Syracuse and Pitt 2025 ACC Kickoff Attendees Say Northeast Football Exudes Toughness

Villari isn’t the only player who feels that way.

“Once you get to November, get to that time, it’s going to be cold,” Pitt linebacker Kyle Louis, who hails from East Orange, N.J., said. “We just get ready for every game to be cold. … My rule is I wear no sleeves when it gets cold. You’re out there getting a free pump.”

Spoken like a true Northeast football product, Louis, one of the top linebackers in the ACC—and in the nation—finds it amusing when his teammates from the South can’t handle the inclement weather at Pitt and elsewhere above the Pennsylvania border.

According to Louis, the cold is an advantage for the college football programs who experience it on a day-to-day basis.

“People from the South, when it’s practice, they got double tights, vaseline, long sleeves, ski masks,” Louis said. “They hilarious. That’s how they get used to the cold when it come to game day. It’s all fun, though.”

One crucial aspect of being recruited, or transferring, to Northern schools is the opportunity that comes as a result.

While perennial College Football Playoff contenders like Alabama, Clemson, Georgia and Louisiana State contain, pound for pound, the best overall talent, there is a very limited scope of players who actually make it to the field. Some players who arrive at those programs as four- or five-star recruits don’t ever get an opportunity to showcase their abilities.

As a result, they transfer up North—to schools with roster holes to fill where they can step in right away, or at least have a better chance.

“Just being able to get on the field and play, that’s underrated,” quarterback Rickie Collins, who transferred to Syracuse from LSU this offseason, said. “Just being able to get seen and reach your ultimate goal, you get to be able to show what you got.”

That is certainly the case for some players in the Boston College football ranks.

The Eagles saw two former four-star recruits, quarterback Dylan Lonergan and tight end Ty Lockwood, transfer from Alabama to Chestnut Hill this Spring as a result of not touching the field at their former program.

While the location is different weather-wise than Tuscaloosa, Ala., Lonergan, a Snellville, Ga. native, only cares about the opportunity. Lockwood is in the same boat.

It also helps that Lonergan had previously established a relationship with BC head coach Bill O’Brien when he was an offensive coordinator for the Crimson Tide.

“When Saban left, that was kind of a transition,” Lonergan said in March. “For me, it was just time for a change.”

Syracuse head coach Fran Brown thinks there are other reasons recruits should come to the Northeast.

“I mean, if you want to rap, where you gonna go?” Brown said. “New York. You want some good food, cheesesteaks and things of that nature, where you coming to get them at? Up North, right?”

Brown technically was joking, he admitted. But the history of Northeast football is something that stands out to him as a recruiting magnet.

“When you go back to Syracuse, the history of it, [you have] guys that go first round and have the opportunity to be Hall of Famers,” Brown said. “From Larry Csonka, Chandler Jones, Jim Brown, Marvin Harrison, Donovan McNabb. There’s so many guys that were just prominent players, right?”