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Today was supposed to be the day when the next big shoe dropped in the frenzied free-for-all over conference affiliations in big-time college football, with the governing boards of the Universities of Oklahoma and Texas scheduled to meet to discuss expected moves by those institutions. But the Atlantic Coast Conference sent another set of shock waves through the industry by announcing Sunday that Syracuse University and the University of Pittsburgh had decided to bolt the Big East Conference and join the ACC.
The moves by Pitt and Syracuse appeared to take other members of the Big East Conference by surprise, and angered some, who questioned whether Pitt's chancellor, Mark Nordenberg, was shooting straight when, as chair of the league's board, he called for Big East solidarity on several key issues. The defections appear to put the Atlantic Coast league on a path to becoming the first 16-member Football Bowl Subdivision league and to threaten the viability of the Big East as a football conference.
Developments later today, meanwhile, could put another existing league at similar risk, if Texas and Oklahoma, as expected, say they are leaving (or considering leaving) the Big 12 Conference for the Pacific-12 Conference (or perhaps another league, in Oklahoma's case).
