Pitt's 11 years in the ACC. What were your expectations? Have they been met?

[cbpitt2]

Pitt has been in the ACC for 11 years, winning one conference title in football and played for another. Zero conference titles in basketball. Everyone knows historically, the ACC is a great basketball conference but so was the Big East when Pitt was in it. Pitt won two Big East conference tournaments and was runner-up five times. What were your expectations going into the ACC for football and basketball? Have they been met? What are your expectations in the future?

 

[Zeldas Open Roof]

im more dissapointed in the decline of both ACC mens hoops and ACC football from a conference perspective. I was under the impression we were joining a top athletic conference.

 

[ChiefJusticeMarshall]

Yeah...as far as Pitt is concerned, Pitt football has been overall the most successful expansion team since the 2003 expansion. Well at least since we have been in. Basketball's demise, I can't blame the ACC but the awful Stallings hire. It has been great for the Olympic sports.

But Zelda hit it. It is not Pitt who has not met my expectations, but the ACC overall. First of all, as we got a peak behind the curtain, this conference who raided the Big East twice was being run by a bunch of rubes. The media infrastructure sucked and they (we) quickly fell behind.

And again, FSU going south, Miami never regaining the U, VT becoming essentially Syracuse, football wise, the ACC never got a foothold. Basketball wise, Duke and UNC are still uberpowers, UVA has been good, but Pitt, Louisville and Syracuse have been nothing like the powers in the Big East.

 

[Joe Magarac]

Yeah...as far as Pitt is concerned, Pitt football has been overall the most successful expansion team since the 2003 expansion. Well at least since we have been in. Basketball's demise, I can't blame the ACC but the awful Stallings hire. It has been great for the Olympic sports.

But Zelda hit it. It is not Pitt who has not met my expectations, but the ACC overall. First of all, as we got a peak behind the curtain, this conference who raided the Big East twice was being run by a bunch of rubes. The media infrastructure sucked and they (we) quickly fell behind.

And again, FSU going south, Miami never regaining the U, VT becoming essentially Syracuse, football wise, the ACC never got a foothold. Basketball wise, Duke and UNC are still uberpowers, UVA has been good, but Pitt, Louisville and Syracuse have been nothing like the powers in the Big East.

The ACC will continue to be a notch below the SEC and B1G mostly due to money, the huge fanbases of those two conferences and the fact that almost all of those conferences’ team are located in areas where they are the only “game in town” ( no pun intended) for hundreds of miles in every direction.
The secondary reasons that the ACC will be a notch below is the one you cited about the conference being run by “a bunch of rubes” and the hard to break and long held parochialism of the Tobacco Road centric powers that be.
As long as the cigar smoking, back slappin’ good ole Carolina boys insist that the conference revolves around them, the ACC will be second rate.
I get it. The state of North Carolina gave the ACC a sweetheart deal to locate the conference HQ in Charlotte in return, the Football and BB Championships will be held under the noses of the Tar Heel faithful.
It may be good business but it stinks for the rest of the conference teams. Remember us ???? Didn’t think so.
Believe it or not, the ACC has schools in Massachusetts, New York, Pennsylvania, Kentucky, Florida and Georgia. I guess it sucks to be us.
Anyway, forces are putting plans in motion to kill the goose and steal the golden eggs, so all of these issues will be mute.
When it’s over, it’s over.
I’m glad that i am old enough to remember and have experienced college football and basketball when it was only somewhat tainted.
Hail to Pitt.

 

[ChiefJusticeMarshall]

The ACC will continue to be a notch below the SEC and B1G mostly due to money, the huge fanbases of those two conferences and the fact that almost all of those conferences’ team are located in areas where they are the only “game in town” ( no pun intended) for hundreds of miles in every direction.
The secondary reasons that the ACC will be a notch below is the one you cited about the conference being run by “a bunch of rubes” and the hard to break and long held parochialism of the Tobacco Road centric powers that be.
As long as the cigar smoking, back slappin’ good ole Carolina boys insist that the conference revolves around them, the ACC will be second rate.
I get it. The state of North Carolina gave the ACC a sweetheart deal to locate the conference HQ in Charlotte in return, the Football and BB Championships will be held under the noses of the Tar Heel faithful.
It may be good business but it stinks for the rest of the conference teams. Remember us ???? Didn’t think so.
Believe it or not, the ACC has schools in Massachusetts, New York, Pennsylvania, Kentucky, Florida and Georgia. I guess it sucks to be us.
Anyway, forces are putting plans in motion to kill the goose and steal the golden eggs, so all of these issues will be mute.
When it’s over, it’s over.
I’m glad that i am old enough to remember and have experienced college football and basketball when it was only somewhat tainted.
Hail to Pitt.

I didn't expect them to match those two, but not fall behind the Big 12 conglomerate to be the 3rd conference. We have fallen woefully behind them in basketball. In football, now that Texas and Oklahoma has gone, it will be interesting.

But the ACC......Clemson is not a blue blood. Florida State is close to a blue blood in football as we have. Clemson, for many years, was well.....Pitt like. Virginia Tech's program is a shell of itself. Miami has never even close recaptured its glory days. Pitt shows every once in awhile we can be relevant, yet still have that MAC wtf loss at the same time. ND isn't joining. Louisville is serious about sports. Carolina just can't sustain football excellence like most BB schools.

The thing that hurts us football wise, if you want to count what was formely the 66 "P5 level" football schools, Wake, Miami and BC are among the 6 smallest schools, and now we are adding SMU which is also there. Florida State is the only ACC school with a +40,000 enrollment and only they and VT are in the top 50. The Big 12, even though what the hell did the Cal guy call them, "a collection of truck stop academies" or something like that, they have some HUGE schools and some schools who also own their states like WVU.

I mean Pitt is in the right conference. Somewhat serious about sports, some forays into the top of those sports, but much larger endowment than sports donations, and much more serious about its intended academic mission than being a defacto Pro franchise.

 

[tps48]

Actually, I prefer the old Big East for FB and BB

 

[King Of All Message Boards]

Actually, I prefer the old Big East for FB and BB

I wasn’t gonna be the one to derail this thread earlier haha.

Football I don’t much care. But I’ve never missed anything in sports like I miss Big East basketball. I think Gtown still plays Cuse every year and when I see that game’s on my heart hurts.

 

[NKSplitter]

First of all, as we got a peak behind the curtain, this conference who raided the Big East twice was being run by a bunch of rubes. The media infrastructure sucked and they (we) quickly fell behind.

They did botch the media rights negotiations, but I think part of that was bad timing in a market that ballooned right after the ACC negotiated their deal; but quickly became unsustainable for the networks paying(Insisting on keeping Raycom in the loop longer than necessary likely didn't help).

The ACC did have the sense when signing a long term media rights deal to make conference members sign a grant of rights for the duration of the deal. If enough conference members agreed the deal was bad at the time they could have refused to sign and go back to the negotiation table. That nobody knowingly did seems to indicate conference members thought it was a good deal at the time. Then the media rights market caught fire.

The ACC negociators also got pro rata for adding additional teams worked into the contract. I think an argument could be made that the ACC should have been more proactive in trying to poach Big 12 teams before the Big 12 was able to add the 4 corners teams; giving them more stability than they would have otherwise.

The real clown show was the Big East leadership that thought an 8 team football conference could remain a viable power league long term when 25% of that league was Temple and Rutgers.

 

[TitoBeagle]

Pitt has been in the ACC for 11 years, winning one conference title in football and played for another. Zero conference titles in basketball. Everyone knows historically, the ACC is a great basketball conference but so was the Big East when Pitt was in it. Pitt won two Big East conference tournaments and was runner-up five times. What were your expectations going into the ACC for football and basketball? Have they been met? What are your expectations in the future?

Great Question.

I remember telling a guy at a bar on the North Shore a week after it was announced. I expect Pitt to win the coastal once every five years and win the ACC once a decade… They pretty much nailed that.

Basketball, I would have thought they would have done a little better. Not sure anyone could have envisioned the complete meltdown. But things are looking up in BBall. Even if Pitt gets screwed out of the tourney this year Capel has some of his Mojo back. Could be a nice 3 or 4 year run if a few things fall in place.

 

[DruidTM]

Friendly reminder Clemson got two titles 2016 & 2018

Big 10 got its first in …..20 years with UofM

 

[Parkview57]

I thought Pitt would settle in as the "bottom of the top tier" in football and a middling basketball team in a strong conference. ......

alas.... seems they are headed for the bottom off the top tier of a middling basketball Conference....

 

[pswagadactyl]

Friendly reminder Clemson got two titles 2016 & 2018

Big 10 got its first in …..20 years with UofM

Bruh Ohio State won in 2014.

H2P

 

[Las Panteras]

I still remember Golic and Greenburg...when Miami, BC and Va Tech joined the ACC.

Greenburg led off that morning with, " The ACC is now the best football conference in the country".

He was right....and the powers that be in N Carolina let it slip away.....

 

[Upg bobcat]

I still remember Golic and Greenburg...when Miami, BC and Va Tech joined the ACC.

Greenburg led off that morning with, " The ACC is now the best football conference in the country".

He was right....and the powers that be in N Carolina let it slip away.....

This is why my expectations, at least for Pitt football, were not very high. I wasn't expecting any conference championships. As someone born in the early 80s, FSU and Miami were the two most successful football programs of my lifetime at least until 2005ish (when the #1 program became another school from the state of Florida) and the belief was that the two programs weren't far off from a return to prominence. Plus VT had built an impressive program and definitely carried that over during its early years in the ACC. We got lumped in the division with Miami and VT and I wasn't expecting to be able to defeat them for division championships.

The reality ended up being that the Coastal Division was very weak and looking back, only two division titles and one conference championship feels like a disappointment. But it was certainly more than I was expecting at first.

 

[cruzer]

Pitt has been in the ACC for 11 years, winning one conference title in football and played for another. Zero conference titles in basketball. Everyone knows historically, the ACC is a great basketball conference but so was the Big East when Pitt was in it. Pitt won two Big East conference tournaments and was runner-up five times. What were your expectations going into the ACC for football and basketball? Have they been met? What are your expectations in the future?

I'll keep this simple.

Football - more or less met my expectations (which are not terribly high). Middle of the pack most years with an occasional good year.

Basketball - have not met expectations. I certainly thought that competing consistently in the ACC would be no walk in the park, but we've been really bad. Maybe we're starting to trend up after the past 2 seasons, but we've really under performed since joining.

 

[DruidTM]

Bruh Ohio State won in 2014.

H2P

Argh shit you’re right

Must not have been that memorable lol

 

[DruidTM]

I'll keep this simple.

Football - more or less met my expectations (which are not terribly high). Middle of the pack most years with an occasional good year.

Basketball - have not met expectations. I certainly thought that competing consistently in the ACC would be no walk in the park, but we've been really bad. Maybe we're starting to trend up after the past 2 seasons, but we've really under performed since joining.

I think the Stallings experiment gives us a mulligan

 

[cruzer]

I think the Stallings experiment gives us a mulligan

More like and OB tee shot.

 

[RaleighPittFan]

More like and OB tee shot.

Right in the lumberyard, Danny.

 

[WillyDavis33]

A more rounded athletic dept and teams fielded

Yes

 

[Sean Miller Fan]

Football has done about what I expected. I didnt think it was a good football league going in and we've been above average. We self-sanctioned ourselves in basketball and are just recovering from that now. The huge surprise for me is just how bad the ACC became in basektball. Or maybe bad is the wrong word but the league's unwillingness to game the NET like other leagues leaves programs like Pitt, who had very good ACC seasons, fighting just to make it to Dayton.

 

[TheWerewolfFromTwilight]

For football? I would say they've been exceeded, because we've been respectable most years and have won the division twice. Obviously we caught a huge break going to the Coastal instead of the Atlantic, as well as with Miami being down for 20 years. But it was an upgrade from the Big Least, which we should have dominated by didn't.

Basketball - I can't even begin to describe how disappointing it's been. So much so that Pitt football has vaulted well ahead of it in terms of what I care about. I envisioned nationally relevant showdowns with Duke and UNC, etc. I knew we probably wouldn't be quite what we were in the Big East, because it always felt like we were kind of sitting at a table we didn't belong at, but I never thought we'd be bad enough that 11 years later we're all talking about how awesome it is to be on the bubble - something we would have called a failure of a season in the Dixon heyday.

 

[HailToPitt725]

As most have said, I would say football has exceeded expectations (outright winning a conference championship) while men’s basketball hasn’t come close to hitting expectations, although we’re slowly getting back to where we were when we arrived in the ACC.

I will say the biggest (good) surprise has been the success of our Olympic sports in the ACC. Compared to where they were when we left the Big East, and considering the ACC’s excellence in non-revenue sports, I would’ve never guessed we’d have volleyball, men’s soccer, etc. competing for national championships. I know these tend to get overlooked, but they’ve been an absolute success.

 

[HailToPitt725]

Actually, I prefer the old Big East for FB and BB

In an alternative universe, the Big East accepts Penn State in the early 80s, the conference lands FSU in addition to Miami/Virginia Tech, and the Big East (minus the basketball schools) looks something like this today:

- Boston College
- Florida State
- Miami
- Penn State
- Pittsburgh
- Rutgers
- Syracuse
- Virginia Tech
- West Virginia

I’d also throw a few ACC schools in there as well because we would’ve been the ones poaching them and not the other way around.

 

[JD1976]

In an alternative universe, the Big East accepts Penn State in the early 80s, the conference lands FSU in addition to Miami/Virginia Tech, and the Big East (minus the basketball schools) looks something like this today:

- Boston College
- Florida State
- Miami
- Penn State
- Pittsburgh
- Rutgers
- Syracuse
- Virginia Tech
- West Virginia

I’d also throw a few ACC schools in there as well because we would’ve been the ones poaching them and not the other way around.

That conference would have landed the first big media rights deal from ESPN and been a power in the late 80s/90s. Of course, we never would have had the beauty of Big East basketball, but that would have been the first conference to score big in the media game. I’m not sure how it would have held up through that first conference poaching of the early 2000s, but it would have done well.

 

[pittdan77]

Were there really any expectations? It's not like things were going to get worse. Any improvement was going to be a win.

 

[Islanderpanther]

Due to poor leadership and a lack of vision and strategic planning the ACC hasn’t kept up with the big 2 …….as others have noted the conference leadership is very parochial in their thinking and they have failed miserably in playing the media rights game and the PR game.

Very disappointed in the performance of both Pitt FB and BB in the conference. In a conference with average teams for the most part, FB has been saddled with a mediocre, defensive minded HC who finds himself in a complete rebuild in the 9 th year of his tenure when things should be rolling. Things may get worse before they improve. Thankfully BB is on the upswing in terms of recruiting and performance , and I am cautiously optimistic that Capel is starting to hit his stride so that I think Pitt can be a top 4 player in the conference in hoops going forward.

 

[ChiefJusticeMarshall]

In an alternative universe, the Big East accepts Penn State in the early 80s, the conference lands FSU in addition to Miami/Virginia Tech, and the Big East (minus the basketball schools) looks something like this today:

- Boston College
- Florida State
- Miami
- Penn State
- Pittsburgh
- Rutgers
- Syracuse
- Virginia Tech
- West Virginia

I’d also throw a few ACC schools in there as well because we would’ve been the ones poaching them and not the other way around.

Yeah I mean if we are doing "what ifs" and fantasy......
Easy add Maryland. Clemson would likely want to join. Then you add Carolina. Georgia Tech, NC State and Virginia. That's the Eastern Conference.

 

[ChiefJusticeMarshall]

Due to poor leadership and a lack of vision and strategic planning the ACC hasn’t kept up with the big 2 …….as others have noted the conference leadership is very parochial in their thinking and they have failed miserably in playing the media rights game and the PR game.

Very disappointed in the performance of both Pitt FB and BB in the conference. In a conference with average teams for the most part, FB has been saddled with a mediocre, defensive minded HC who finds himself in a complete rebuild in the 9 th year of his tenure when things should be rolling. Things may get worse before they improve. Thankfully BB is on the upswing in terms of recruiting and performance , and I am cautiously optimistic that Capel is starting to hit his stride so that I think Pitt can be a top 4 player in the conference in hoops going forward.

Well the extended and iron clad Grant of Rights have been both a blessing and a curse. It has stuck these teams together, but it has allowed all the other conferences to continually negotiate new deals while the ACC opening up this risks having some of the schools refusing to agree and therefore blowing up the conference.

 

[NTOP]

I wasn’t gonna be the one to derail this thread earlier haha.

Football I don’t much care. But I’ve never missed anything in sports like I miss Big East basketball. I think Gtown still plays Cuse every year and when I see that game’s on my heart hurts.

The problem was that some topnotch coaches left, willingly or not. And now that K & Dr. Roy have retired it's even worse. football is diferent....WF cared about as much as Uconn or even Nova.
The old Big East hoops was the best ever. More emphasis on FB now....$$$$$$
Now we have to put up with Cal & Stanford eggheads (can't believe I typed that!) toying with AI to install the SkyNet Era. Frankly, Pitt doesn't fit in any other conference w/o downing FB a notch.

 

[singregardless]

Football - barely met expectations. They definitely should've won more. And blowing all of the momentum from 2021 is something I will always hold against them. That said, multiple conference championship appearances. 1 title. Multiple top 25 finishes. 2016 was extremely fun, even if it ended dreadfully. Our individual players have continued to assert themselves as the best of the best in the new conference. We came in, Donald wins DPOY. Next year, Ollison and Whitehead win ROY. Year after, Conner wins POY. Pickett wins POY. Kancey wins DPOY. 3 NFL first round picks. Bunch of 1st team All-Americans. Not to mention fun wins over Clemson (2016, 2021) and FSU (2020).

Basketball - fell way short of my expectations. Go back to 2013 when we joined. Jamie was here. Adams went lottery in the 2013 draft. Two guys remaining on the roster who will end up getting NBA run (Patterson/Artis) along with a guy who will lead the ACC in scoring (Mike Young). And we secured commitments from Maverick Rowan in 2013 and Mustapha Heron in January 2014. I was convinced we'd be living in the top 4. I went from that to watching Kene Chukwuka starting 30 games for my team. The collapse was so complete & total I still haven't processed all aspects of it.

(I will say that I have enjoyed the last two seasons. And even parts of others, even if they didn't meet my expectations. And even when we've sucked, we've still managed to find a way to pull out fun wins. Seems like we beat UNC once a year, at least.)

Athletic Department as a whole - astronomically exceeded expectations. I've seen a Final 4 team every year this decade and that just doesn't happen in the Big East. I was a Pitt fan for a decade in the Big East years, so I'm comfortable saying that. Not only that, I've seen Pitt achieve in victory as an ACC member in places as diverse as Cameron Indoor, Madison Square Garden, Malibu, and Las Vegas. It's been a fuggin blast.


My expectations in the future are that Cal/Stanford will pleasantly surprise as additions. I suspect Jim Phillips will massively fall short of expectations and not be anywhere near up to the challenge before him. I expect more winning from football & basketball until the ACC collapses. If we are fortunate enough for the ACC to still exist another decade & shrewd enough to keep Dan Fisher, I expect we'll see a NCAA champion team. That is, unless the twin tsunamis of players becoming employees and conferences breaking away washes all of that out. Which probably would be the most Pitt thing to ever happen.