OT: Pat Forde on realignment Winners/Losers
- Thread starter TIGER-PAUL
- Start date
It was a weird article. He seemed to inaccurately describe our acc invite as a reach when geographically, academically, traditionally and our sports success (at the time) made us just as attractive as Syracuse. Then he suggest we have not done much of anything to deserve it since then. Well Jamie went to the NCAA tournament three times in four years after we joined then ACC. The football team has gone to a bowl game every year except one. Sure the last three years of basketball have been awful and football hasn’t had a breakout season. But we haven’t been the disaster he paints us to be since we joined either. And this is before considering the turnover we have had in the athletic department since we joined in 2013. I mean no offense Missouri hasn’t been anything in basketball and their football program has been mediocre at best since they had those dominant first two years in the SEC and he doesn’t mention this at all. That alone makes me think he just has a bone to pick with Pitt. Its just seems like he wants to hate on Pitt and then cherry picks facts to do so.
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But people don’t see 6-2 so stop hanging your hat on that. All they see is 7-7. It’s reality
Weren't you the one who constantly talked about how awesome and well run Louisville's athletic department was?
Cut his teeth following pitino and petrino around to bars and IHOPs sounds glorious.
I agree. I don’t normally get too worked up over stuff like this but everything about what he wrote is extremely uninformed.
You are citing the Kevin Stallings era? What are you doing? He was hired after we were members of the ACC for several years.
And, as others have pointed out, we have the second or third best ACC record since joining the league. That’s not underperforming by any definition. Now, that’s also an indictment of the rest of the conference. However, that’s not Pitt‘s fault either.
I think it’s just a gratuitous shot at Pitt for no real reason.
However, as I recall, when Pitt got the ACC invite the first time, nobody — and I mean nobody — was more pissed off over that invitation and than the people at Louisville.
They just thought Pitt was a total bullshit program and did not think that we were on their level. They were floored to learn that the way everyone else saw it was that they were not quite on our level.
I have just always looked at those two schools as having radically different priorities. Louisville is a horrible school and they have poured all their money into their athletic programs. Their entire institutional identity revolves around the success of the Cardinals’ athletic teams. Pitt is an excellent school whose institutional identity is directly tied to their academic successes. However, the Panthers brass has definitely underfunded their athletic programs, and that too is undeniably true.
BTW, Pitt did not get into the ACC because Boston College blackballed UConn. That is so overrated. The Eagles have nowhere near that kind of juice in that conference. Hell, they pretty much went against the Tobacco Road schools to add academic misfit Louisville and that small bloc of schools has traditionally run that conference.
Also, nobody in this thread has claimed otherwise but Connecticut was also not blackballed because it sued the ACC years ago. Those are all old wives tales. This was strictly about business, nothing else.
Finally, Pitt did not get into the ACC because of the strength of its men’s basketball program or really the strength of its football program at the time.
I remember at the time a lot of people pushing the silly notion that Jamie Dixon was responsible for getting us into the ACC. I always found that ironic because I knew from talking to people close to the program at the time that he was ADAMANTLY opposed to leaving the Big East.
Of course that narrative never made sense when you considered that one of the schools being left behind was UConn, which has a far greater basketball history (men’s and women’s) than we do.
Pitt got into the ACC for two reasons: a great football history, which gave them badly needed street cred in that sport; and more importantly, access to Pennsylvania for cable television distribution.
The ACC was looking to create a television network that spans the eastern seaboard and you can’t have that if the third most populous state on the eastern seaboard (after Florida and New York) and the fifth largest state in the country does not have a team in your footprint. There are 12.8 million people in Pennsylvania as compared to just 3.6 million people in Connecticut. There are 4.5 million Kentucky residents.
Now, obviously, Connecticut has a much higher percentage of fans in its state than Pitt has in PA. However, to television networks, advertisers and cable distributors, that’s largely irrelevant — which is why Rutgers and Maryland are in the Big Ten rather than say, Missouri and Kansas.
Also, nobody in this thread has claimed otherwise but Connecticut was also not blackballed because it sued the ACC years ago. Those are all old wives tales. This was strictly about business, nothing else.
Finally, Pitt did not get into the ACC because of the strength of its men’s basketball program or really the strength of its football program at the time.
I remember at the time a lot of people pushing the silly notion that Jamie Dixon was responsible for getting us into the ACC. I always found that ironic because I knew from talking to people close to the program at the time that he was ADAMANTLY opposed to leaving the Big East.
Of course that narrative never made sense when you considered that one of the schools being left behind was UConn, which has a far greater basketball history (men’s and women’s) than we do.
Pitt got into the ACC for two reasons: a great football history, which gave them badly needed street cred in that sport; and more importantly, access to Pennsylvania for cable television distribution.
The ACC was looking to create a television network that spans the eastern seaboard and you can’t have that if the third most populous state on the eastern seaboard (after Florida and New York) and the fifth largest state in the country does not have a team in your footprint. There are 12.8 million people in Pennsylvania as compared to just 3.6 million people in Connecticut. There are 4.5 million Kentucky residents.
Now, obviously, Connecticut has a much higher percentage of fans in its state than Pitt has in PA. However, to television networks, advertisers and cable distributors, that’s largely irrelevant — which is why Rutgers and Maryland are in the Big Ten rather than say, Missouri and Kansas.
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With respect to football and basketball team performance, have any teams that switched one P5 conference to another P5 conference during realignment actually done better? I guess VT eventually did much better in basketball but that was mostly because of Buzz.
Thank you. I just spit my coffee all over my keyboard. "Syracuse brings the NYC market"? Ha ha ha.
I didn't realize Forde was from Louisville and used to work in that market. Article makes sense now. That school was extremely pissed when we got the invite over them.
Shows you can't take these things serious as there is a ton of bias in them.
Shows you can't take these things serious as there is a ton of bias in them.
You put as much stock in them as they're worth. If he just said "it's been a rocky road for Pitt football, who is #2 in the ACC in wins since realignment with a division title but has an average record of 7-6; men's basketball fell off completely, going 24-41 under Kevin Stallings before showing a slight pulse under new coach Jeff Capel" no one would have minded. Those are facts.
What is ridiculous is suggesting: 1) we got in because of Syracuse or 2) we don't deserve to be in a P5 conference. As an overall profile, Pitt is certainly in the top 64 athletics programs in the country. And our admission to the ACC had everything to do with our market presence in the NE, our history, our potential, and our academics, and almost nothing to do with Syracuse (who is worse than us in football and I guess slightly better in basketball but certainly nothing special).
Syracuse basketball was probably still considered a better program than Pitt, although at the time the move to the ACC was announced Pitt was still a basketball power in the Big East conference.
If basketball ruled however, the Big East would’ve remained. But as we all know, this was a football driven move.
The move to the ACC was announced in September 2011. In the three seasons prior to this.....
Pitt Football in the Big East went
8-5 (5-2)
10-3 (5-2)
9-4 (5-2)
Syracuse Football in the Big East went
8-5 (4-3)
4-8 (1-6)
3-9 (1-6)
Yeah, we rode in on the coattails of the power that was Syracuse football though. I mean good god what an embarrassing statement.
