Darius Parson was alerted of Syracuse’s move to the Atlantic Coast Conference when he was tagged in a Facebook post.

Parson was groggy the morning after his Woodbridge Senior (Va.) High School football team defeated Granby High School on Sept. 16. But once Parson — a verbal commitment to Syracuse for the Class of 2012 — noticed the new post on his wall about Syracuse possibly leaping from the Big East to the ACC, he was suddenly aware.

‘And then I see it on SportsCenter, and I was like, ‘Alright, wow, that’s cool,” said Parson, who comes from Woodbridge, less than an hour from the University of Maryland. ‘A lot of schools that are from the ACC are around this area and in North Carolina, and that’s cool for family getting to see me, come out and see me a little closer.’

Syracuse’s move to the ACC was formally announced on Sept. 18, one day after Parson found out about the speculative change in conference. Due to a waiting period imposed by the Big East on teams leaving the conference, Syracuse and Pittsburgh, who is also joining the ACC, will remain in the conference for 27 months before finally leaving the Big East in time for the 2014 college football season.

But the effects of the move to a more stable and competitive football conference may be seen sooner than that — on the recruiting trail. SU enters a conference that has a rich history of getting top prep talent. And in Scout.com’s 2012 team recruiting rankings, five ACC schools are in the top 17.

Players all down the Atlantic coast, like Parson, will now need to take a closer look at SU.

‘It’s huge for Syracuse,’ said Mike Farrell, Big East, ACC and national college football recruiting analyst for Rivals.com. ‘It’s a big, big jump.’

The switch from the Big East to the ACC positions the Orange in a stronger football conference on the field and geographically. SU will be in a league that currently has four ranked teams in 2011, including three undefeated teams in Clemson, Virginia Tech and Georgia Tech.

Most ACC programs are south of Syracuse, with two in Florida, one in Georgia, four in North Carolina and two in Virginia — places that are hotbeds for high school talent. Suddenly, with the near-guarantee that beginning in 2014 SU will be playing at least one or two games a year in the south, the Orange’s recruiting pitch has more charm.

‘They can go in there and they can sell early playing time,’ Farrell said. ‘They can sell playing against schools that didn’t offer you from that region. All of the things that they were sort of selling you before, with that added bonus of playing against teams from where you come from.’

Syracuse has made inroads in recruiting in the south during its two-plus seasons under head coach Doug Marrone. The Orange has 13 scholarship players on its roster from Florida, and this year’s freshman class features seven players from Florida, Georgia and Virginia combined. Seven of the 20 players who verbally committed to join the Orange next season are from a state with one of the 12 current ACC schools.

All of them are two- or three-star recruits on Rivals and Scout.com. Few received interest or offers from the ACC schools in their states.

For recruits, the chance to play against teams that overlooked them can be an advantageous selling point for the Orange.

‘You always want to show those schools that didn’t offer you what they’re missing,’ Farrell said. ‘And this is a bigger opportunity, obviously, for kids who commit to Syracuse from the south to do that.’

Parson received interest from Boston College, Duke, North Carolina State, Virginia and Virginia Tech, according to Rivals. But Syracuse was the only offer on the table.

He said playing in the ACC excites him most because of the connections he has to the teams near him. Parson knows players at Virginia and Virginia Tech. He’s close friends with Cavaliers freshman Dominique Terrell, he said, although they have not yet discussed the prospects of playing each other in a few years.

The thoughts of playing in Death Valley against Clemson or at Florida State are also more enticing. Farrell said the Big East teams struggle with recruiting because none of the conference’s matchups are that exciting.

‘I actually thought about that a couple times,’ Parson said. ‘I might be playing against Clemson when I get up there, all these other teams, that would be cool. That would be awesome.’

SU freshman linebacker Cameron Lynch had interest from Georgia Tech and Miami (Fla.) last year, but his only other Bowl Championship Series offer besides one from the Orange was from Vanderbilt. Lynch was Georgia’s Defensive Player of the Year at the highest level, but his 5-foot-11 height may have caused many ACC and Southeastern Conference schools to be wary.

He’s jumped right into the fire for SU, though, and is fifth on the team in tackles.

Now, the Orange schedule could feature a trip to Georgia Tech in 2014, and though Lynch didn’t mention the aspect of proving a team wrong, the Lawrenceville, Ga., native said it would be a trip home — something to look forward to.

‘Going back home is going to definitely raise an interest, but we’re going to focus on the season now at hand,’ Lynch said. ‘So, it’s going to be exciting most definitely.’

Orange offensive line coach and recruiting coordinator Greg Adkins has been at the forefront of some of Syracuse’s recruiting wins in the south during the past few years. His success can be attributed to his history coaching in the south at Georgia and Tennessee. He was also the recruiting coordinator for three years with the Volunteers.

Adkins did not address the specific leverages playing in the ACC will give SU, but he said that ‘kids will go anywhere today’ in a changing college football landscape.

‘Because of the Internet, because of TV, the exposure is out there for every school to have,’ Adkins said. ‘Some schools may get a little more exposure than others, but people in every state in this United States know about Syracuse University.’

Still, the Orange’s switch to a better football conference can at least boost the team’s recruiting success above the Big East teams left behind.

Brandon Huffman, a national recruiting analyst for Scout.com, said the uncertainty of the Big East, and even just the rumors that the conference could possibly lose its automatic bid to the Bowl Championship Series, will hurt SU’s recruiting competitors Connecticut and Rutgers.

While the Scarlet Knights will continue playing Louisville, Cincinnati and UConn in conference play, the Orange get national powers Florida State, Virginia Tech and Miami.

Farrell and Huffman both said that will give Syracuse an advantage in the Northeast, where the team does most of its recruiting now. The Orange will have a pitch that trumps UConn and Rutgers, and one that now rivals Boston College. Farrell said he thinks BC is hurt the most by Syracuse’s move to the ACC because it can no longer use its conference as leverage over SU.

Huffman compared it to one of the big moves in last year’s conference expansion carousel, when Colorado leapt from the Big 12 to the Pac-12. The Buffaloes have the No. 45 recruiting Class for 2012 in Scout’s rankings, compared to No. 62 in 2011 and No. 70 in 2010.

The move to the Pac-12 gave Colorado more exposure in California, a prime recruiting state for the school. Syracuse can make Florida and Georgia even bigger pieces of its pipeline through the ACC.

‘It’s going to be a school that they’re going to be seeing week in and week out because they’re going to be recruited by their opponents,’ Huffman said. ‘They’re going to be that much more attentive now when Georgia Tech’s playing Syracuse or when Clemson’s playing Syracuse than before, when it was just a random September matchup.’

The Orange is still waiting to make a big recruiting splash. Syracuse hasn’t brought in a recruit rated four stars or better on Scout in the Marrone era. With 20 committed for 2012, that class could be nearing capacity.

But the move to the ACC could trigger a big-time recruit to finally give SU a shot.

‘They need to get back to recruiting at a high level, and they need to get back to what they represented a decade ago,’ Farrell said. ‘And this is the first step toward that.’

mcooperj@syr.edu

 

Published on September 28, 2011 at 12:00 pm

Contact Mark: mcooperj@syr.edu | @mark_cooperjr