Pitt and Syracuse Have had Vastly Different Fortunes in the ACC

Pitt football begins an unusual Atlantic Coast Conference season this weekend. There will be 10 games instead of the typical eight. The previously scheduled game against Notre Dame will now count in the ACC standings after the Fighting Irish joined the conference on a temporary basis. With no divisions they will not be playing traditional Coastal rivals Duke, North Carolina, and Virginia. However, they will be playing multiple Atlantic division opponents that they typically see only once every 6 years. For example, on October 3 the Panthers will square off against North Carolina State, 4 years before they were supposed to next play each other in 2024. With all of this uncertainty surrounding the 2020 college football season (and the world at large), it’s actually something of a comfort that the Panthers will open this abnormal ACC season against their old friend Syracuse.

Pitt fans would universally consider Penn State and West Virginia their primary rivals. However, it’s Syracuse who has actually appeared on the Panthers’ schedule more frequently during the 21st century. The two teams have met every year since 1955. Back then both teams were independents, but they’ve since shifted conference affiliations in step with each other. Both were inaugural members of the Big East football conference in 1991. The two schools’ exit in advance of the 2013 season was also the initial domino that precipitated the league’s dissolution. Despite entering the conference together, since joining the ACC Pitt and Syracuse have had drastically different fortunes in their new home.

By almost any metric you look at, Pitt has been a far superior team to their old Big East foes since 2013. Admittedly Pitt hasn’t exactly lit the world on fire, winning only 54% of their games (49-42) over this period. However Syracuse is on the other side of .500, having only won 43% of their games (43%). The difference is even starker if you cut out the non-conference games. With Pitt’s unfortunate habit of scheduling tough games out of conference, their ACC winning percentage is actually the same as their overall mark (31-26, 54%). Meanwhile, Syracuse has only come out on top against their ACC competition 33% of the time (19-38).

The same story is told when you compare points per game. Once again, while Pitt’s figures aren’t anything special, they are still above average and much better than the unfortunate numbers you see from the Orange.

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The most striking thing to me about these numbers is that, on average, Syracuse’s ACC opponents are outscoring them by more than a touchdown per game. 

I’m going to pause here because I can hear any Syracuse fans reading this screaming about how they play in a much more difficult division. So in the interest of considering all relevant information, let’s take a look at the divisions.

Pitt and Syracuse were placed in the Coastal and Atlantic divisions respectively upon joining the ACC. However, they were designated as permanent cross-division rivals, keeping their annual matchup intact. This was likely due to a combination of history, geography, and keeping things simple with a new scheduling format being required with the conference expansion. I’m not going to argue against the popular consensus that the Atlantic division has been the better division. The winner of the ACC Championship Game has come from that division for 9 straight seasons. A streak that predates Pitt and Syracuse’s entry. 

However, it is also a top-heavy division. Clemson has been a juggernaut during this timeframe and Florida State and Louisville have also had dominant teams at times. However, they’ve also been home to some less than stellar squads. Pretty much every team not named Clemson has had at least one lean season since 2013. We can look at the Simple Rating System (SRS), a basic rating of teams utilized by the sports-reference family of websites, to boil down the relative strengths of the divisions down to a single number. While it is true that the Atlantic has had the higher average rating for all their teams since 2013, the Coastal actually beats them when you look at the median ratings.

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Looking at the median is a good method of mitigating the impact of outliers such as Clemson and get a good picture of the strength from top to bottom. There are of course valid arguments that the fact that the Coastal has never really had a dominant team is a mark against them. These figures are more to show that any difference in the quality of the divisions is overblown and would not be a very good excuse for the sorry state of Syracuse football in recent seasons. 

Syracuse has even shown that they can have success in the Atlantic division. While 2018 proved to be an anomaly in the Orange’s recent history, that year they went 10-3 and beat every other team in the Atlantic division except for Clemson. While they still finished behind the Tigers and their potential path to a division crown is blocked as long as they remain a dominant force nationally, it shows that it would be a poor excuse to blame Syacuse’s overall woes on the bad luck of their current division alignment.

There are a few other factors that you can look at to show how much more comfortably Pitt has fit into their new conference home than Syracuse. Though as we’ve just shown, Syracuse has a much more difficult road to a division title, it’s worth mentioning that Pitt has already played in the ACC Championship Game. Additionally, Pitt has gone to a bowl game in 6 of the 7 seasons, while Syracuse has only managed during 2 of the seasons. Notably though, Pitt has continued to dominate the series between the two schools. This current trend goes back to their Big East days. In 2002 Pitt beat Syracuse 48-24, snapping an 11-season losing streak. Since then they’ve switched roles and have been the much better team. Pitt has won 15 of the 18 matchups since then and 6 of the 7 that have occurred since both teams joined the ACC. Even during the Orange’s anomalous good season, Pitt got the better of them in a 44-37 overtime win. Pitt’s only loss in ACC play to the Orange came on the road, during a down 2017 season, and by only a field goal.

It’s quite clear that Pitt and Syracuse have had markedly different experiences since joining the ACC. By all indications that will continue this season. Syracuse has already been defeated handily North Carolina and expectations are low for the rest of the season. Pitt meanwhile is projected to finish in the upper half of the league standings and is currently ranked. Pitt is a heavy 21 point favorite in today’s head-to-head matchup. Upsets happen and Syracuse could easily surpass expectations over the rest of the season. However, as of now there’s little reason to expect the current dynamic between these two programs and their respective places in the ACC to change anytime soon.

*Series history from Winsipedia. Other information from College Football Reference.