Dan DiCola

Susquehanna University alum. Pitt season ticket holder. Educating the youth of America every day.

[Pat Narduzzi @CoachDuzzPittFB]

Great to have @MrBeast at the facility today. You never know who is going to stop by! #H2P

[Dan DiCola @DannyDiCola]

@JJ_Kitchen40 @KevinVerpaele17 How would you feel about stripes on the sleeves? I think that’s the only thing missing from the new look uniforms

[Pitt Football @Pitt_FB]

It runs in the family for @BraylanLovelace 💙💛

Leechburg High School ➡️ Division 1 Football

Like father, like son.

[Ben Sasse @BenSasse]

Friends-

This is a tough note to write, but since a bunch of you have started to suspect something, I’ll cut to the chase: Last week I was diagnosed with metastasized, stage-four pancreatic cancer, and am gonna die.

Advanced pancreatic is nasty stuff; it’s a death sentence. But I already had a death sentence before last week too — we all do.

I’m blessed with amazing siblings and half-a-dozen buddies that are genuinely brothers. As one of them put it, “Sure, you’re on the clock, but we’re all on the clock.” Death is a wicked thief, and the bastard pursues us all.

Still, I’ve got less time than I’d prefer. This is hard for someone wired to work and build, but harder still as a husband and a dad. I can’t begin to describe how great my people are. During the past year, as we’d temporarily stepped back from public life and built new family rhythms, Melissa and I have grown even closer — and that on top of three decades of the best friend a man could ever have. Seven months ago, Corrie was commissioned into the Air Force and she’s off at instrument and multi-engine rounds of flight school. Last week, Alex kicked butt graduating from college a semester early even while teaching gen chem, organic, and physics (she’s a freak). This summer, 14-year-old Breck started learning to drive. (Okay, we’ve been driving off-book for six years — but now we’ve got paper to make it street-legal.) I couldn’t be more grateful to constantly get to bear-hug this motley crew of sinners and saints.

There’s not a good time to tell your peeps you’re now marching to the beat of a faster drummer — but the season of advent isn’t the worst. As a Christian, the weeks running up to Christmas are a time to orient our hearts toward the hope of what’s to come.

Not an abstract hope in fanciful human goodness; not hope in vague hallmark-sappy spirituality; not a bootstrapped hope in our own strength (what foolishness is the evaporating-muscle I once prided myself in). Nope — often we lazily say “hope” when what we mean is “optimism.” To be clear, optimism is great, and it’s absolutely necessary, but it’s insufficient. It’s not the kinda thing that holds up when you tell your daughters you’re not going to walk them down the aisle. Nor telling your mom and pops they’re gonna bury their son.

A well-lived life demands more reality — stiffer stuff. That’s why, during advent, even while still walking in darkness, we shout our hope — often properly with a gravelly voice soldiering through tears.

Such is the calling of the pilgrim. Those who know ourselves to need a Physician should dang well look forward to enduring beauty and eventual fulfillment. That is, we hope in a real Deliverer — a rescuing God, born at a real time, in a real place. But the eternal city — with foundations and without cancer — is not yet.

Remembering Isaiah’s prophecies of what’s to come doesn’t dull the pain of current sufferings. But it does put it in eternity’s perspective:
“When we've been there 10,000 years…We've no less days to sing God's praise.”

I’ll have more to say. I’m not going down without a fight. One sub-part of God’s grace is found in the jawdropping advances science has made the past few years in immunotherapy and more. Death and dying aren’t the same — the process of dying is still something to be lived. We’re zealously embracing a lot of gallows humor in our house, and I’ve pledged to do my part to run through the irreverent tape.

But for now, as our family faces the reality of treatments, but more importantly as we celebrate Christmas, we wish you peace: “The people walking in darkness have seen a great light; on those living in the land of deep darkness a light has dawned….For to us a son is given” (Isaiah 9).

With great gratitude, and with gravelly-but-hopeful voices,
Ben — and the Sasses

[Dan DiCola @DannyDiCola]

@PantherLair @VeritasSports1 When we had a great OL with Paul Chryst, we didn’t have a defense. So hard for Pitt to have complimentary talent on both sides of the ball…2021 was the year everything came together. It was a shame Addison didn’t give us one more special year to enjoy in 2022.

[Marcus Jennings 6’3 205 @marcusjenn24]

All-Americans Teaming up?? @matt_sieg

[Dan DiCola @DannyDiCola]

@ChrisDokish I’m from central PA and root for Pitt because I wrote to Hank Poteat in 8th grade and he returned by letter with an autograph and a Pitt media book.

I’m rare out here!

[EJ Borghetti @PittBorghetti]

"It was a dream come true to play for the University of Pittsburgh. My experience as a Panther is something that influences my life every day.”

—WPIAL product Aaron Donald, future Pro & College Hall of Famer

[Dan DiCola @DannyDiCola]

@MaxBrowne4 👊 H2P

[Mason Heintschel Szn @neverlosebets]

Allen Greene I hope you have Dan Mullen on speed dial

[Dan DiCola @DannyDiCola]

@ChrisDokish Yes! This!!

[Dan DiCola @DannyDiCola]

@Kzovko People rail on Kade Bell, but the team played like dog crap and were still leading by 10 in the 2nd half

Bell is not the problem IMO

[Dan DiCola @DannyDiCola]

@ChrisDokish Yeesh. Scheduling way too hard for little benefit.

[Dan DiCola @DannyDiCola]

@ChrisDokish I’d take wins over cash 💰

Pitt wants the cash (viewership) :(

[Dan DiCola @DannyDiCola]

@ChrisDokish I absolutely love playing the best option. In decades of football viewership I’m not sure I’ve ever seen a returner get injured. Could happen, but seems rare.

[FLORIDA @UF]

It's finally #UFgrad time 🐊

🎓 more than 3,000 new @ufalumni
🎓 68 countries
🎓 47 states
🎓 Countless congrats 🎉

[FLORIDA @UF]

#UFgrad ➡️ @ufalumni 🐊🎓

[Dan DiCola @DannyDiCola]

@MaxBrowne4 @Pitt_FB @accnetwork Once a Panther, always a Panther #H2P

[Dan DiCola @DannyDiCola]

@Kzovko This was your guy, right! Man…I think he’s going to make us regret letting him go!

[Dan DiCola @DannyDiCola]

@ChrisDokish