One of the greatest sources of tension for Big East football fans and ND has not been the fact that ND stayed independent. Not that they wouldn’t fully commit, and on top of it they wouldn’t really schedule Big East teams unless it was on their terms (Pitt and Syracuse being exceptions owing to history). No, it was the bowl relationship. That on top of being able to park basketball and their olympic sports in the Big East, they could swoop in and grab a bowl bid just by being within two wins of the team inline for the bowl. A source of immense frustration that only exacerbated the anger most Big East football fans had towards the line-up of bowl options.

The justification from the Big East — and repeated so many times by so many — was that the Big East would not even have the bowl line-up it presently has (had?), but for the affiliation of Notre Dame as a carrot to the bowls. Which of course, begs the question,  what happens to the Big East bowl line-up post-ND? A related and more relevant question for Pitt fans, what about the ACC bowl line-up?

There is a slight possibility of actually finding out what Notre Dame’s impact on a conference bowl line-up beyond the perpetual rhetoric.

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Had a few pile up over the past couple weeks.

While lots of attention was on all the football recruits Pitt had at the VT-Pitt game, let’s not forget Coach Jamie Dixon had a couple 4-star recruits of his own visiting. Center BeeJay Anya from James Robinson’s high school was there. As was point guard Josh Newkirk from North Carolina (Newkirk is 4-star on Scout.com, and a 3-star on Rivals and ESPN). Last week Coach Dixon did an in-home visit with Anya — Anya’s first. This week, Coach Dixon is out to visit Newkirk. Besides Pitt, he holds offers from Arizona, Memphis, GT and Indiana.

Interesting tidbit about early workouts and Coach Dixon leaving the door open for all freshmen to see action.

Pitt coach Jamie Dixon said upperclassmen Lamar Patterson and Talib Zanna have proven to be leaders early in the first few weeks of workouts. The freshmen — Steven Adams, James Robinson and Chris Jones — have stood out as being physically and mentally mature to contribute at the beginning of the season. Pitt has had a history of developing its players and not getting the maximum from the freshmen. But this program will need, and now it looks like it will get, immediate production from the freshmen class. This is a must that will likely lead to quite a turnaround from a 22-17 CBI champ (5-13 Big East) season.

While Adams and Robinson are no-brainers for seeing action this season, that Chris Jones is getting considered is surprising. Jones may be benefiting from the change in NCAA rules that actually allows more contact with the coaches in terms of practice for players and the team. Giving him a chance to show the coaches earlier what he can do, and getting the coaches to trust him.

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It’s a cute story. And really the Con had nothing to lose by submitting a bid.

Consol Energy Center has put in a bid to play host to the Atlantic Coast Conference men’s basketball tournament, a Penguins official confirmed tonight.

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The ACC accepts bids for a six-year period and decides which cities will play host to the event in each of those years. The ACC rotates the tournament to different cities. Atlanta played host to the event last year. Washington, D.C., Tampa and Charlotte have played host to the event as well.

Consol Energy Center and Visit Pittsburgh worked together on the bid. Pitt athletic director Steve Pederson said the university was not directly involved in the process, but the Panthers encouraged the Penguins to put in the bid.

To clarify, the Con submitted a bid to host at some point between 2016 and 2021. The bid was not just submitted yesterday, but last month.

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Yesterday got totally disrupted with the Notre Dame-ACC news. I just have one (or two) final thoughts for now on the deal. Then, I swear I’ll get back to the stuff regarding the VT game. Really. I mean it.

I’m surprised it took place this quickly. For the ACC there was no real urgency to do this. It seems that the ACC could have waited a year or two to let ND twist in the new Big East. It wouldn’t have resulted in full membership, but they probably could have had ND playing 6 games against the ACC rather than 5.

The exception to that thought would be if getting the ND deal done was the only way to make sure the ACC could pass the new exit fee structure. That was really the bigger deal and puts the ACC on the Big 12 level stability with such painful exit fees that it becomes almost impossible to leave.

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Anyone remember this?

“I don’t understand it,” Jack Swarbrick said as a new round of conference hopping in college athletics moved into high gear Sunday. “How do you vote as a collegiate president on something that has the potential to provide some benefit for your institution and the conference you’re affiliated with but has a very negative consequence for a host of other members of the academy, as presidents like to call it?

“I’d like to know how much of these discussions are: What’s right? What is the best thing for the larger enterprise, and how many other schools would be adversely impacted?

“I just don’t know that that’s happening.”

Yes, the ND AD complaining about the selfish behavior of Pitt and Syracuse moving to the ACC. He and his institution are so far above such crass things. They would never make a move out of no where without giving their present partners a fair notice. Notre Dame’s president put his money-where-Swarbrick’s-mouth was. Why, Rev. Jenkins even headed up the Big East expansion committee. So you know they wouldn’t act against the best interests of the Big East while helping to make big decisions.

Oh, what’s that?

The University of Notre Dame accepted an invitation today (Sept. 12) to become a member of the Atlantic Coast Conference (ACC) in all sports except football.

That exception for football was even in the sub-headline of the press release, “Football to stay independent but will bring five games annually to ACC.”

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The Big East decided to screw Pitt in the SEC/Big East Match-up this year. The ACC, however, is being a lot cooler about things for their own marquee non-con conference cross-over.

Syracuse and Pitt are expected to be a part of the ACC-Big Ten Challenge in 2013 when they are members of the ACC. There was initial talk of not including them because they were new — but that was never going to fly. The ACC hasn’t officially decided how it will decide the 12 teams that will go against the 12 from the Big Ten. But one proposal that will be discussed is to pair the top 12 RPI teams from the previous season in the ACC with the 12 Big Ten teams. If that’s the case, the bottom teams will get frozen out.

Doesn’t that simply make more sense when one side has more teams than the other? To take your best teams? These are match-ups for conference pride and bragging rights. If you can avoid sending the DePauls, Providences and Wake Forests you do it.

Okay, football stuff coming later. First a bunch of links to touch on some other topics.

The daily bomb threats on Pitt’s campus last spring should not re-occur. The FBI has their man (sort of). It’s as weird as possible.

A 64-year-old, wheelchair-using Scottish man from Dublin, who already has served a prison sentence for emailing hoax bomb threats, was indicted Wednesday as the person responsible for emailing a series of 40 false bomb threats targeting the University of Pittsburgh during the spring semester.

A federal grand jury in Pittsburgh also charged the suspect, Adam Stuart Busby, with sending emailed bomb threats to federal courthouses in Pittsburgh, Erie and Johnstown and with threatening U.S. Attorney David J. Hickton.

Speaking at a news conference announcing the indictments, Mr. Hickton said Interpol had been alerted to the federal warrant charging Mr. Busby, who currently is in custody in Dublin on a Scottish warrant for similar crimes there. He would not speculate on any timetable for extraditing Mr. Busby from Ireland to face prosecution.

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According to The Irish Times, Mr. Busby has multiple sclerosis and is a leader of the Scottish National Liberation Army, which seeks independence for his homeland. He recently was released from prison on a 2010 conviction in Ireland for emailing two false bomb threats in 2006 to Heathrow Airport in London. Those threats, which cited specific international flights, claimed to be from the Scottish National Liberation Army, according to the Times.

Since last month Mr. Busby has been held in custody in Dublin on a European Union warrant seeking his extradition to Scotland for additional charges of sending false threats, according to Irish media outlets. He is charged with making hoax threats in 2010, mostly by email to media organizations, that threatened then-British Prime Minister Gordon Brown with a noxious substance, and claimed buildings would be bombed and that the English water supply would be contaminated, Irish news media reported.

The FBI wouldn’t give a reason for why he targeted Pitt for the bomb threats (Editor note: I know this is somehow related to you, McClearn).

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Ever since the silliness of Notre Dame associating/aligning themselves with the Big 12 died, there have been intermittent reports of a possible alignment of Notre Dame with the ACC.

The ACC members have been vehemently opposed to partial memberships in the past and have had the attitude of “all in” or “not in” but Swofford said today he’s not sure if that is still the case and of course, he wouldn’t say it but others already have – that subject is indeed being considered with respect to Notre Dame. So don’t be shocked if in the near future Notre Dame is an ACC member in all sports except football and has some sort of scheduling agreement to play X-number of ACC schools in football each year.

Now this one.

Speaking of ND. The Irish and the ACC continue to focus on a deal which would allow ND to play 6 games a year against ACC teams in exchange for getting full membership in the ACC in all other sports.

The sticking point would be in basketball. Putting together a schedule for a 15 team league is much tougher than doing it for a 16 team league. Talks will continue.

I’ll give you reason to panic a bit further down, but for now, take a breath.

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A few links/stories not directly related to Pitt but putting out there.

Northwestern has been Under Armour-ized. It’s not good. It’s not Maryland bad, but in the Big 10 it is radical.

Want to see how a lot of teams will probably (or should) schedule in the ACC when they go to a 9 game schedule? Virginia Tech is a good example.

The 2015 Akron game that was listed on Tech’s website under future schedules has been canceled.

The Hokies’ nonconference schedule in the next few years looks like this:

2013: vs. Alabama in Atlanta, vs. Marshall, vs. Western Carolina

2014: vs. William and Mary, at Ohio State, vs. Western Michigan

2015: vs. Furman, vs. Ohio State, vs. East Carolina

2016: vs. Wisconsin, vs. Liberty, at East Carolina

By being pushed back, the East Carolina series would have one more home-and-home cycle in 2017 and ’18.

The Hokies also are scheduled for a trip to Wisconsin in 2017 to satisfy that home-and-home agreement…

Every year has one marquee non-con. VT relies a little heavy on local 1-AA foes for an extreme patsy for my tastes. The third game isn’t bad. Especially with the always dangerous ECU team out there.

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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.”

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Just remember Pitt, nothing stupid in 347 days. Keep it simple.

Not much new since last night. A few more comments. Another press release.

Here’s the statement from the ACC.

“Today’s announcement that Pitt will be joining the ACC on July 1, 2013 is terrific one. It’s exciting to know that both Pitt and Syracuse will become playing members in the ACC starting with the 2013-14 academic year. I’m pleased that both schools were able to finalize agreements with the Big East. The ACC has long enjoyed a rich tradition of balancing academics and athletics and the addition of Pitt and Syracuse further strengthens this conference. Throughout this past year, we’ve been preparing to welcome both teams into our membership and we look forward to the future of the ACC with these two schools as prominent members.”

It’s nice to have it official. But everyone knew this was coming.

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Okay, looks like we officially have 348 days until Pitt is a part of the ACC.

The Big East Conference and the University of Pittsburgh announced today that both organizations have reached an agreement on Pittsburgh’s departure from the Big East and move to the Atlantic Coast Conference (ACC). Under the terms of the agreement reached between the Big East and Pittsburgh, Big East members will vote, in accordance with the Big East’s bylaws, to terminate Pittsburgh’s membership in the Big East effective July 1, 2013, at which point Pittsburgh will join the ACC. In addition to other consideration, Pittsburgh will make a total cash payment to the Big East of $7.5 million, which includes the $5 million withdrawal fee under the Big East Bylaws applicable at the time Pittsburgh gave notice of withdrawal.

“This is another step for the Big East to take toward a very exciting future. With the addition of our eight new members, the Big East will be incredibly strong and vibrant,” said Joe Bailey, Interim Commissioner of the Big East.

Steve Pederson, Athletic Director for the University of Pittsburgh said: “We have appreciated and enjoyed our membership in the Big East and wish them much success in the future. We are anxious to compete in our final season in the Big East and look forward to an exciting future in the Atlantic Coast Conference.”

Mildly surprised Pitt didn’t work the number down a little considering the hit Pitt took to the football schedulue this year, but it’s not like the Big East would be (or should be) terribly sympathetic.

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Sure we don’t know Pitt’s full basketball schedule. Sure, we are not officially out of the Big East. Sure the schedule this year (especially at home) blows.

This time next year, Pitt will be in the ACC and we will be trying to figure out what kind of record Pitt will have in its first year in the ACC.

Well, an important part of that is figuring out the potential wins and losses on the schedule. Pitt’s 2013 schedule is all set except for the actual dates on the conference games.

Miami blog, The Seventh Floor has already figured out the entire conference schedule for 2013 based on a 9-game schedule with Pitt and Cuse on board. As a planned member of the Coastal Division (start trying to remember this stuff now), Pitt will get 4 home conference games in 2013 (odd years) and 5 conference games in 2014 (even years)

The conference schedule format is to play all six divisional foes (3 home, 3 away), two cross-division (1 home, 1 away), and one protected cross-divisional rival (alternating home/away)

Pitt originally had 5 non-con games scheduled, but that included NC State and at VT. Those obviously will not be on the schedule any longer.

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Maybe it’s because of all the scandal coverage is being devoted to Happy Valley. Maybe it’s because the school already punished itself in related events, including the firing of their head coach and forced resignation of the AD. Maybe it’s because it has been dragging on for some two years. Maybe it is because so many journalists happen to come from this school. Or maybe it’s because nearly two years later we still don’t exactly know who or how many players were part of the huge academic fraud scandal that happened at North Carolina.

Everyone knows about the agent-related scandal at UNC that ultimately cost Butch Davis his job. The other component that came out of the scandal was academic. And it has proven to be a huge infestation of a problem. One that involved an entire academic department and was wide-reaching through all of UNC athletics — though, with an extra emphasis on football.

Willis Brooks and Jay Smith, two UNC-CH history professors who are concerned about the case’s impact on the university’s academic integrity, said the enrollment and pay data suggest Nyang’oro had set up a system for athletes to get into classes they could pass.

“The only logic I can conjure is (Nyang’oro) was protecting seats,” said Brooks, a professor emeritus who served on the faculty athletic committee in the early 1990s. “And since the preponderance of people who took the seats are athletes, there is circumstantial evidence,” he said.

This included a class, “launched two days before the start of a summer 2011 semester and immediately filled with 18 football players and a former player. Academic advisers to the football players knew the class did not meet and only involved a term paper, but still placed the athletes in the classes.”

Newspapers looking into this found irregular classes dating back to 1999.

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Yes, I know. I said expansiopocolypse is done for the summer. It’s not done for good, and some other materials in my tabs that I just need to get out. Not essential stuff, but things that might be interesting when it all comes back in another year.

Strangely, while Florida State seems to have settled down to some degree over leaving the ACC — at least until they get a clear signal from the Big 12 that they want them — Clemson still seems to be discussing it. Now, maybe it’s because Clemson has been a founding member of the ACC, so this is not nearly as simple as it is for FSU about the willingness to leave the ACC. Clemson seems much more divided.

So you see articles like this pushing back on any move because of travel costs.

Geography impacts travel costs, recruiting and historical rivalries. All of those aspects favor Clemson remaining in its conference home of the last 59 years.

Based on Clemson’s actual travel expenses for football and projected costs had the Tigers played in the Big 12 last season, the team would have spent $750,000 more in the Big 12.

Those travel costs would negate a significant portion of the Big 12’s greatest draw — television revenue. The Big 12’s deal with ESPN will pay its programs about $3 million more per year than what the ACC’s deal with ESPN pays out.

Unlike the Boise St. move of the football program to the Big East, a move by Clemson would obviously be for all sports. Which means increased travel costs for all programs. I’m not convinced the number would really be as high as $750K, but it would be more significant that most Clemson pro-move people suggest.

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