The Bicknell Center provides Pittsburg State University with its first true performance facility since 1978, when deterioration forced the closure of Carney Hall.

The university is a member of the NCAA Division II ranks, primarily competing in the Mid-America Intercollegiate Athletics Association (MIAA) since the 1989–90 academic year.

The Pitt State football program began in 1908 under head coach Albert McLeland.

During the 2004 season the Gorillas finished 14–1, losing 31–36 to Valdosta State University in the NCAA Division II National Football Championship.

Pittsburg State has won, outright or shared, a total of 27 conference championships during the 96-year history of its intercollegiate program, including 13 conference titles in the last 19 seasons under Coach Chuck Broyles PSU reached the Division II National Championship game in 2004, 1995, and 1992.

[19] In 1907 a small delegation from the Pittsburg area lobbied the state legislature to give the newly established university an appropriation that would pay for the construction of the school's first building.

And when the men returned to Pittsburg, the students were so amused by the story that they decided university administrators and faculty who had missed work and class in order to lobby in Topeka should have to pay the same fine.

During an afternoon program in the assembly room of the Central School building, the students once again fined the faculty a barrel of apples.

Thus began the unique, annual tradition at Pittsburg State of the teachers bringing apples for their students.