Pitt's Move to the ACC and What It Means for Fans and the School

The last few days have been pretty crazy for Pitt fans.  The team lost in disheartening fashion to the Iowa Hawkeyes on Saturday, and to even further complicate things, applied to join the Atlantic Coast Conference, or ACC.  This move came out of nowhere, and I do mean literally out of nowhere.  There was no press release from the Athletic Director, Steve Pederson, or Chancellor Mark Nordenberg.

 I had gained knowledge of the application through 93.7 The Fan, a Pittsburgh Sport’s radio station.  As I was listening, the stunning news was read for the first time on the air.  Now plenty of fans are either A) excited about the move and can’t wait for a chance to play the Duke Blue Devils every year at the Peterson Event’s Center or B) upset about the move away from playing familiar teams and even the possible loss of the highly anticipated Backyard Brawl with West Virginia University. 

Now, I am personally very much supporting the move.  The Panthers have gone on record telling the Big East that if they did not make moves to extend the size and skill level of their football affiliated schools, they would begin looking elsewhere to call home.  The Big East did answer by adding Texas Christian University last season.  The TCU Horned Frogs will be playing a Big East schedule next season.  This move though was not enough to keep the Panthers at bay.

With only nine members, the Big East was slowly losing its power nationally and could even soon be losing its automatic bid to a Bowl Championship Series game.  This started to scare some teams in to looking elsewhere, to a conference that seemed more interested in improving their stability as a football conference. 

The Big East was originally founded in in 1979 by Providence, St. John’s, Georgetown, Syracuse, Seton Hall, Connecticut, and Boston College.  It was founded to create a powerhouse basketball conference and did not even add football to the league until twenty-two years late in 1991.  The football conference then gained some notoriety as perennial national championship contender, Miami, took home titles in 1991 and 2001.  The conference took a huge step backward when the Canes left for the ACC in 2004, bringing another top-tier football school, Virginia Tech, with them.  The year after, Boston College joined them.

 

This definitely weakened the conference, but with teams like West Virginia, Pitt, and Cincinnati playing well as of late, it survived.  What all of this means is that the Big East is not a football conference.  It has made its stand very clear; it is a basketball conference first and foremost.  Recently it has been regarded as the top basketball conference in the country, but has swapped that top spot with the ACC every year or so.  Now with BCS Bowls and college football becoming more popular (or profitable is more like it), being a member of a serious football conference has become more and more necessary.  Teams all over the country are running to “power” conferences like the Big Ten and Pac-12.

When it comes down to it, conference changes are about making money and assuring that the opportunity to make more money will be there.  With the Big East now losing two more football schools, their total is now a meager nine teams.  If this does not change soon, the Big East will lose its automatic bid to a BCS game.  A decision like this will kill the football conference.

Now that we better understand what has happened to the Big East recently as a whole, the big question remaining is, “what does this mean for our Pitt Panthers”.  Well, it really means a few things.  First, the football part of the conference is much, much better than that of the Big East.  When I say better, I mean teams that have National Championships in their sights will be playing against us every season.  This also means that if we end up finishing 11-1 we will have a chance at a National Title.  In the Big East, finishing 11-1 with the right situation (or in this case, wrong situation) might not even lead your team to a BCS game.  The ACC is a much stronger football conference and will give the Panthers a chance to become nationally recognized as a football powerhouse, something that playing against Big East competition just could not offer.

The ACC consists of Boston College, Clemson, Florida State, Maryland, North Carolina State, Wake Forest, Virginia Tech, Georgia Tech, Miami, Virginia, North Carolina, and Duke.  Eight of those twelve teams stand out to me as great football programs that seem to shift in power every few years.  Now, this shift in power is important because in order for fans to be excited (and keep buying tickets) their teams need to be competitive year in and year out.  Virginia Tech joined the ACC in 2004 and has won 4 of the last 7 ACC Championships, but those other three years were won by three different teams.  Seven years and four different teams winning championships is a good trend to have when it comes to competitiveness.

As of right now Pitt will step in and be competitive against the ACC schools.  I would not bet on any championships in the next two or three years, but with a year or two of recruiting in the conference, we will be fine.  Basketball though, is something that really is exciting a lot of people across Pittsburgh.  As you know, the Panthers have been a perennial powerhouse in college basketball for the past 10 seasons.  Pitt has made the tournament for an entire decade, with 5 Sweet Sixteen’s and 1 Elite Eight appearance.

The Panthers will join a conference that features a few teams that have been doing the same thing that has brought Pitt to national recognition for about30 years.  North Carolina has won five national titles, Duke has four, North Carolina State has two, and Maryland has one.  Eight of the twelve current members have advanced to the Final Four at least once.  With Pitt virtually dominating Big East play over the last few years, a step up in competition makes sense.  Now, this is not to hold anything against the competition faced in the Big East.  The league was huge, with 16 teams, 10 of which played in the NCAA tournament last year.  As a whole, the Big East is a great basketball conference from top to bottom (well maybe not all the way to the bottom, but anyway).  The ACC is just a little bit stronger at the top with North Carolina and Duke headlining the schedule.

Now, so far this seems all well and good for basketball and football.  The two sports have strengthened their schedule, joined a conference that will gain them national prominence (as long as they play well), and will create great atmospheres in Heinz Field and the Peterson Event’s Center (imagine playing a “Backyard-Brawl-sold-out-type” game every weekend for at least the first season at Heinz Field and Duke or North Carolina falling to our Panthers at the Pete, trust me it is going to be fun).  There are though, a few negatives that arise because of this transition.

Only one real negative comes from football, the possibility of losing the Backyard Brawl.  Now, this game has been played for over 100 years and is a nationally renowned rivalry that is highly anticipated every single season.  Whether or not West Virginia is hostile towards Pitt for leaving a conference that (as of late) has been held together by combined efforts of the two schools, will make the difference.  I will be greatly disappointed if WVU is not on the non-conference schedule every year (this really goes for basketball and football, especially football though).  The second negative aspect about the conference change is the location of the opposing teams.

Teams in this conference stretch geographically from Boston College in Massachusetts to Miami and the tip of Florida.  The games played against Maryland and Virginia and Virginia Tech are not really a big deal, the Big East plays games this far away on their schedule already.  The issue arises when a volleyball team has to miss more class time during the week to play Miami, 1,200 miles away (that's a long drive, it's almost "Bubba Long" <see picture to left for unrelated golf humor).  Now as a fan you might not see this as a huge problem, but you also have to remember that college’s take their academics very seriously, and especially the academics of their athletes.

Other than those few issues, all is well for Pitt joining the ACC.  This only stays true though as long as they play well.  As of right now Pitt is atop their conferences in both basketball and football (well, kind of in football, definitely a contender every year at least).  It is almost a fact that they will be competitive and maybe even be the best basketball team in the conference in their first season, but football is a different story.  If the football program cannot win games and contend for ACC titles, then the move was really a waste of time and was more horizontal than vertical.  Recruiting though should see a big jump now that Pitt will be playing some bigger schools, so hopefully within the next few years we will see Pitt stop their new conference.

Overall, I do like the move.  Pitt will play well in both major profit sports.  With a new head coach in football and basketball always being competitive, the new (and improved?) conference schedule will be exciting and fresh.  If Pitt can play up to the standards of the ACC in both sports, they can almost be cemented as a school with one of the top athletic programs in the country.  Now that’s something everyone can look forward to.