UPDATED: Sept. 29, 2011, 8:01 p.m.

Since Syracuse announced its decision to move to the Atlantic Coast Conference on Sept. 18, much of the conversation has focused on the fact that the decision was, at its core, about money. Between a lucrative television deal and the chance to play teams who draw in huge sums of money for athletic competitions, Syracuse University made a decision that will yield monetary dividends for the institution and its athletic programs.

Chancellor Nancy Cantor doesn’t pretend money wasn’t a factor. ‘The financial stability of the ACC was very helpful, very important,’ she said. ‘Obviously, I don’t want to say that wasn’t important, that was certainly on the table.’

But, regardless of the root intent of the decision, the effects go beyond dollar signs. It’s about prestige, too — athletically, academically and otherwise.

Welch Suggs, associate director of the Knight Foundation Commission on Intercollegiate Athletics, said schools seeking more prestige have driven much of the conference realignment.

‘A lot of this has been driven by presidents who are looking for the most prestigious arrangement to get in to,’ he said. ‘As well as the one that’s going to be the most sustainable in terms of athletics and the finances that come with TV deals and so forth.’

Syracuse’s move to the ACC goes beyond a higher level of athletic competitiveness, and it goes beyond bringing in a new set of teams for students to cheer against in the Carrier Dome. It’s about image and it’s about exposure. Whether a primary cause or a convenient side effect, Syracuse’s move to the ACC is about making the school’s name better known in new areas and giving that name a better connotation as an overall institution.

Cantor doesn’t pretend those things weren’t part of the decision, either. ‘It really was the attractiveness of the kinds of sports that the ACC mounts, the attractiveness of the institutions, the geographies that it represents,’ she said.

The ACC strongly promotes and is quick to point out the athletic achievements of its members. The conference issued a news release following the release of the U.S. News and World Report rankings for the 2012 Best Colleges, which stated that the ACC had the best academic standards of any BCS championship conference.

The ACC member schools also participate in the International Academic Collaborative, an initiative meant to promote study abroad, as well as collaboration in research. David Brown, coordinator of the IAC, could not be reached for comment.

Based on the U.S. News and World Report statistics, the ACC is a stronger academic conference than the Big East. Of its 12 member schools, seven rank higher than 38th. On average, schools in the ACC rank 49th.

Syracuse ranked 62nd in the 2012 rankings, and Pittsburgh ranked 58th.

Compare that to the Big East (also excluding Syracuse and Pittsburgh): Of the 14 member schools, Georgetown and Notre Dame rank higher than 38th (Villanova and Providence are ranked first and fourth, respectively, in the regional universities category rather than the national universities category). Seven Big East schools rank lower than 100th, and the average ranking is 110, even with Villanova and Providence’s rankings included.

Boston College is the most recent university to leave the Big East. BC spokesman Jack Dunn said one appealing part of the ACC for BC was academics.

‘One of the major reasons why Boston College chose to join the ACC was because its member schools were of a similar caliber academically to Boston College,’ Dunn said. ‘We were the highest-ranked school in the Big East and joining the ACC put us alongside schools such as University of North Carolina, Wake Forest, Virginia and Duke, all of which are highly ranked and with which we compete for students.’

Suggs, of the Knight Commission, said Syracuse and Pittsburgh are schools that academically match well with the ACC. For both schools, as well as the ACC, the addition is a matter of prestige and image.

‘It’s more of the image and the question of whether adding the schools is going to add to the prestige of the schools that are already there or is it going to dilute them? And Pitt and Syracuse are both very strong schools,’ he said.

But not everyone buys the idea that the association brought by an athletic conference will improve a schools academic caliber or image. Jeff Orleans is a professor at Princeton University and the former commissioner of the Ivy League conference, the premier example in college sports of a conference of like-minded schools academically and athletically.

Conferences like the ACC may encourage collaboration, but academic collaboration among institutions is labor intensive and much more likely to occur across Division-III schools.

On conference realignment, Orleans said, ‘My sense is that geography, scheduling and revenue now make much more a difference than anything else.’

Orleans said he thinks Syracuse may benefit most from the move in terms of geographic exposure.

‘You’re now going to go regularly to Miami and to Boston and to Atlanta and to the triangle in North Carolina,’ he said. ‘You’re going to be on a wider TV network, you’re going to reach a wider set of possible students.’

The Southeast is increasingly becoming an area where Syracuse and other universities are pushing outreach to potential students. Syracuse opened a recruitment center in Atlanta in 2010 and the incoming classes from the Southeast have grown in recent years.

Competing athletically with schools such as Duke, North Carolina, Wake Forest and Miami may increase exposure of Syracuse.

Max Patino, recruiting specialist in the S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications, said from a recruiter’s perspective, he is excited about the potential exposure the new conference will bring.

‘For a student who might not know much about Syracuse now, to see them compete with their local teams, see them on national TV, it’s a plus for us,’ Patino said. ‘… Those are things that will help expand the Syracuse University brand to a more national level.’

David West, director of domestic market research in SU’s Office of Admissions, said while athletic competition in new areas is a nice plus, he does not see it having a major effect on Syracuse’s recruiting policies. That’s because Syracuse is already making a concentrated recruiting effort in the Southeast, he said.

In addition to having admissions representatives and recruiters travel cross-country to meet with students, the Southeast has been an area of recruitment for some years. Data shows the Northeast is shrinking and the Southeast is growing in terms of students, he said.

‘I wouldn’t say that it’s going to make a big shift, but we’re certainly pleased from an admissions perspective that it’s going to give us more exposure,’ he said. ‘But we’re not expecting a huge windfall from the Southeast due to this.’

Robert Taggart serves as the faculty representative to athletics at BC. Although impossible to link directly to joining the ACC, he said BC has seen more interest from students from theSoutheast since the move. Taggart teaches mostly MBA students, and although he doesn’t have statistics, more of his students have been coming from ACC schools.

‘It strikes me that we’re getting more MBA students in recent years from other ACC schools,’ he said. ‘… I think it sort of gets the school more on people’s radar screens.’

John Sweeney, professor of sports communications at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, said that although the realignment may have secondary effects, at its core, it’s a decision about sports and money. That has been the case with previous conference alignments, and it will continue to be.

‘What you’re seeing is each of the conferences wanting to make themselves the biggest, most wonderful candy apple for television,’ Sweeney said. ‘And how that affects everything else is secondary.’

kronayne@syr.edu

Published on September 28, 2011 at 12:00 pm