Every family is crazy in their own way.

Now that Pitt is heading to the ACC, we are getting a crash course in the crazy and issues of the ACC family. We’ve learned a bit about FSU’s (and to some extent Clemson’s) issues with the ACC. The whole basketball league, controlled by North Carolina interests, dragging/keeping down the football.

What’s interesting is the longtime ill-will towards ACC Commish John Swofford. From the vantage point of a Providence-based conference, Swofford has appeared to be a rather aggressive and dare I say dynamic leader of the ACC. He engineered the raid of the Big East to get Miami, BC and VT — entirely to bolster the football side of things. To do it he navigated over the explicit objections of Duke and UNC on the expansion. He worked around the Virginia politics that forced VT over Syracuse late in the process. He got the conference good TV money in the aftermath. Then he staged the second expansion that got Pitt and Cuse out of the Big East for next year (yes, technically Pitt and Cuse are not out of the Big East until 2014, but we all know the reality).

It seems, though, that from within the ACC the Swofford reign is much less charitably viewed. One place that truly hates the Commisioner: Clemson.

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Earlier in the week, BC blog, Eagle in Atlanta wrote a really excellent post on how and why ESPN should step in to defuse the whole mess of FSU wanting to flee (with another ACC school in tow) to the Big 12. It lays out a great case as to why it is in ESPN’s interest to do so and draws parallels to the way ESPN worked to make sure Texas didn’t destroy the Big 12 by leaving for the Pac-10/12/16. He doesn’t, however, see ESPN showing any interest in taking this kind of action. Read the whole thing, it’s really good.

I do disagree with him, though, in drawing the parallels to Texas. In the case of Texas, they were considering the Pac-12 for more than simply money and football. It was about the alignment with schools in the west. It was academic interests in being part of the Pac-[random number here]. Ultimately, they opted to stay in the Big 12 because it positioned them better — with the help of ESPN — to control more. The money was a big carrot, no question. But it was also the easier path. No fights with the Texas legislature over what would happen to Baylor and Texas Tech.

The better comparison would be to the situation of Texas A&M.

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Unintentional honesty is always fun. There’s the confirmation of what has been rumored, plus the hilarious attempts to walk it back. The latest, TCU AD Chris Del Conte talking about the Big 12.

Del Conte is in Lubbock this morning speaking to a Committee for Champions breakfast on the Texas Tech campus. According to Chris Level, who is the publisher of RedRaiderSports.com and a co-host of a radio show on 104.3 FM in Lubbock; he Tweeted that Del Conte said that the once dead Big 12 “now has schools like Florida State, Clemson and Miami trying to get in.”

This is called a confirmation, and it’s actually on the record.

Not that Del Conte is actually in a hurry to expand the Big 12 — now that TCU is in.

“From my standpoint of right now, I want to stay let’s take our breath. We are in a position of strength. Let’s not rush into anything. We know expansion has to happen. It may not be for a while. We are in the catbird seat right now. We don’t need to rush it. You are excited all of these teams want into the Big 12 and two years ago it was going to disintegrate.”

So how did Del Conte attempt to walk it back? By claiming that he was only commenting on the rumors of teams trying to get into the Big 12. Of course he was. Not actual ACC programs trying to get into to the Big 12.

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Well, like it or not, this is going to be a reoccurring topic for a while.

Let’s start with some background. Specifically when the Seminoles chose to go to the ACC over the SEC.

While conference affiliation would impact FSU’s entire athletic program, suggesting that football was anything less than a major factor in expansion talk would be naive. So while (Bobby) Bowden was not directly involved in the decision, his support was critical in the process.

Not surprisingly, the Birmingham born-and-raised Seminoles coach — who spent one year as a quarterback at Alabama — said the SEC was ‘emotionally’ his first choice. Even so, he carefully weighed all options.

‘I was probably involved just about as much as anybody in that I agreed to [the ACC],’ Bowden said. ‘I think if I would have wanted to fight for the SEC it might have caused some concerns for everybody, but I didn’t feel that way.

‘When you started looking at it from a financial perspective and what’s best for us, I felt pretty sure what we should do is go ahead and join the ACC. … Bob [Goin] had it laid out pretty good. I’ll be honest with you, it was a no-brainer.’

Haggard, like many on the advisory committee, valued Bowden’s view on the choice of conference.

‘Bobby was totally SEC when it started,’ (Andy) Haggard said. ‘As Bobby’s thinking changed, our thinking changed. It ended up unanimous ACC.’ (Haggard is currently the chairman of FSU’s board of trustees and he was the man quoted in yesterday’s story regarding FSU’s expansion committee.)

By the time a contingent of ACC school and league officials made their Sept. 2 tour of FSU’s campus, the league had already made substantial gains on the SEC’s initial foothold. Finances, football and basketball prowess aside, the ACC’s overall image — specifically its academic reputation — had left a strong impression.

‘More people here wanted the ACC; that’s what really changed me,’ Sliger said. ‘The faculty really wanted the ACC. There were very few [faculty members] that had gone to the SEC, but many of them had gone to North Carolina and Virginia, places like that.’

While the ACC and FSU continued to discover common ground through the search process, the SEC was losing ground.

That’s right, the same Andy Haggard that shot off his mouth two weekends ago about running to the Big 12 was part of the crowd that followed what Bobby Bowden wanted back in 1990.

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Last week, it seemed that things were beginning to slightly cool down from all the expansiopocolypse talk of Florida State and another ACC team (Clemson, Miami, VT, GT all being mentioned) fleeing to the Big 12. The FSU president put out a pointed statement talking down the Big 12. The details about media contracts were better explained.

Then this:

The champions of the Big 12 and SEC conferences will meet in a New Year’s Day bowl game annually beginning with the 2014 season, the conferences said Friday in a news release.

The five-year agreement calls for the champions of each conference to be in the matchup “unless one or both are selected to play in the new four-team model to determine the national championship,” the statement said.

“Should that occur, another deserving team from the conference(s) would be selected for the game,” the release said.

The style of the agreement will be similar to the one the Rose Bowl has with the Big Ten and Pac-12 conferences.

This was a largely symbolic gesture, but one that was immediately treated with deeper meanings.

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I’ll get to more on the increasingly insane latest bit of expansiopocolypse and what it means for Pitt in a bit. This is just a short thing that’s been gnawing at me.

One of my dad’s favorite cliches that he reaches for when trying to decide on a big economic thing  — buying a new car, moving, changing jobs, replacing large appliances, etc. — is: “Better the devil you know than the devil you don’t.” My father, as you can imagine, is very financially conservative.

That phrase, though, keeps echoing in my head as expansiopocolypse continues. Albeit in a flipped on its head to be: “Better the devil you don’t, than the devil you know.” Everyone is completely willing willing to risk the devil they don’t know for the money. And because they feel that they know the devil they know just that well.

Beyond the money there is no football school in the Big East that wouldn’t run screaming to another conference, because they know that Providence-based leadership just that well by now. They know how incompetent, late to react, and how little they actually care about football — and thus the conference doesn’t provide any help, support or growth for the football schools. If the Big East was able to get $20 million/year for football schools I would still want Pitt out of that conference.

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