ACC Expansion: Syracuse and Pittsburgh Remaining True to Atlantic Coast

In the summer of 1776, 13 colonies declared their independence from England forming the United States. Almost the entire Eastern Atlantic seaboard was involved. East and West Florida did not join at the time, but they were sympathetic.

The ACC's wisdom in taking the University of Pittsburgh and Syracuse University from the Big East this weekend is obvious.

In the end, the Atlantic seaboard was critical to England, just as it is critical to the Atlantic Coast Conference.

And, just like the 13 colonies, it appears almost certain that the ACC will gain all of the East Coast, which makes sense.

The incentives and rewards are too great, and the potential of eventual failure too serious, to allow any market within the natural geography of the East Coast to escape.

Until today, the Atlantic Coast had seven states not within the ACC: New York, Pennsylvania, Connecticut, Delaware, New Jersey, Rhode Island and Maine.

New York, with its huge media market, and Pennsylvania, with its two major media markets, were absent from the ACC.

No more.

With the addition of Pittsburgh and Syracuse, the ACC becomes even more established in the Big Apple, moving from invader to member.

Even today, the ACC enjoys a huge following in New York. That will expand exponentially with Syracuse (practically the home team in many encounters in Madison Square Garden already) and Pittsburgh's addition in no more than two years.

Realistically, after gaining New York and Pennsylvania, three states remain on the Atlantic seaboard that need ACC teams: New Jersey, Connecticut and Rhode Island.

Although all three have smaller markets than New York and Pennsylvania, they provide a key continuity for the conference that all other major conferences now lack: geographic cohesiveness.

Thus, with the likely exception of Delaware and Maine, the ACC will soon extend from Boston to Miami including all but two of the original colonies in its reach.

The Big Ten and the SEC are arguably the closest conferences to the ACC to their original roots.

Yet, the Big Ten's decision to reach out to Penn State several years ago, and the SEC's new venture into Texas to get Texas A&M, make both conferences no longer consistent with their roots and their natural geographic rivalries.

With Colorado in the Pac 12, the future of conferences appears to be greater geographic diversity, rather than consistency with rivalries due to geographic proximity or similarities.

Another issue makes the ACC unique among most major conferences: it has more private institutions as members than all but the Big East.

The ACC has five private institutions: Syracuse, Miami, Duke, Wake Forest and Boston College. If they were to add Providence, Connecticut and Rutgers, it would gain one more in Providence.

In contrast, the Big Ten has one (Northwestern), the Pac-12 has two (Stanford and Southern Cal) and the SEC one (Vanderbilt).

There are those who lament the break up of the Big East. They contend that it is and was a great conference, and that its rivalries will not survive the change.

Despite these claims, the fact remains that the Big East was largely created and still exists because of basketball.

Its teams are geographically diverse, including teams in the Midwest, the East Coast and the South.

Also, while their teams have the most even split between private and public universities, a majority of their members are private Catholic universities with their own cultures and traditions that differ to a degree both in their needs and objectives from secular public universities.

In the end, the future of the Big East is now a big question, especially as a major football conference.

Probably lacking the needed number of football schools to qualify as a BCS conference, will they go elsewhere?

Almost certainly, with Connecticut now making public statements about their interest in looking at other opportunities that some report are focused on the ACC, there will be more moves involving the ACC.

The ACC has discussed adding at least two more schools. These will most likely be Connecticut and Rutgers.

Finally, some have treated the statements about adding these schools consistent with their academic excellence as something that did not ring true.

This criticism is unwarranted. Both universities have prominent programs in several fields.

Pittsburgh is ranked as 19th among all national public universities in the well-respected 2012 US News and World Report Annual College Rankings. Pittsburgh and Syracuse ranked 58th and 62nd in the rankings of all national universities.

They will join a conference that has seven of its institutions ranked in the top 50 of all private and public national universities. It will have 13 of their members in the top 62 universities, and continue to rank among the top of all conferences from an academic standpoint.

Under these circumstances, both Rutgers and Connecticut can hardly avoid joining. After all, universities are for learning first, are they not?