Pat Narduzzi is not interested in your Power Conference hierarchy.
The Pitt head coach, appearing on Atlanta sports radio station 680 The Fan, made a claim that will echo through every tailgate lot from Tallahassee to Chestnut Hill: the Atlantic Coast Conference is better than the Big Ten.
“It’s better than the Big Ten,” Narduzzi said. “It’s got more skill.”
He didn’t stop there. Narduzzi backed the assertion with a pointed appeal to the scoreboard — bowl games, regular season, the whole ledger.
“You look at our record in bowl games against the SEC and the Big Ten,” he said. “You look at our record in the regular season. We don’t have losing records.”
The comments, first reported by On3, arrive at a moment when conference realignment has scrambled every assumption about who sits where in the college football food chain. The Big Ten has swelled to 18 programs with the additions of USC, UCLA, Oregon, and Washington. The SEC absorbed Texas and Oklahoma. The ACC, meanwhile, held together — barely — after a protracted legal fight with Clemson and Florida State that ended in a settlement this spring.
Narduzzi’s argument isn’t about roster size or television markets. It’s about what happens between the lines. And on that front, the ACC’s postseason résumé against both the SEC and Big Ten is genuinely strong. The conference has historically held its own in bowl matchups against both leagues, and ACC teams have frequently punched above their seeding in the College Football Playoff and New Year’s Six games.
Whether “more skill” holds up to a position-by-position audit is another matter. The Big Ten just produced the national champion in Ohio State and returns a loaded crop of defensive linemen and running backs across the conference. The SEC remains the standard-bearer for NFL talent production. The ACC’s top-end teams — Florida State, Clemson, Miami — have the athletes to compete with anyone, but the league’s depth has been the recurring question, and the middle of the conference has taken its lumps in recent nonconference slates.
Narduzzi, entering his eleventh season at Pitt, has never been one to hedge. He won an ACC championship in 2021, took the Panthers to the Peach Bowl, and has been a vocal defender of the conference’s football bona fides even as basketball carries the brand. His comments read less like a coach working the refs and more like a guy who genuinely believes what he’s saying — and has the bowl records to point to when someone pushes back.
The Big Ten won’t issue a response. The SEC won’t either. That’s not how this works. What happens instead is that the claim gets stapled to every bulletin board in Columbus, Ann Arbor, and Eugene, and someone keeps a running tally through December.
Narduzzi said the ACC doesn’t have losing records. The season will test that.
Sources:
- On3 / X (formerly Twitter)
- 680 The Fan (Atlanta sports radio, as cited by On3)