(03-12-2013 12:30 PM)TerryD Wrote: I think that ND has done ok in realignment so far. I would put it in the "winner" column right now.
On balance, I agree with this. The main positives for ND are that it maintains its Independent status in football and will have realistic access to major bowls and to the ACC's minor-bowls. Plus the relationship with NBC shows no signs of weakening.
Two small-to-medium negatives that I can see.
First, ND has to hand over five football games a year, every year, to the ACC. That is obviously something that the old Big East was never able to get the Irish to agree to. And ND does not get to pick
which ACC teams they play, either. Wake Forest and Duke and NCSU rotate on just as much as Pitt and Georgia Tech and Miami. No one seriously thinks Notre Dame would have chosen that format on its own.
Secondly -- Notre Dame's relationships with other Catholic-led universities like Georgetown and St. John's and DePaul will obviously not be the same as they have been in recent years. Maybe ND doesn't care about that. But I don't see how anyone could deny that Notre Dame, institutionally, has more in common with the "C7" than schools like Clemson and Virginia Tech and Florida State. Not the end of the world (or anywhere close to it) but still, not a "positive" change (in and of itself) from ND's point of view.
The ACC is obviously light-years ahead of the Aresco League. But for a Catholic university like Notre Dame, I don't think the ACC is much better than what the old Big East was in the 1990s and 2000s.