Pitt wasn’t there. But they and Syracuse came up in the conversation. Primarily in the context of how well they fit in the shape of the conference.
In the days before their 2003 and 2004 expansion, the ACC liked that they could claim that all their members were geographically contiguous. Then they added Boston College and they had an outlier. With the addition of Pitt and Cuse, the connection is reestablished and the ACC really does live up to its name.
And Pitt and Syracuse were natural additions to the league because they fit the profile academically and athletically. He said the geographic fit was perfect as well because the two schools fill a gap between Maryland and Boston College.
Swofford said that it was easy to add Pitt and Syracuse because both schools are so similar to most of the current schools in the ACC and that both have plenty of potential for growth.
“I think what attracted this conference to Pitt as well as Syracuse relates to the balance or athletics and academics, their history of athletics and the potential of that program to grow going forward and the quality of the institutions,” Swofford said. “I know a lot of people are cynical about [the importance of academics] in terms of expansion, but if you sat in and listened to an expansion discussion with our presidents it definitely does matter.
“And Pitt and Syracuse both fit the profile collectively of the other 12 schools in the ACC as far being in the top 100 of academic institutions, their athletic numbers were good in terms of graduation rates, etc., and geographically the two schools have given us the opportunity to be contiguous from state to state, and competitively we felt like they fit well.
“A lot of it was about fit. I mean institutionally and academically as well as athletically and certainly, in this instance, geographically as well.”
