Know Who You Are

This past weekend, Sept. 17th and 18th, Pittsburgh and Syracuse both agreed to leave the Big East conference and join the Atlantic Coast Conference, more commonly referred to as the ACC. This change began days of speculation that more teams would be leaving the Big East as well as the Big 12 (which has only 10 teams in it), leading to so called "super-conferences." Now, I have sat back over the last 18 months and not really had an opinion about which conference Nebraska should play football in, however I do have an opinion about this latest change.


The reason for my new found caring about conference realignment is simple: this move was made for the wrong reasons. It is true that schools such as Utah, Colorado, TCU and Nebraska changed conferences recently, and it is also true that with the exception of maybe TCU they all seem to have done it less for a competitive upgrade and more for a financial one. But there is a major difference between Utah, Colorado and Nebraska and schools such as Syracuse and Pitt. Syracuse and Pitt are NOT football schools. It is true that both programs have a football tradition, but it is also true that both football programs have been between mediocre and terrible for the better part of a decade.

Since 2001 BOTH Pitt and Syracuse football have ended the season ranked in the AP top 25 a combined four times. When it comes to having winning records Pittsburgh as been able to consistently have over .500 years notching 7 winning season in the last 10 years.  Syracuse, on the other hand, has had only two winning season since finishing 14th overall in 2001. During that same time span Syracuse basketball has won a National Championship and has won the Big East tournament twice, which considering the basketball pedigree of the Big East is impressive. Since it's inception in 1979 the Big East has produced 11 National Champions and 45 Final Four appearances. Big East football has never produced a National champion.


Pittsburgh basketball has also shown an affinity for winning. Despite never making it to the Final Four the Panthers have been ranked in the Top 10 at least once every year since 2001. Five out of those ten years the Panthers have gone to the Sweet Sixteen and came within seconds of a Final Four birth in 2008 when Villanova beat them in the Elite Eight.

At the end of the day some college conferences aren't good at football, the ACC and the Big East would be examples of that, others aren't good at basketball, the PAC-12, Big 12 and SEC are examples that come to mind. These conferences need to know who they are. If you aren't a football conference, if you aren't a football school that's O.K. But ruining one of the best college basketball conferences in the country is not the answer. The ACC already gets a huge amount of air time with teams such as Duke and North Carolina, by leaving the Big East both Pittsburgh and Syracuse are hurting there conference, there teams chances of winning it all and the tradition of Big East basketball. But what they are helping is their own wallets which I guess is all that matters in the end. Even if it shouldn't be.