Pittsburgh Following Syracuse to ACC One Year Early

The ACC has fully taken shape for the 2013-14 season. And it’s not too early to fancy what lies ahead in the not-so-distant future.

Just days after Syracuse bought its way out of a lame duck season in the Big East, Pittsburgh worked out a similar deal, reportedly agreeing to leave the conference after the upcoming school year and join the ACC on July 1, 2013.

More impressive than Pitt weaseling its way out of the Big East in the same week as Syracuse is that it did so at the same cost. Pittsburgh will pay the Big East $7.5 million as part of the buyout agreement, $5 million of which the school already owed [and has since paid] for leaving the conference at all.

To say the benign resolution of this ongoing strife was both unexpected and unsuitable would be a major understatement. Not more than a few years ago, both sides were wrangling in the courts. Pittsburgh sued the Big East claiming the league had waived its right to enforce a [27-month] withdrawal notice after West Virginia bought its way out in February.

Suddenly, all appears to be well—months of sparring and acrimony over in a flash.

So what was all that fussing about?

The Big East had flexed the iron fist ever since Syracuse and Pitt first announced in February their plans to join the ACC. Fast-forward to July of 2012, and the conference is now holding the door open as its two parting members pass through.

Maybe the Big East just wanted to cut its losses A.S.A.P., tired of haggling over two schools that would have been gone by July 2014 at the latest. Or perhaps, and forgive this stretch, the Big East came to its senses. Not buying it? Don’t blame you. But it’s possible.

There has been no shortage of strange events in this long-unfolding, now-dying melodrama. Interim Big East commissioner Joe Bailey having a change of heart and a dose of sense—choosing what’s best for his league, rather than acting in spite—would be the strangest of all, an appropriate ending to a 10-month conflict that at no point ever made sense.

“This is another step for the Big East to take toward a very exciting future,” Bailey said in a statement. And by “a very exciting future,” we assume Bailey means “abject mediocrity and instability.” Or maybe he just misspoke, meaning instead to reference the ACC and not the Big East.

If that’s the case, then Bailey is two for his last two.

With North Carolina, Duke and Syracuse on board, the ACC now comprises three of the top-five programs on the all-time wins list. Then there’s the ever-steady Florida State, which has seen an uptick on the recruiting trail over the last few years, soaring so quickly that the Noles are now one of the two favorites to land the nation’s top high school junior (Andrew Wiggins). Factor in fast-rising Maryland, a usually formidable Pittsburgh program and NC State, which is on the up-and-up under Mark Gottfried, and the ACC will soon again be all the rage in the newest era of college basketball. Just as it had been before the Big East stole the spotlight in the late ’90s and 2000s.

No better way for a league to jump back atop the conference hierarchy than to raid the league that bumped it off its perch in the first place.

It seldom ends so auspiciously, but all of college basketball wins with these latest developments. Well, except the Big East, which is finally accepting its diminished role as a sacrificial lamb on the major-conference totem pole.

That, in itself, is a tragedy, given all the Big East has meant to the sport over the last 30-plus years. Not nearly the travesty that would have occurred, however, had the Big East held Syracuse and Pittsburgh hostage for two more seasons.

In the interest of choosing the lesser of two evils, the Big East did exactly what it had to.