Is Pat Narduzzi right about the ACC?

Matt BowlingSun, July 19, 2026 at 1:00 PM UTC·2 min read

There’s a healthy debate to be had about the usefulness of conference media days. Yes, they give outlets a chance to generate fresh content ahead of the season, but so many coaches and players fall back on the same generic soundbites each year that we rarely learn anything of value.

Every now and then, though, someone will say something off-the-wall enough to make the exercise feel worthwhile.

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That’s exactly what Pitt head coach Pat Narduzzi did on Friday. In an interview with Atlanta radio station 680 The Fan, Narduzzi, who’s entering his 12th season leading the Panthers, declared the ACC to be a better conference than the Big Ten.

Yes, really. Here’s the transcript:

I’ve said this for many years…This conference is as good as any conference in the country. I don’t care what you make and all that stuff. I don’t care about how much resources you have, all the rest of that bologna…Coming from Michigan State, spent eight seasons there as the defensive coordinator, coming to Pitt in 2015, I said it then, I said it now–after about two years in the league, I said “This conference is better. It’s better than the Big Ten. It’s got more skill.”…I’ve said that for years, and I’m going to stick to my guns.

Narduzzi went on to claim that the ACC has a winning record in matchups against Big Ten and SEC teams. That’s true — if you look only at the first two years of his tenure at Pitt, during which the ACC went 10-6 against the Big Ten and 14-10 against the SEC. In the nine years since, the records stand at 20-35 and 38-60.

What do you make of Narduzzi’s comments? Is there still some truth to what he said? (It may be hard to believe, but the ACC did post a winning record against the SEC in two of the last three seasons). Or is he just clinging to a bygone reality?

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Leave your thoughts in the comments below.