Presumably, players at the recent 2013 ACC Football Kickoff media event got tired of answering one specific question.
The question: "What do you know about the new teams coming into the league?" (Or, to the four players in attendance from Pitt and Syracuse: "What do you know about the teams you'll be joining in the ACC?")
As you can imagine, there weren't many specifics, just a lot of platitudes about how the players were happy Pitt and Syracuse were joining the league and that they would provide good competition. (Or, from the four players in attendance from Pitt and Syracuse, that the league they were joining had a lot of good teams and that they were looking forward to the new competition.)
If going by recent NFL Drafts is an indication, Pitt and Syracuse should fit nicely into the ACC. The two newcomers from the old Big East are right in the middle of the league when it comes to producing pro talent of late.
Pitt and Syracuse each have had 11 players selected in the past five drafts; that's tied with Wake Forest for seventh in the league. Clemson and North Carolina lead the way with 23 draftees apiece, followed by Florida State (22, including 11 in the 2013 draft), Miami (21), Virginia Tech (14) and North Carolina State (13). Trailing the newcomers are Georgia Tech and Maryland (10 each), Virginia (eight), Boston College (five) and Duke (one).
Worth noting is that Pitt hasn't had a player selected in either of the past two drafts.
While adding Pitt and Syracuse has helped expand the ACC's geographic footprint in the Northeast, the move to the ACC should help the recruiting efforts of Pitt and Syracuse, especially in the Southeast. The Big East was a Northeast-centric league, with only Louisville and USF located in the Southeast. Kentucky, though, produces barely of handful of top-level recruits annually. Now, Syracuse and Pitt will venture outside the Northeast for the vast majority of their game.
As for the importance of recruiting Florida and Georgia, 11 of the 25 players on the preseason All-ACC team are from those two states. It's hard to see Pitt and Syracuse grabbing top-tier prospects from Florida and Georgia, but schools can win a lot of games with second-tier guys from those states.
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This season, Pitt has one projected starter from Florida (LB Shane Gordon) and zero players from Georgia. Syracuse could have as many as five starters from Florida, including potentially the entire starting secondary (TE Beckett Wales and CB Keon Lyn seem to be for-sure starters, while CB Ri'Shard Anderson, FS Jeremi Wilkes, FS/SS Durell Eskridge and SS Ritchy Desir are possible starters). Syracuse also has five players from Georgia, including potential starting LB Cameron Lynch.
All the current players from Florida and Georgia at Pitt and Syracuse were two- or three-star recruits out of high school.
For Panthers and Orange coaches, signing a few four-star guys from those states now becomes a realistic expectation.
