ACC has party to celebrate big shift

Happy realignment day!

It certainly was for the Atlantic Coast Conference, which welcomed Pittsburgh, Syracuse and Notre Dame to the league with a celebratory news conference/flag planting in New York City.

The ACC is now a 15-team league — and it might just stay that way for a while.

Commissioner John Swofford says expansion is not a topic of discussion for the ACC now, and he would “not anticipate it being in the future, but we’ll see.”

Swofford called the new-look ACC the “strongest collection of basketball programs” ever assembled.

Other leagues took a more low-key approach.

Here’s a look at just a few of the dozens of conference switches in Division I that became official on July 1.

• American Athletic Conference opened for business and Memphis, Central Florida, SMU and Houston left Conference USA to become members of the conference formerly known as the Big East.

• The new Big East is up and running. The basketball-centric league was created by old Big East members Villanova, Georgetown, St. John’s, Providence, Seton Hall, Marquette and DePaul. Joining them on Monday was Butler, Xavier and Creighton.

• Charlotte, Florida Atlantic, Florida International, Louisiana Tech, Middle Tennessee, North Texas, Old Dominion and Texas-San Antonio all became members of Conference USA, as the league restocks after being gutted by the American.

• Georgia State, UT-Arlington and Texas State are now in the Sun Belt, as the conference restocks after being gutted by C-USA.

• The Mountain West adds Utah State and San Jose State from the Western Athletic Conference, which is now out of the football business.

• Coming in 2014: Maryland and Rutgers to the Big Ten. Louisville to the ACC. East Carolina, Tulsa and Tulane to the American. Idaho, New Mexico State, Georgia Southern and Appalachian State join the Sun Belt.