It has now been confirmed: Pittsburgh and Syracuse have been added as new members of the Atlantic Coast Conference. This is way beyond shocking given that the conventional wisdom was that the ACC was just sitting on its hands as superconference talk heated up again with Texas A&M recently saying adios to the Big XII--which is really the Big XII minus II. (other rumors involved NC State, Virginia Tech, FSU, and Clemson being courted by the Southeastern Conference and that the ACC really wanted UConn and Rutgers)
Texas has been the spark for most of this. There's been talk of the Longhorns going independent. It was that kind of talk last year that prevented the Pac-10 from becoming the Pac-16 coupled with UT wanting their own network, which the now Pac-12 shied away from because it wanted all of its member schools to have a channel more like the Fox-owned Big Ten network.
All I had been hearing for the past month in wake of TAMU's jump to the SEC was that the ACC was in danger of being raided by the SEC and/or the Big East. The talk, as recently as last week, then moved to whether Texas, Kansas, Missouri, or some combination of the three would be added by the ACC. As it turns out, the ACC has once again raided the Big East, which was on pace to become a basketball superconference upon adding Mountain West defector TCU next year.
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