Pittsburgh and Syracuse both submitted letters of application to join the Atlantic Coast Conference. The ACC is obviously not content with their 12-team format in the afterglow of the emerging Pac 12, which could soon become the Pac 16. Also, the addition of Nebraska to the Big 10 and Texas A & M to the SEC started the proverbial ball rolling. Now, two big-time Big East programs have an opportunity to deepen an already tough Atlantic Coast Conference.
For football standards, Pitt is the better of the two programs obviously and would deepen the up-and-coming Atlantic Coast Conference. Syracuse would not make quite the same splash with their entry.
With this move, the Big East would obviously lose some luster from a basketball standpoint if this does trickle over. Can you imagine? Syracuse and Pittsburgh are perennial powerhouses, but the conference is loaded with an absurd 16 teams currently. The loss of the two huge programs would spread greater parity throughout the Big East with 14 teams, a more realistic schedule for team’s in the conference.
The ACC on the other hand would become the greatest conference in college basketball history, period. You are already talking about the best conference in the land for years. With such powers as Duke, North Carolina, Georgia Tech, Wake Forest, Maryland and Florida State…trips to the NCAA tournament are routine. Now, we’re talking about adding two of the best teams in the nation to the ACC? Good luck to all those teams I didn’t mention above, in the coming years…you’re going to need it if their application’s are accepted.
Of course, both teams have not been accepted yet. However, the mere fact that the process got to this stage is very important. Syracuse and Pitt are on the verge of a monumental move that would help excite college football and tear a historic hole through the roof of college basketball. I hope for the sake of the weaker schools of the ACC, this move does not happen. But, I am a huge college basketball fan and would love for nothing more then to witness a super-human conference of legendary proportions. We await the decision…
