PITTSBURGH — The Pitt Panthers have three new members in the ACC this upcoming season, with the additions of SMU from the American Athletic Conference and both Cal and Stanford from the Pac-12.
The movements come after the Pac-12, essentially, dissovled following the failure to draft a new grant of rights for the conference. USC, UCLA, Washington and Oregon are off to the Big Ten, while Arizona, Arizona State, Colorado and Utah will join the Big 12. Texas and Oklahoma also moved to the SEC for this upcoming season.
All of these moves are due to football and the amount of money that comes in for each school is something they want to prioritize going forward, even if it makes it more difficult on their other programs.
Stewart Mandel of The Athletic wrote about which college football teams are most helped/hurt by the recent moves in conference realignment. The ratings come on +5 to -5 for "New World Order Status."
He rated Pitt as a -2, along with Syracuse, Wake Forest and Virginia. Boston College and Duke received a -3 rating, Stanford at -4 and Cal at -5.
"Pitt is nearly 50 years removed from its national heyday, but it did win the ACC in 2021, which would have garnered a 12-team berth," Mandel wrote. "But star receiver Jordan Addison’s jump to USC the following spring was a window into new NIL reality."
The analysis is quite poor for Pitt, as it looks at Addison's movement to USC as a reason to see them do worse following conference realignment.
Addison left Pitt for NIL purposes, but he did so in 2022, prior to any serious changes in conference makeups. His reasoning for transfering didn't have to do with Pitt not playing in a prestigous enough league, as he chose to play for USC, in the Pac-12, just one season removed from its finality.
Cal and Stanford received poor grades considering they're west coast teams that now have to travel much more to schools on the east coast.
SMU was one of two Power 4 teams that received a +5 rating, along with BYU, who joined the Big 12 ahead of the 2023-24 academic calendar year, along with Cincinnati, BYU and Houston.
The Mustangs get a chance to raise more money from wealthy alumni in Dallas, as they moved into a better conference, and they finished in the top 25 rankings last season for the first time in four decades.
Clemson and Florida State received a +3 rating, Louisville, Miami and Virginia Tech received a +2, NC State received a +1, while Georgia Tech and North Carolina received a "0", for neutral.
Pitt finished 3-9 overall in 2023, their worst record in 25 years when they went 2-9 in 1998. With new offensive coordinator Kade Bell implementing a different scheme compared to last year, they'll hope to play more effectively on offense to get the program back on track.
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