Would ND join the ACC if it took that to keep ACC schools from bolting?
- Thread starter Win5002
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While I will always prefer an Indy ND.
I think that ND should do everything possible to stay in the driver's seat of controlling their own destiny. However I honestly believe sooner than later college football will give ND a ruling. Telling them to conference up or be left out of the play off. They would still be able to go to bowls, and even be considered a P5 opponent. But just like way back at the end of the 60's. When ND was told 'go bowling or no more titles'. College football, and the TV contracts that rule them, will dictate the landscape. Not ND.
If so I hope ND picks an ACC type conference. It puts them in a good position to help upgrade that conference, be in the recruiting locations they prefer. Play in front of a ton of ND alumni. And compete for titles.
I think that ND should do everything possible to stay in the driver's seat of controlling their own destiny. However I honestly believe sooner than later college football will give ND a ruling. Telling them to conference up or be left out of the play off. They would still be able to go to bowls, and even be considered a P5 opponent. But just like way back at the end of the 60's. When ND was told 'go bowling or no more titles'. College football, and the TV contracts that rule them, will dictate the landscape. Not ND.
If so I hope ND picks an ACC type conference. It puts them in a good position to help upgrade that conference, be in the recruiting locations they prefer. Play in front of a ton of ND alumni. And compete for titles.
How many times would it take for a 11-1 or 10-2 ND being left out of the playoffs as opposed to a team from a conference with the same number of losses but one more win from a conference championship game to consider changing their independent status? would it take a couple of times? Or would it not matter?
It will be interesting to see if the Big 12 rethinks their number if they are left out again.
It will be interesting to see if the Big 12 rethinks their number if they are left out again.
Just my opinion, but I don't think ND is that concerned with conference champions with the same record, they are concerned with non-conference champions with the same record.
Why would you think anyone here would have an answer to that? Do you think anyone here has knowledge to say "It would take exactly four times, but no fewer than that...."?
I think it might also be concerning if we were passed over by a conference champ we beat in the regular season, say USC or Clemson, that ended up with more wins due to a conference championship game. (But that would be an unlikely outcome).
ND has always been my 2nd team. Before I went to UNC, they were co #1s. So I am answering as a fan of one of the core ACC members - one of the 3, no more than 4, necessary ACC members - and of ND sports - and not just football.
The BT and SEC both would have taken UNC and UVA at any time. If you think the BT is stupid enough to take Rutgers ahead of UNC, UVA, and Dook, and thus completing a 16 team confernce, you are far from the reality of the power of college sports. Thwe UNC-Dook basketball rivalruy is worth at least twice what Rutgers, located inside the NYC TV market, is worth. To the BT, which is desperate to deliver a major blow to the SEC, having UNC, UVA, and Dook would be worth more than having ND, Nebraska, and Rutgers.
And the BT would sacrifice virgins publicly to get ND.
The SEC also wants UNC and UVA as badly as does the BT. The SEC would expand beyond 16, with Dook, to get The South's Oldest Rivalty: UNC-UVA.
The odds that either league can dislodge any ACC school worth their having are very slim and none. I suppose Wake Forest could be bought, but as with losing Maryland, the ACC would not be hurt by losing Wake.
But to your question - ND is not stupid. ND is not going to sit idly while the landscape is forcibly changed in ways that mean it ia faced with the choice of being part of a non-Power conference or of joining the BT. If the only way to secure the ACC as all the rest of ND sports need is for ND football to play 3 more conference games per year and perhaps win the ACC Championship, then that's what will be done.
ND moving to having a conference schedule 5 football game sfor it per year is a MUCH bigger move that going from 5 to 8 conference games. ND basketball - which for nearly 2 decades was as big a national name and draw as existed - going from independent to BE play was a bigger change that going from 5 conference football game to 8 conference football games. ND football going from refusing all bowls to playing a bowl every year eligible was a much bigger move than going from 5 conference football games to 8 conference football games.
I would say that ND's response to Texas would be that it should get an ND deal with the ACC - 5/8ths football member - and see if the ACC would also add a couple of Texhoma schools as full members.
Uh, in your last post, didn't you suggest that Texas try to persuade the ACC to add a couple of the Texas and Oklahoma schools as full members?
I want Texas. To get Texas, the ACC will need to play to get OU and maybe Baylor. So I would push for Swofford to keep in close otuch with Texas with the door open to Texas bringing a friend or 2. But if possible, land Texas alone.
Conferences are already too big. What's the advantage of being in a conference if you only rarely play other member schools?
Nobody ever answers that question. I don't know why anyone thinks mega-conferences are good for college football.
I agree, but the landscape it what it is. And when the landscape decalres you must get bigger or die, you do one or the other.
All ND fans should study closely the history of the Big Ten. Simply knowing the BT history of trying to screw ND to the wall does the trick, if you see that it has gone on since ND used football to step out and be accepted among the old time fashionable schools seen as promoting American Protestant mores. But the BT problem is much bigger than just staunch anti-Catholicism that we like to think is no longer applicable. I am a Middle Tennessee native with deep ties to Vanderbilt. The SEC commissioner who had the vision to expand to 12 and knew what the move would mean to all of college sports is Roy Kramer. Hi previous job had been Vandy AD. Kramer came to Vandy from the MAC. He is an old time MAC guy, in every sense. One of the stables he repewated over and over to those very close to him, to Vandy people as to how he knew about acting for the very little guy against the behemoths, and to SEC power brokers about how he knew that the SEC must expand, was that the Big Ten, which every year since its founding has been the wealthiest conference in college sports, remaioned so greedy 24/7/365 thast it used all its massive power to try to squash even MAC radio networks.
The BT is and always has sen teh world the way Robber Barons saw it: to be bought for their use or destroyed by them, the pieces for their use. The BT is opposed to any real compettition. It acts always to close competition because it intends to buy its way out of losing. The closing of the Rose Bowl is a prime example.
Anybody who thinks the BT is happy with its current wealth is as naive to the point of happily unaware suicidal as Timothy Treadwell prancing among the Grizzlies in Alaska, filming himself talking about how he can commune with them and they must be protected at all costs. He got eaten and so did his grilfriend.
The recent Boren commenst has brought out again the BT talk of epanding not merely to 16 but to as many as 20. BT fans now are proud that to get Maryland they had to offer abribe of maybe 30 million dollars for travel reimbursement, because that show that the BT is relentless in getting what it wants and able to find the most cash to pull it off.
What the BT wants out of conference realignment is to narrow competition for TV air space and access to football playoffs. And it wants that with itself clearly the 'most equal' among no more than 4 equals left standing. The BT wants everybody else as low and as hopless as was the MAC vis a vis the BT back when Roy Kramer was at Central Michigan.
And as much as the BT despises seeing the SEC so wealthy and successsful on the fields, it most hates the ACC. Why? Because the ACC has ND, and the BT will pursue ND as relentlessly as Ahab pursued Moby Dick. The BT cannot rest unless either it forces ND into the BT or else it so corners ND that ND is forever harmed, is forever weakened.
That is the reason I have 0 doubt that at some point ND must be a full member of ACC foootball. It is not for the reasons almost everybody discusses in sports articles and on the internet. It is because the BT cannot rest even being the richest league every day of every year while ND is running loose, not broken by the BT either to saddle or to 2nd tier starus.
And if the BT were to break ND, it would take the mantle of waging Holy BT War against the SEC. The BT is about perpetual war to end competition so the BT can enjoy perpetual peace.
Almost 100% of us who are 'old ACC' types would prefer that teh good ole days were still here. We greatly prefer leagues of 8 or 9, 10 at most, members. But the landcape changed, and the ACC either changes with it or dies, at least as a major conference.
And that gets us to Texas and its buds in the southwest. I think the BT has decided that it cannot crack the UNC-UVA-Dook trio, which is required to crack the ACC, unless there is pressure much greater than seen so far, greater than many can imagine. So, the BT may now be happy to act to surround the western part of the SEC. That would mean taking KU and OU to get to Texas. If the BT pullls that off, its next offer in the plan to become a 20 member BT will be to tell ND that its last offer is on the table. If ND accepts, then the final 2 slots wil be offered to UNC and UVA. If ND rejects, the BT will offer UNC, UVA, and Dook.
Ahab was never going to listen to reason from anyone. Ahab either was going to kill Moby Dick or see his ship and crew destroyed trying. The BT is Ahab. ND is its main Moby Dick, but the ACC is now forever linked to ND, and the SEC is to the BT another potential Moby Dick. So the BT will pursue us. The BT will not sit happy in its immense wealth.
The only way ND can be truly protected from that pursuit, while saving small private schools as part of Power conference football, which long term is indispensable to ND's status, is if the ACC is invulnerable, unquestionably 100% untouchable. And that requires 2 things: ND as a full football member and a 16th member that has a huge football fan base - the 100,000 seat stadium kind - and an extremely wealthy athletics department.
And that means Texas. And if to get Texas we must expand to 18 by taking OU and/or Baylor or TCU, then that it what must be done to keep the BT at bay.
The BT hates that the sports world laughed at it taking Rutgers and Maryland. Its pride is damaged, and it is planning its strike back, which will be at both the ACC and SEC, with ND the main desire. Either to weaken ND's place or force ND to join the BT.
A little bit over the top, don't you think? The landscape is not declaring anything. You are making a lot of assumptions which, IMO, are just your vivid imagination.
ND has been dealing with the Big 10 for a long, long time. We are fully aware of how Delany and Company operate. Just as Delany was not able to railroad ND into joining the Big 10, the ACC won't be able to do so. There is no either/or decision for ND to make. ND is not in the position where it needs to either: (1) join the ACC; or (2) perish. ND will be just fine, but thank you for your concern.
ND has been dealing with the Big 10 for a long, long time. We are fully aware of how Delany and Company operate. Just as Delany was not able to railroad ND into joining the Big 10, the ACC won't be able to do so. There is no either/or decision for ND to make. ND is not in the position where it needs to either: (1) join the ACC; or (2) perish. ND will be just fine, but thank you for your concern.
It certainly sounds over the top, but I've been around and gone through thinsg that for their time were as over the top as what I say above can happen if just one of the dominoes agrees to fall - say, OU.
When I first learned of the SEC plan to go back to 12 (GT and Tulane had been members and left in the 1969s), it wsa 1 AM. A friend from high school whose father and granfather were UT Vols boosters and who had gotten a 4 year schaolrship to be a Vols football manager, called and told me. He said he was half drunk after anight with several major SEC wheels, who told him that the SEC was going to 12 and it wanted Texas and A&M. He said that if either or both refused, the SEC would take Arkansas. He said the SEC knew taking even 1 of the 3 would kill the SWC before to long.
I thought that was way over the top.
When in 2003 I began saying that ND either would be in the ACC or in the BT or part of a minor conference and indy in football, with its football falling in stature, 100% of ND fans said I was crazier than crazy because none of it could ever happen.
When I began telling ACC fans that not only would the ACC go to 14 but that we probably would have 14 before any other conference, the vast majority of other ACC fans said I was crazy - never going to happen.
ND already is in the ACC. The catch is that you are only 5/8ths members in football. The ACC is not trying to railroad ND into anything. The ACXC is ND's opnly chance opf not being railroaded by the BT, which will keep acting to dislodge ND. And the odds are good that the BT will be moving to at least 16 long long before the ACC GOR expires. It is a certainty that the BT would love to screw both ND and the SEC by taking UNC and UVA.
So you had best prepare yourself for another change. There may be no movement until 2020, but movement is coming.
Your entire argument is based upon a faulty premise. The ACC is NOT ND's only chance of not being railroaded by the Big 10. ND has other options, one of which is the status quo. The Big 10 is going to expand to 16?? Really? What schools is the Big 10 going to add? Seems to me that the Big 10 already scraped the bottom of the barrel with Maryland and Rutgers. If UVA and UNC were interested in the Big 10, would have already happened.
You need to calm down. Although you seem inclined to panic, ND does not need to panic. ND will be just fine.
Also, not sure what the SEC addition of South Carolina and Arkansas two decades ago has to do with ND. Perhaps you can enlighten me.
There were discussions when the Big 12 looked doomed to implode last time that the ACC would go to 20 teams with 4 pods of 5 teams and that those pods would rotate who they played each year. Rumors where also that the ACC would be open to taking on Navy to help Notre Dame with their scheduling. Lots of talk back then but I wouldnt be surprised to see it start again. The pac 10 wants OK and OKst and has the money to pull them and Texas would probably not view the SEC as a viable landing spot.
I don't think the PAC 12 wants Oklahoma and Oklahoma St. The PAC 12 wants Oklahoma and Texas. I do know some OU alums, however. They tell me that OU and OSU would have to be a package deal. That pretty much put a kibosh on the PAC 12's overture.
That may well be true. if so, it means the SEC would not fear the BT coming down its west side. And that means the BT wil focus all its en
You are still missing the point of what the BT is and does. Yes, Maryland was scraping the bottom of the barrel with Maryland and Rutgers in every way but 1: coming to control media markets with a bigger long term plan to stifle compettion.
The BT is not asleep, nor is it run by brain dead people. The BT powers that be are the same as ever. They know what they want and the steps to take to try to get it. And they are ruthless and relentless.
Yes, the BT will expand to 16 in a heartbeat, going down either side of the SEC. It will expand to more than 16 if it can get the goal of Texas or UNC/UVA or ND.
What Arkansas has to do with it? I would bet that almost 100% of Texas fans scoffed at the absurdity of the SEC being able to take Arkansas and laughed at the thought that such a move would slowly kill the SWC.
Even Jim Delaney once let loose that the BT would look at expanding beyond 16. Various BT fan boards have brought that back up numerous times.
The Pac wants OU and agreed once to take Ok St, but that was a deal with Texas. The Pac may never want Ok St even with OU unless Texas comes along.
But the Pac needs OU football. It is #5 nationally in total # of TV viewers for football and basketball, making it easily the most overpaid conference. So would the Pac now take Ok St and K St to get OU and KU? If so, the SEC might then be willing to take Ok St to get OU.
I'm an ND alum and I'm not worried about any of this stuff. You see danger lurking in every corner. I will let you worry for the both of us.
Expand beyond 16? As I said before, what's the value of being in a conference if you only rarely play other members of the conference?
I am old enough to remember when ND did not play in bowls. The ND position was that bowls hurt academics and were for common progams. Bowls eere beneath ND. AS odd as it sounds, my small town in the South had aretired factory manager - he was about 65 or maybe 70 - named as its first director of youth sports - it was a part time postion. He was from Chicago and was an ND grad. He had 1 full time position to fill, which was a jack of all trades position to do everything from speak to Kiwanis and Rotary and Jaycees and Moose Lodges about donations to overssing all management of fields and other facilities. He was about 25 and an ND grad.
If you had polled ND fans in 1965 or 1955 and asked what is the 1 thing that most sets apart ND football, the one 'tradition' that makes it unique, the top answer by a large margin would have been No Bowls. That would have been #1 in a landslide because there were so many independents that nobody gave 2 thoughts about being independent. I got to hear Mr. Duffy and his protegee Mr. Ranier debate ND and bowls. Duffy swore that only the panicky young ND fans had even a faint interest in bowls. Rainer said Duffy was living in the Leahy era which could not be sustained. Duffy said that if ND were to start playing bowls, it would be killing its tradition and so ruining everything that made ND football great. Rainer said that ND football had already been hurt by no bowling as the bowls had grown in stature and that it would get much worse in the future. Duffy laugfhed and said that was the stupidest thing eh ever heard because ND just won the national titles. Ranier said that was a fluke, in part by northern sportswriters voting against Alabama in the name of civil rights, and that it would never happen again.
Duffy was certain Ranier was something between a scared mouse seeing shadows and a wild eyed kid who wanted any and all change just to change things. Ranier quietly said that behind the scenes, with no fanfare, in secrecy, ND officials had already prepared to play bowls. So I was not surprised at all when ND anounced it would entertain bowl bids.
Duffy hated that 1st Cotton Bowl. He swore ND football tradition was dying and might never recover. He wrote letters of prtest to everyone from Father Hesburgh to retired football assistant coaches to Paul Hornung, saying that as a gard who had known Rockne persoanlly and had owned season tickets since the late 1920s, he was totally opposed and might never buy season tickets again. He was far from alone. The school was hit by a tidal wave of letters and phone calls opposing ND in bowls.
When in its 2nd Cotton Bowl, ND knocked off undefeated #1 ranked Texas, Duffy forgot almost 100% of his oppposition to ND playing bowl games. By the time ND upset Bama 31 Bama in the Sugar Bowl and won the national title, Mr Duffy sounded like a man who had always said ND must play bowls.
Here may be he most salient part of that story for you: even with the 1966 national title, the ND powers had seen the landscape and reaslized that before long, ND either would play bowls or be left behind in a nbad position. They saw that the hobgoblins were real and would like to arrange matters so that ND would be be a less than desirable position. To wait to act in such a landscape is to allow others to act for you to your detriment.
The BT is acting right now, and was acting before David Boren's speech, because it would love to expand as I said above (either down the west side or east side of the SEC) to create a near a behemoth able to alter college sprts and its TV coverage forever to the huge advantage of the BT. That is a worse scenario for ND than the one Mr Duffy could not see.
ND did not start playing in bowls because of some knowledge that playing in a bowl was a prerequisite for being rewarded a NC. That's revisionist history. Or to be more basic, just because A happens, and then B happens, doesn't mean that A caused B.
You seem to think that the SEC and Big 10 are going to end up with 32 team conferences. I'm not worried about that happening. IMO, within a decade, some of the conferences are going to start shedding schools. 14 or 16 are too many schools for a conference.
You seem to think that the SEC and Big 10 are going to end up with 32 team conferences. I'm not worried about that happening. IMO, within a decade, some of the conferences are going to start shedding schools. 14 or 16 are too many schools for a conference.
It would actually be better for the ACC if NC State and Virginia Tech left for the ACC. In the new paradigm every college from a singular viewing market just detracts from the net value of your contract. Then the ACC could pick up some other schools with a higher net value for tv like UConn and Cincy.
It's a very simple answer. Bargaining power. 16 or 20 schools have more power to up their contract value than 10. The more big television fish (schools like Texas, Connecticut (for ball), FSU, Miami etc) you have the higher you can drive the price up.
That's why I assume that at some point the Big Twelve is done. It's only got two really hugely marketable schools left (Texas and Oklahoma) while the others are only worthwhile when they are fielding great teams (Baylor, OSU, Texas Tech). The ACC has more big big fish (FSU, Miami, UNC, Duke (for bball), and half of Notre Dame. So at some point the Big 12 is imploding again as they've got too few chits for their next tv contract. Hopefully they end up in the ACC and not the PAC-12.
I have to disagree with your premise. It's not the quantity of schools. Rather, it's the quality of schools which is important. No one is scrambling to add MAC schools, American Conference schools, etc. If only numbers counted, those schools would be in demand. The fact that UConn remains in the American conference also shoots a hole in your claim that UConn is a "big television fish."
It's a mixture of both which I said maybe inelegantly. A conference with ten schools but four big fish is obviously better than a conference with twelve schools and only two if fish. Because it's the big fish that brings in the eyeballs which drives television ad revenue. But a conference with 20 teams and eight big fish is going to get substantially more money per school than the conference with four big fish and ten total schools. As long as the overall number of big fish to deadweights is at least roughly proportional then bigger is better.
And the Big 12 has a lot of deadweight when it comes to eyeballs. Oklahoma, Texas and Kansas for bball is all they have. No one nationally is watching Baylor, Oklahoma State and Kansas State unless they are having great seasons. The ACC on the other hand has FSU, Miami, and Clemson plus Notre Dame, UNC, Duke, and Syracuse for basketball.
As much as Miami is an FSU rival and I would not like it to be so, despite a decade of sucking Miami still has some of the highest draws in the country. The last time I saw the highest rated cable games from the past ten years or so, FSU and Miami games were at the top of the list.
Little ten sports are like minor league baseball. If you dont live in the town where the game is played no one cares. ND is a major league team. ND will never join a conference in football because they dont have to.
Very true because it's about an hour from campus and the locals are lazy. But that doesn't stop the eyeballs on tv. You shouldn't mistake the two. Miami is consistently among the most watched college football programs. They may be watching it to see them lose, but they're watching it. That's not true of Kansas State for example. Even when they have a one or two loss season....no one cares outside of Kansas.
True.
The standard' way to evaluate value of a school for football especially is from average attendance. That is the Big Ten model that the SEC has exploited and perfected, by-passing the BT in both average attendance and national TV audience. If that model is the only one that works, then almost all private schools and smaller state schools are bound to failure.
That faith is the one that leads the average BT and Big 12 fan to assume that the ACC is doomed. We have as many private schools as the SEC, BT, Big 12, and Pac combined. Our average student body is far and away the smallest among the P5.
That also is the faith of what I call the 'SEC-envying, football-factory' part of the FSU fan base that will always want to be in the SEC.
But it is not the only way. As you note, Miami has the ability to draw huge audiences. Even while mediocre, Miami draws TV viewers in numbers that would suggest it is a state school with 40,000 students. A Miami team that follows up a 12-2 ACC champ/Orange Bowl champ season with an undeated team will enter the playoffs as the top TV draw in the nation, unless ND is also undefeated.
I doubt he thinks it is a matter of quanity only, or even quanitity in new states. Anyone who is that simple would argue the ACC should add South Alabama.
'
UConn is not a big TV draw even in basketball, even when it wins a national title. That you are correct about. And that has meant that UConn is left out. UConn's biggest value is that when playing Syracuse in basketball, the game is easily the largest TV draw in the northeast - far and away. Its secondary value is proximity to NYC. The ACC does not need the former, and the BT adding Rutgers makes the latter worthless to the ACC and BT for football.
That is not true. BT alums and natives of their states often follow the BT for life. That's how the BT has the 2nd largest number of TV viewers for football nationally and the largets for basketball (the ACC is 3rd for football and 2nd for basketball). Under-estimating your enemy is a sure way to help him defeat you.
ND already joined a conference for football. An independent in football does not have a conference office schedule games for it every year. ND is a 5/8ths member of ACC football. The ACC schedules 5 rather than 8 games for ND football.
That is not true about Miami. As they have faded from the top 25, their ratings have fallen as well. If it is early in the season and they don't have a loss yet, they might pull good numbers. But the days of Miami-FSU being a top ten regular season ratings draw are mostly over.
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