If the ACC had 0 National Championships in football over the past decade, that would be true. Because the ACC has the hardware and because virtually everything with CFB now runs through conferences, Notre Dame football needs to bite the bullet as it did with bowls in 1969.
All ACC schedule in 2020?
- Thread starter Leahylads
- Start date
As the Championship Game pits division champs, and ND is not in a football division, that cannot happen -
Unless something drastic is done. My guess is that nobody will want to do anything drastic unless ND is becoming a full member in football permanently. It would be far too much trouble for far too little benefit to anybody but ND for 1 season.
All of you saying Cancel the season are bat shit crazy.
This appears to be a really nice squad and you want to just cancel it? GTFO here, then next year ND comes back less experienced and lost a season to all of their opponents and don’t even mention recruiting.
Worst take EVER on here..
This appears to be a really nice squad and you want to just cancel it? GTFO here, then next year ND comes back less experienced and lost a season to all of their opponents and don’t even mention recruiting.
Worst take EVER on here..
Makes no sense competitively or financially. We consistently have one of the harder schedules in the country. You join the ACC you have to carry the rest of the conference nationally and you lose your tv deal.
The last three years of the Holtz tenure brought a record of 23-11-1. Hardly premium seasons. Kelly has had a NC game appearance and a playoff appearance in the last 8 years. Not elite but very good. Yes they have lost all those high profile games. We all wish they would have won them all. An upset or two would have been great. The better, more talented teams won those games.
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No one "wants" to see football canceled. Ignoring what is currently going on doesn't change things. I spoke to a friend who is a current head coach in a power 5 conference and he gives it a 30% chance at best there is a season of at least 9 or 10 games.
Clemson caught lightning in a bottle with Dabo. What other ACC team is on the upswing and in the national conversation ? It's one great program and a bunch of middle of the roaders.
It's still a loss. I believe ND was a double digit underdog in all those games. No moral victories for me.
It is more than just that ND could have a very good team, as in maybe a shot at playoffs. It is the huge picture of the possibility of a lost season starting a major downturn for all of CFB.
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Chock full o' excuse you are.
The Holtz era, beginning, middle and end was the Holtz era and light years better than where we are now. You love defending Mr. Indefensible so you'll nitpick and point to the worst of what Holtz did to compare it to the best the BK did.
Read your last statement one more time.
The better more talented teams won those games.....
Oh dear lord in heaven....that could possibly be said of the 88 Convict game...the 93 Creminole game..the 91 Cheerios bowl game...countless Michigan games ..several USC games
All teams that one could say "the better more talented team (SHOULD'VE WON)" but they got out coached and out played by us.
Somethimg BK has yet to do one damn time.
Every year other teams find ways to have one of those incredible moments against a Goliath. Get an upset victory. The offense today just promotes scoring and it happens. Teams pull off upsets.
Just not Brian Kelly. He does everything but actually win just one of those. Just once? Nope! Still looking for a top5 victory in how many D1 years? 20? Oh and he's in charge of ND? Pathetic.
The last three years of the Holtz tenure was so so. Sorry if you take facts as excuses. Never said Kelly was a better coach. Yes Holtz won some very big games. How many of those were when his team was a double digit underdog ? Look at the rosters of ND against Miami in 88 and FSU in 93 and tell me ND had way less talent. After 93 ND was 23-11-1 under Holtz. Why do you think that is ? I know. Do you ?
If ACC football is that weak, then it would be easy for ND to waltz into the Conference Championship Game at least half the time. That would maximize ND's chances of getting into the playoffs.
ACC football is not that weak. It definitely is not the SEC, which I think is too tough for anybody without HUGE money and a BIG history. But ACC football in most years holds up well compared to anybody other than the SEC. As an SEC native, I don't like to admit how deep and good the SEC is. But it is.
What the ACC is - a league with multiple private schools and only 1 huge state school - is the reason that ND football will gain once it becomes a full member in football, assuming its joining is done correctly. I think that is inevitable, and when you know something must be done, you are best served by doing it as quickly as possible on your terms. For ND, I think that starts with the replacement of John Swofford. If ND is going to be a full football member, ND should want a major say in the next commissioner, even that it be a person with ND ties. Swarbrick, for example.
ND also should demand that league scheduling work to help ND play the teams most often that make most sense for ND and help it play as much of a national schedule as possible. That does not have to be complicated if everybody is on board. I assume that the NCAA is ready to end the requirement that leagues playing a CCG have divisions of equal number of members and have division champs meet in the CCG. If that is the case, it is possible for a 15 team ACC to play 8 league games per year with scheduling of 2+6 (6).
In a 15 team league, each team has 14 league foes. 2+6 (6) adds up to 14. It means 2 teams are annual rivals and the remaining 12 teams are divided into 2 groups of 6 teams each. If the ACC were to go that route, everybody would play everybody else at least twice every 4 seasons. That is ideal variety for fans and for TV. If that were to be adopted, and I were ND, I would want my 2 annual rivals to be Pitt and BC. ND has played Pitt more than anybody except Navy and SC. And Pittsburgh is practically in OH, meaning that in geographic terms ND at Pitt is the same as ND at a Big Ten school- very easy Away game for many ND fans to make. BC is the only other Catholic school playing major college football, and ND playing in Boston every other year is a big help in ND 'owning' New England.
I also would want deals made regarding other games. I would want the games with Syracuse always played at either MetLife Giants Stadium or at Yankee Stadium to make ND top dog in the NYC TV market. Dook has no Home crowd. I would want Dook to agree that all games are Shamrock games, all of then on neutral fields. As Dook football needs to become a national recruiter, that would work for Dook as well as for ND. Dook has alums and basketball fans in Baltimore, Philly, Chicago, St Louis, DFW, Houston, San Fran, so Dook football could play ND in those places.
Great post. The ACC doesn’t need ND to just join them. They need ND to lead them. We need help with the Tobacco Road game plan
It was YOU who IMPLIED that the last couple of Holtz years were meh...while BK has been to Venus and back.
Holtz schedules were ALWAYS significantly tougher....moreover let's just look at the last major bowl game we were competitive in.
1995/96 orange bowl against FSU. We had Thomas Krug startimg after Powlus injury.
We had no business playing that tight of a game against FSU. Notice the formation we ran? A single back with Marc Edwards as the single back. Marc Edwards!!!
Why was that a big deal? It was an odd wrinkle that we hadn't shown all year. In other words it was Holtz pulling out all the stops for that "one" game that had become a staple of his.
We can debate why Holtz last couple years were down but the fact remains his ten years were eons better than 10 years of getting the shit beat out of us before we get off the bus under BK.
It was YOU who stated BK was not favored in those games and therefore should get a pass?
Tell that to the many of coaches who actually get that sun on the dog's ass once in a blue moon. The sun never hits BK.
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That's the fact.
Or we could honor the contract we signed and not even hypothesize about a new Big East ghetto within the ACC.
Mid-Atlantic schools need ND visits equally as ND needs games with Clemson and FSU/Miami. This is actually a good reminder of why the deal is mutually beneficial. When the BoG10 wants to close ranks, we have a partner who will is happy to replace them.
I am a UNC alum, and that is the Tobacco Road game plan. John Swofford has been working to bring ND in fully for football since before we went to 12. In fact, the reason that BC was delayed joining by almost a year was that Swofford was in talks with ND about being the 12th. ND, of course, would have much preferred that BC was in over VT, but the sticking point was number of conference games. ND would agree to no more than 5.
I am not certain if Swofford has told Swarbrick that the Commissioner job can be his, but I have no doubt that if ND will go full member in football that Swarbrick will be offered the job. He can do it well, and he can do it easing ND into full league play in football.
Are you under the assumption that the current contract says that ND will never be a full member of ACC football? It does not, nor does it hint at such. In fact, any hint is that ND will eventually.
CFB is very much, almost totally, about teams playing to reach a CCG and from that get an invite into the playoffs. That is not going to change. And it means that the longer it takes ND to win something big , the more that ND boosters and fans are going to see that perhaos the route back to being a contender for a National title more than once per decade or two is through league play. They will see that the entire fan base HATED the idea of playing in bowls, and they will see also that playing in bowls starting with the 1970 season gave ND its best decade since the 1940s. If not that unbelievably awful hire of Gerry Faust, ND may well have kept Miami from dominating the 1980s.
BY the way, the group of ADs that got Faust hired was the old guard that had been anti-bowl to the bitter end. They saw Faust as their type guy - and he was also out of date for CFB and ND.
ACC will get ND football for 6, 8, 9 or 10 games for this season only if there is a season. The cost to give up iNDepeNDence is too high to save one season. Power 5 conf football will most likely form one conf for the high rollers soon anyways once play for pay starts.
ND was in the NC game and the playoffs twice in this decade. The idea that ND needs to join a conference to "take the route back to being a contender" is not borne out by reality.
I remember the excitement of ND playing in bowls in 1969-1970. And I remember the "excitement" over the hire of Faust. (We in Tallahassee were excited over the hire of Willie Taggart, so not my place to criticize).
Because college football has no central leadership, it's hard to predict next steps. When the P5 was formed, many assumed that they would act in unison. That has not happened. The Big Ten has committed mutiny and I am surprised that few in the power 5 have not called them out for the brazen act they did. Many on this board are correct...there was no reason to cancel the Wisconsin game with ND. But it happened.
The Big Ten is out to change college football. The PAC 12 will follow them. The "all powerful" SEC was left flat footed. They have no current response. They are clearly upset that they are not running the show...notice how their commissioner said today how the 2020 season is very much in doubt...he doesn't want to admit that the Big Ten may play this fall while the south handles its current spike in infections. Everyone else has to find out how to respond to these changes. But under what structure?
Is life that boring that y'all need to eat up every shit sandwich these football writers must serve up? Nothing else to write about except a heaping pile of what if's and possible scenarios,,,,,well maybe. Kinda sorta.
The NCAA is not going to allow some teams to play and others who can't play to get left behind.
Either everyone at D1 plays or nobody does. The NCAA will not stand by watching teams who can't play essentially get a death sentence.
Before some of you get all pissy and say the NCAA doesn't really have a say. L O L....watch em'.
What the NCAA recommends will be followed by all. You write that down. They aren't saying a word right now because there us nothing to say. They don't know at this point where this is going to wind up.
But mark my words when it's crunch time and some teams (D1) can't play...nobody else will play either.
I don't get it. this could only help if ND is a fringe team and needs an ACC championship game to jump from #5 to 4th. In that case we probably are better off in the Orange Bowl anyway.
The NCAA is dead. They have no power in college football because they don't control the playoff. But if the SEC says they are only playing 8 games and everybody else can also or pound sand that is what will dictate play. That's why the Big10 hasn't put out a schedule for 10 games. The SEC runs college football and will dictate what everybody else does. They meet Monday and will either delay the decision until the end of July to see what the conditions are then or make the season a certain number of games with everybody else following.
You basically have the same comments regarding the SEC in another thread as you do here, and you are wrong both times. The Big Ten makes more money than the SEC, and has for the last two years. You are correct that this crisis has exposed the failings of the NCAA. And it's also true that it has exposed the failings of the Power 5 conferences to create an organization that can work during a crisis. All the power resides within the conferences - and directly to its university presidents that vote on all important conference matters. And the Big Ten has taken (usurped?) the role of the leader in the clubhouse. All will follow.
Why? Because, as noted another articles, the Big Ten gave reasons for why it did what it did, and any conference that does it differently will have to explain why it would dare to be different. The Big Ten is treating the college football season as a current set of unknown variables, with the possibility of new variables down the road. There are several reasons why the Big Ten is going conference only, the two main ones being the ability to control testing and quarantining protocols, and the ability to treat the 10 game schedule as flexible over a 14 week period. The Big Ten didn't announce their schedule yet because they are trying to decide if they can still start the season Labor Day week-end and have 3 open dates to move games around in case a game gets cancelled: contrast that with the PAC 12 - they are most likely going to start their 10 game season on Oct. 3 because of the spike in their region. This is what conference only games give you. You can't be flexible with OOC games because the other team has a different scheduling system.
I have written previously about the impact of a person with an NFL background being the Big Ten commissioner. The Big Ten made their announcement now so as to control the narrative. Kevin Warren met with all the other commissioners, he heard their reasonings for maintaining OOC games, and decided to only concern himself with what he can control. The PAC 12 followed suit. The Big 12 already plays a full round robin of 9 conference games. The SEC can decide to play only 8 games; it can decide to keep its FCS games - but then it has to deal with the Big Ten and when the playoff rules for 2020 are "amended". And make no mistake, Bill Hancock has said that they are prepared to do anything. The SEC planning an 8 game season will do so at their peril.
And now - I apologize - a little history about ND and the ACC as it impacts the talks that are currently underway. ND has its unique situation, as discussed in many threads. The ACC and ND have a strong relationship, but let's be honest. When the deal was struck in 2012, ND and the ACC said that there was a "pathway to full membership" should the direction of the sport of college football warrant it. ND has made its way to the playoffs as an independent and the term "pathway to full membership" hasn't been heard for years. There is some bitterness in the ACC for this, and you will need to have a little history to understand why. Please bear with me, as this history is critically important in the next two weeks.
In 2003, Swofford had a plan of expansion to add Miami, Syracuse and BC. (Syracuse was replaced by VT for political reasons in the state of Virginia). The purpose was clear: Swofford wanted to destroy the old Big East and go after ND who was playing all its non football sports there. But that didn't happen; the Big East survived. This is when Louisville and Cincinnati joined the Big East and saved the conference. Swofford's plan failed, but he tried again in 2011. This time, the ACC was looking closely at Rutgers, UConn, SU and Pittsburgh, and invited the latter two. Some football schools - such as FSU and Clemson wanted a "football" school like West Virginia but were outvoted by the basketball bluebloods. Suddenly, Bob Delany, Big Ten commish, actually believed that ND might join the ACC for football, and went after Rutgers and Maryland solely (per Barry Alvarez of Wisconsin) to disrupt the ACC. Then he went after UNC and UVA. Losing Maryland was a disaster - it was the northern most ACC charter school. Having SU and BC is meaningless without them. Some boosters in the Big 12 were "talking" to FSU and Clemson. The SEC started working on its own conference network; the ACC wanted to, but it had a legal connection with Raycom that it couldn't break....and ESPN refused to invest unless each ACC member signed a GOR - a grant of rights contract that would force any member that wanted to leave the conference pay the conference for any revenue it would have earned had it stayed. Many FSU fans are bitter about the GOR as it totally limits our ability to change conferences...or even renegotiate our relationship with the ACC. But without a GOR, the ACC probably would have broken up in 2013.
When FSU joined the ACC in 1992 and made it a 9 team conference, its per member TV revenue for 10 years was greater than what it would have been had it joined the SEC. But - As of the past two years, and for as long as you can project, the ACC per member TV revenue is the smallest of the Power 5.
How did this happen? This is where you ND fans need to pay attention. Without adding ND for football, and with the loss of Maryland to create a sensible footprint that goes from Miami to Boston, the ACC expansions have been a failure. The conference footprint is southern heavy with football schools - middle heavy with 6 members concentrated in North Carolina and Virginia - and northern heavy with schools that don't move the football meter. The conference is unable to create a northern and southern division. With equal revenue sharing, the ACC members have diluted their earning potential. FSU and Clemson cannot monetize their value. Clemson makes $12M a year less than schools in the SEC (such as Mississippi State) and $17M a year less than Northwestern. Memo to MBA students: How long can this last?
Now you can say - and correctly so - the ACC bargained for what they got. No doubt. Funny how Swofford announced his retirement days after the future TV projections were made public.
I write this so that you can understand the mindset of certain ACC members that were always outvoted when they wanted the conference to add only schools that treated football as the primary sport. The ACC has now "gotten religion" with regard to football but all crises expose weak spots in an organization that were hidden when times were good. But the northern expansion was completely illogical without ND joining for football. The ACC gambled it would happen. The Big Ten believed them and reacted (another reason - among others - that the Big Ten is the power source of college football).
There actually is a great football conference hiding inside the ACC, and it's going to take a leader to perform an exorcism on the in bred current leadership to find it. Takers anyone?
And that's the state of the mindset of certain ACC members in this two week period as we chat about scheduling 2020. Cheers.
I think the conference presidents have to vote on who the commissioner will be. I sincerely hope that Swofford will have nothing to do with it . Just glad to see him gone.
Thanks for cementing my point. Perhaps you've some personal vendetta with them..?? Perhaps you just don't like them as an organization.
Question...what rules and structure do these D1 teams play under?
If the NCAA is dead then to hell with it.
85 scholarships? No no...we'll just start going unlimited. Lifetime eligibility? Most certainly.
Book can just stay forever playing QB at ND. Odds are he won't make it professionally and BK seems to love him now so much (he sure didnt before)....
Yep,,,maybe Book can just keep returning every year until he's in his late 40's.
You can tee hee all you want about the NCAA not having power but watch what happens when they recommend a direction. Everyone follows along. Amazing how that works with a governing body who is as you put it.. "dead"..yet the masses just follow along with the walking dead now.
Your assertion that Swofford wanted to end the big east is flat inaccurate. You are simply adding your opinions as revisionist history. Swofford needed to increase the acc's ability to secure a tv contract which would keep FSU and Clemson from jumping ship. He also tried to entice ok and oklahoma st and texas when the big 12 was fumbling.
Swofford has delivered to the ACC the boston market, the new york market, and solidified the virginia market. (They took va tech because the virginia govt got involved and it was the only way to move forward).
Losing maryland was actually a blessing as UL has brought more money than maryland ever could to the table especially in their bankrupt state, without hurting their ratings (many in maryland and dc are uva fans).
Nd is a match culturally for the acc and swofford has been very respectful of notre dame staying independent.
The acc doesnt need notre dame. The only thing they really get from football is 1 network game occasionally.
Always and Never are two words that shouldn’t be used.
There will not be CFB in the fall, fingers crossed we can have a season in the spring ... would think many of the best players in their last year of eligibility would opt out.
ACC has a the best fit for ND among P5 conferences ... academically and institution quality and culture all work. Hope it’s not time to give up football independence. The current conference structure is not good for the game - they all just take care of their own and screw the rest of the non P5 teams.
There will not be CFB in the fall, fingers crossed we can have a season in the spring ... would think many of the best players in their last year of eligibility would opt out.
ACC has a the best fit for ND among P5 conferences ... academically and institution quality and culture all work. Hope it’s not time to give up football independence. The current conference structure is not good for the game - they all just take care of their own and screw the rest of the non P5 teams.
I like this but not as well.
Any talk of ND joining a conference won't happen.
They love their independence and they should.
ND the brand is it's very own conference. Remember they started the craze with the conference network by getting an NBC exclusive. How dare they?
Well they are the only ones that could pull that off. A national network showing one team? You kidding me?
ND doesn't NEED a conference but there are a ton of opponents who NEED ND.
IF the season is played at all everyone will do everything to see that ND has a schedule. It is too important to cfb for anything else will happen. I suspect the ACX will allow ND to do everything except a conference championship game.
You do know Maryland's departure happened after the ND-ACC deal was signed right?
See what Mirer said, losing Maryland hurt the ACC but otherwise your expansion from 2003 onward added new brands and markets that made you into a Power Conference.
Yes, I do. The ND deal was signed close to after the ACC agreed to take Pitt and SU (which was announced Sept 2011). MD disclosed that it was leaving the ACC in early Nov 2012 (I was at the FSU-MD game the day that the news broke)
