Let's face it - Pitt and Syracuse are essentially joined at the hip. Both are headed to the ACC now, so with that in mind, I reached out to Sean over at Troy Nunes Is An Absolute Magician, SB Nation's incredible Syracuse blog, to answer a few questions. I asked him about a manufactured rivalry between the schools, facing stiffer competition in football, missing Big East basketball, and more.

I'm fascinated by the Pitt-Syracuse football rivalry, or lack thereof. We've played each other every year since 1955 and you're the 2nd-most common opponent in the history of SU football and yet...it barely registers. I don't quite know what to make of it. I think we both get more fired up on the basketball court than we do for football and there's way more history on the gridiron. Perhaps its a lack of memorable moments or a lack of bad blood. With West Virginia, we can point to specific moments and say we hate them and they hate us but I can't really do that with Pitt.

I think we're linked and we'll be rivals more than, say, Syracuse will be with Clemson or Georgia Tech. But I think we'll view Boston College as more of a rival than you guys and you'll be in the 2nd tier along with Maryland and Virginia Tech.

What this rivalry needs, like any rivalry, is emotion. There needs to be some kind of screwjob that costs one of us some kind of major stakes. There needs to be a shocking victory on a dubious call. There needs to be a fight or players jawing at one another or an intense recruiting war. We just need more of that stuff and if that starts to happen, we can get a rivalry going.

I'm extremely pleased with the way Syracuse handled themselves this entire time. It was very business-like, at least publicly. We made a business decision and we never seemed to waver from that mentality, even as the Big East got all pissy and took their toys home with them. I'm really impressed with our AD, DOCTOR Daryl Gross, who has not only turned Syracuse Athletics into a well-rounded sports program, but made a fantastic move getting us into the ACC without turning it into a story about himself (coughcoughOliverLuckcoughcough).

By the way, my guess is that we probably toyed around with the suing thing behind closed doors, but just never pulled the trigger.

Yeah I was surprised that they were able to come to the table like that considering the lawsuit. And then that Pitt got the same deal even though they had been much more disruptive. I'm not complaining, I mean, could you imagine the nightmare of Syracuse leaving a year early but Pitt not? It would have been a disaster for scheduling and other things. I'm glad cooler heads prevailed in the end once all the emotions died down (and Marinatto was no longer involved).