Syracuse: Sources say the Orange will be in the ACC by 2013
By A. Mazzolini
In the saga that has been Syracuse University this season there might be some good news after plenty of bad. From the off the field of the Bernie Fine ordeal, which has turned into what one could call a Y2K circus. To what could be a huge on the court scandal if the story from Yahoo Sports, detailing that since 2001 the school failed to stick to its own drug policy while playing ineligible players, who might have not even known they had failed the testing or were not supposed to play, is found to be true. To the exiting from one conference to go to another which the Big East has played hard ball with SU, wanting to keep them for the full 27 months, have all been obstacles that the Orange had to overcome this year. But from an article from
it seems that the break up between SU and the Big East might be finally happening.
"College football industry sources told CBSSports.com that “there is no doubt” Pittsburgh and Syracuse will be in the ACC in 2013."
This is a 180 turnaround for commissioner John Marinatto, who has been stead fast on keep both colleges in the Big East for the duration. A third team from the conference, West Virginia, had to pay $20 million, instead of the regular $5M, in order to leave a lot quicker than the normal notice of 27 months. So now the question has to be: how much, if anything, are the two schools going to give to the conference in order for this to be happening?
The fact that the Big East has drawn in several teams to replace all that are leaving is probably the driving force behind this change of heart by the conference. If the Big East front office had not been able to lure teams to replace the three leaving I would seriously doubt that any of this would be happening. However it is, and that means for the old school fan base of both SU and Pitt this is the season to go to games and enjoy their old conference cause it will be the last go around for both the Orange and the Panthers in it. And talking about luring teams in, one has to wonder if the Big East had voted in favor of Penn State coming into conference back in 1982, three years after the founding of the BE, would have all of this happened? We will never know, but it’s something to think about.
In a landscape such as the world of college sports, where conference re-alignment has been a constant of late, watching teams come and go is nothing new. But to watch almost half the gridiron teams in the Big East ( 3 out of 8 ) heading to other conferences, including a founding one, is not so easy to digest. In the end, whether one likes it or not, the Big East and the Atlantic Coast Conference will be looking totally different in 2013, and that can be either a good or a bad thing, or maybe both. The final verdict of how good or bad this will be is something that can not be determined for quite a while, and for now all we can do is watch and wait. The one thing that can be said, at least in their new conference SU will not have to travel throughout the country, as the ACC is in the EST time zone, while the Big East will be in all three time zones.