ACC Expansion: Big East Adding to Idiocy by Not Freeing Pitt, Syracuse

The plan, as it was announced over the weekend, is for the University of Pittsburgh and Syracuse University to leave the Big East for the ACC.

Unless something crazy occurs, both schools are going to change conferences, make no mistake about that.

The more interesting question is, when they will be changing conferences?

According to Pete Thamel of The New York Times, it's going to be a couple of years. He tweeted on Monday night that the Big East is going to insist that Pitt and Syracuse abide by their contracts, which won't allow them to exit the conference until the summer of 2014.

This sounds reasonable, but it actually complicates things a little bit. To understand why, you first have to consider what CBS Sports' Brett McMurphy wrote about Pitt and Syracuse on Sunday:

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"[ACC] Commissioner John Swofford said the league would respect the Big East's withdrawal by-laws, which requires 27 months notice. However, it's doubtful the Big East would want Pitt and Syracuse to remain in the league over that period because it would seek to immediately add additional members to survive.

 

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It would be easy to read that and say, "Aha! McMurphy thought wrong!"

But given the other report floating around, he might not be.

Also on Monday night, a report is out from the Associated Press that claims the Big East and Big 12 have been talking about a possible merger to save what will be left of the two conferences in the event that Texas, Oklahoma, Oklahoma State and Texas Tech leave the Big 12 for the Pac-12.

A merger certainly isn't a bad idea, as the Big 12 stands to be whittled down to five schools and the Big East down to seven (once TCU joins in 2012). Put them together, and you've got a 12-team conference.

The tricky part is how the timing will work out.

If the Big East wants to execute this merger while holding Pitt and Syracuse to their contracts at the same time, the merger likely couldn't be completed before 2014. The problem with that, of course, is that the Big 12 is likely going to need the merger to happen sooner, as surely the four schools that are thinking about leaving are not going to want to wait.

So if it wants to survive as a conference, the Big East would have to jettison Pitt and Syracuse ahead of time, just as McMurphy theorized. If it insists on holding on to both schools until 2014, well, it's hard to see how the Big East is going to survive.