Pitt football has outgrown the Big East

The Big East isn’t so big anymore, leaving Pitt football with a weak, dilapidated group of… The Big East isn’t so big anymore, leaving Pitt football with a weak, dilapidated group of peers, which is an unfortunate situation for the Panthers.

Boston College has accepted the Atlantic Coast Conference’s offer to join the ACC and leave behind the wreckage that the Big East is becoming. That leaves the Big East with just five football teams, including Pitt.

Pitt should give up the dream of salvaging the Big East as a football conference that matters. There is no need to try recruiting other schools into the Big East to beef it back up. They should look to go elsewhere – perhaps the Mid-Atlantic Conference – for football, and concentrate on being a powerhouse in the sports that the Big East can lay a claim to excellence in: men’s soccer, swimming, and of course, basketball. Regardless of the football situation, the Big East is a great basketball conference, and Pitt has a fantastic basketball program. We should keep the basketball team in the Big East and stay a big fish in a big pond.

However, the Big East isn’t a great football conference, and really never has been. In recent history, only Miami, Virginia Tech and Syracuse have won conference championships. Of the three, only Miami has won a national title since the inception of the Big East. The Big East was created as a basketball conference, to give ESPN something to broadcast cheaply on Tuesday nights. The addition of football was an afterthought.

We have a strong football program and a strong tradition. Unfortunately, though, we don’t command the television market needed to enter a big conference like the Big Ten. They tap the Pittsburgh market with Penn State.

The MAC, however, isn’t known as much of a powerhouse conference – yet. It’s on the way up, though. They’ve defeated top 25 teams this year. Pitt should get in on the ground floor of this up-and-coming conference and use its muscle to transform MAC into a conference to be reckoned with.

Pitt needs to give up the dream of keeping a failing program alive. Boston College bailed. Virginia Tech bailed. Miami was going to leave either way. The conference will never be a football powerhouse again. The imminent demise of the Big East isn’t the end of collegiate sports. It’s not even the end of football.

Pitt should realize this, cut its losses, and shop around for another conference where our football team can flourish.