.
He wanted to start at 45. Looked pretty cocky.
At first I was sure he was going to fail in an epic way. But then I looked at his face closer. Crap. It couldn't be him, could it?
The first kick was about 10 yards over the cross bar. It looked like he hadn't even tried.
Then he made one from 50 and one from 55. If memory serves, he missed the one from 60. Our ball was pretty crappy.
Yeah, it WAS him. Definitely.
He thanked us and started to walk away. I told him "Dave, really enjoyed watching you kick at Archbold. Thanks for showing us how it is done." He smiled, nodded his head and went back to jogging.
Oh yeah, he tried to pet our dog before he left and almost got bit. Maybe that dog knew something.
Anyway, he was a good dude that day. He kicked in the NFL until 1987 so he was probably still in the league at that point. The guy had a really powerful leg. Not super accurate but really powerful, even by today's standards.
I believe his longest at Syracuse, 58 yards, remains the longest FG ever made by a Syracuse placekicker. That 58 yard FG was kicked at Archbold Stadium on October 25th, 1975 against Boston College.
Pretty remarkable he still holds that record from a kick made almost 49 years to the day from today. There have been a lot of really good placekickers at Syracuse since and they have played a lot of games with far better conditions than what Dave dealt with.