Really, the tip off for how this was likely to play out came from Pitt of all schools.
A lot of people may not know this or may have already forgotten it. However, at the end of the Big East football conference's lifespan, the league was a complete mess.
As is the case with the Big 12 now, and the Southwest Conference before it, the writing was on the wall.
It is a very long and complex story but basically the basketball schools, in an effort to hold the conference together, were trying to force Villanova to play FBS football even though the Wildcats did not really want to play (read: spend) at that level.
The result was this goofy scenario in which Villanova would play in an 18,500 seat soccer stadium located a half hour from its campus. Also, Villanova had no plans to upgrade either it's recruiting budget or it's facilities.
It was a HORRIBLE plan and I think it, more than anything else, served as the death knell for the conference.
Pitt, West Virginia and Rutgers basically said, "Oh, hell no!" Those three schools basically blocked the whole plan.
That's when all three of those schools – as well as a few others – began openly flirting with other conferences.
I've been pretty critical of Steve Pederson - and rightly so. However, I do credit him for being able to read the writing on the wall.
I don't think he was responsible for getting us into the ACC but he was responsible for getting our name out there is a program that could be had if the right opportunity were to come along. He deserves full credit for that much.
At the same time, the big 12 is falling apart and it needed to reconfigure. Their first phone call was to South Bend, Indiana. However, there next to vocals were to Fayetteville, Arkansas and to Pittsburgh. They wanted to gauge each of our interest.
Unsurprisingly, Notre Dame told them they were fine as an Indie and Arkansas indicated that it would rather stay in the SEC.
However, Pitt continued to flirt with the Big 12 and even began to work with other schools about joining the conference as a collective.
That was a very good idea and it is one of the other schools should have followed when Pitt dropped out.
I know someone who was at least tangentially involved in those informal conversations and the talk was Pitt, West Virginia and Rutgers joining the Big 12. Honestly, Pitt was ready to do it but the other two schools were not.
Rutgers sensed that it might have an opportunity in the Big Ten so they chose not to pursue that option. As it turns out, they were right.
Conversely, West Virginia, and later Louisville, each thought they had opportunities to go to the SEC. They were wrong.
However, I do know for a fact that Pitt made it very clear to the Big 12 but it was unwilling to join the conference by itself. It did not want to become an outlier in the way West Virginia ultimately did.
However, when the ACC came around, Pitt dropped the Big 12 like a hot potato. The person I mentioned earlier once told me that Pitt negotiated with the ACC for about three weeks before making their announcement.
That's incredible! That's also why they were able to keep it under wraps. It happened so fast that it didn't have time to leak out. I think that entire affair probably built a lot of trust between the ACC and Pitt and Syracuse. Every single party kept their mouths shut – and that is highly unusual and extremely impressive.
John Marinatto, the Big East's commissioner at the time, literally found out about the defections while he was sitting in the press box at Byrd Stadium in College Park, Maryland getting ready for a Maryland versus West Virginia football game.
That is cold blooded but so was this business.
Think about how incompetent you have to be to have two of your most important members negotiating to leave and you have no earthly clue. That's not on Pitt and Syracuse, that's on Marinatto and the Big East.
It's an incredible story new matter how you look at it.
