By
Boston College is benefitting from a safe and secure seat in the Atlantic Coast Conference as many universities and leagues endure a roller-coaster ride of athletic conference realignments, changing affiliations and television contract negotiations, according to Director of Athletics Gene DeFilippo.
“Our future is secure,” says DeFilippo. “There is no question about that.”
The ACC recently added Syracuse University and the University of Pittsburgh to its membership, expanding the conference to 14 schools and firmly establishing the league’s geographic footprint from New England to Florida.
That decision came as other major conferences, notably the Big 12, the Big East, the Pac 12 and Southeastern Conference, confronted the possibility of expansion or contraction.
The addition of the two northeast region schools and their storied athletics programs also has cemented the ACC’s stature among the nation’s top conferences, DeFilippo says, and will likely produce even greater revenue for league members in coming years.
“We have a huge television market,” DeFilippo notes. “The addition of Pitt and Syracuse gives Boston College some northeastern rivals, and gives us some great extra visibility in this part of the country. Instead of being the only ACC team up here now, we are going to get more media coverage in New York, and more in Philadelphia and western Pennsylvania. It’s going to provide more television revenue and more television exposure for both Boston College and the entire ACC.”
DeFilippo says the addition of the two new schools will enable BC teams to again compete against some traditional Eastern rivals. “Other than our old football rivalry against Holy Cross [which ended in 1986], we have played Syracuse [46 previous games] more than anybody,” DeFilippo notes. “From the time the Big East Conference was started in the late 1970s, we played Pitt and Syracuse on a regular basis. They are great football and basketball rivals for us.”
DeFilippo is one of 12 members of a select ACC sub-committee that studied league expansion, an effort that was hastened by rumblings of changing alliances throughout the college athletics world. The sub-committee is composed of four university presidents, four directors of athletics and four athletics department faculty representatives, with one member from each of the ACC’s current schools.
DeFilippo says the ACC’s recent expansion was a pro-active move by Commissioner John Swofford and member school officials that places the league among the top collegiate athletic conferences in the country. “Having 14 teams is very workable for us,” DeFilippo says. “We are going to hold there for a while.”
Boston College formally joined the ACC in 2005 and conference membership has been positive for Boston College, DeFilippo says.
“The ACC was been wonderful for us. Anybody who can’t see that is blind – or stubborn.”