ESPN Insider Predicts Pitt Football's Permanent ACC Opponents
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PITTSBURGH -- The ACC appears primed to eliminate the two-division model that determines football scheduling and who plays in the annual championship game. A 3-3-5 model that gives each team three opponents to play every year and five rotating opponents was the most popular option at the conference's spring meetings last week, and ever since, speculation about who will draw who has run wild. ESPN ACC insider Andrea Adelson gave her predictions about who the Pittsburgh Panthers will play in their annual conference matchups.
Adelson said she thinks Pitt will draw Miami, Syracuse and Boston College as their three permanent opponents. For other teams in the conference, Adelson found it easier to assign them natural rivals. But the Panthers are a special case.
As a member of the conference's northern contingent, they do not have the proximity or historical ties that other ACC schools have to one another.
"I am also uncertain about how the league will approach the Northern flank, especially since those schools want to have a presence south," Adelson wrote in a thread on Twitter. "I left Miami-Pitt because of its previous history and current yearly matchup."
Syracuse, Miami and Boston College are all former Big East members that have varying degrees of familiarity with the Panthers.
Syracuse is an obvious choice and the only team that Adelson thinks is a lock to play Pitt annually. While the most compelling chapters of the Panther-Orange rivalry have happened on the hardwood, the gridiron has still produced some great moments. The two schools have played football against one another 77 times and once a year ever since 1955. Recent history has been dominated by the Panthers, but the games have been close. Six of the last nine contests have been decided by single digits and the 2016 game - a 76-61 win for the Panthers - still holds the record for most points in an FBS game completed in regulation.
Miami and Boston College's history with the Panthers is much less storied. Pitt has played the Hurricanes just 41 times and rarely found success. Since 1984, the Panthers have beaten Miami just three times and only seven games have been decided by one score or less.
Pitt and Boston College have met 32 times and have rarely played with much at stake. The Panthers and Eagles are separated by just two wins over the series history, but there is not much animosity or tradition to speak of between the two programs.
While those two opponents offer little in the way of history or prestige, neither does much of the rest of the conference. Coastal division foes Virginia Tech and Virginia have jockeyed with Pitt for a shot at an ACC Championship Game berth in recent years, creating some entertaining games and making them attractive options.
The same goes for Louisville, another Big East transplant that has even less to tie them to the rest of the league's football teams. They'll need to play someone and because of their similar degrees of separation from the rest of the ACC, is a prime option to play Pitt every year.
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