Arena NCAA conference realignment?

I don't even pay attention to what the Big East does or tries these days. If I did, I probably wouldn't be able to stop laughing.

 

New name -- Big Geographically Indeterminate Conference? But hey, if the Big Ten can keep its name despite having 11 teams or more, why should the Big East change? All the schools are east of something, right?

As an ND alum, I would be very surprised if we went to the Big 12 -- academic reputation isn't there the way it is for the Big 10 and the ACC. If ND moves, I'd expect it to be the ACC. Basketball used to play Duke and UNC every year (knocking off #1 UNC and storming the court (1987?) was one of my fondest memories from college), so picking that up again would be great.

 

They could just go with the Big Mess Conference.

 

I'd support that one.


Or maybe Irrelevant Mess?

 

Big Irrelevant Mess Conference? In basketball, at least, it should keep the word "Big". Maybe add "Way Too" in front, even.

 

Yes, that's it. And when the basketball schools eventually leave, they can be the Big Mess and the football schools will be the Irrelevant Mess.

 

Memphis to join Big East in 2013

Question is, will the Big East still be a BCS Conference then?

 

My guess is no. There have been rumors flying around that the Big 12 will help pay WVU's Big East exit fee. If that's true and WVU (and maybe Pitt and Syracuse, too) are out of the conference, they won't get it in the next reassessment.

 

Lots of talk about Clemson to the Big 12. Which is absurd

 

Odds are, there WONT be AQ/Non-AQ conferences pretty soon, so it won't matter. However, adding Memphis helps the Big East with TV money and basketball.

 

I can't see Clemson to the Big 12, ever.

 

I saw the WVU settlement numbers and I really can't believe how much money is being throw out there. I know college football is a big money sport but I didn't think it was that much cash.

 

Just announced on Sportcenter that Notre Dame will be joining the ACC in all sports except football.

EDIT: Now they're saying that although the football team won't be joining the ACC, they will be scheduling 5 teams from the ACC annually.

 

Just saw that. I assume the Big Ten insisted on football as well, which was a deal breaker. I wonder to what extent there's an nofficial agreement about footbal joining at some point as well.

One thing it means is that traditional rivalry games against Big Ten teams (MSU, UM and Purdue) will get dropped. A shame, the usual annual game against UM is up there with USC for rivalries.

 

I really hope it's not the end of Michigan-ND. I know they will keep USC and Navy so something has to give - just hope it's not Michigan.

 

I could understand the importance of getting Notre Dame football if they were relevant at all, but they haven't been relevant for going on 30 years. I thought it was a joke that all of the big conferences got together to start to forge a new playoff system and Notre Dame had a seat at that table as though we should give a crap about their input.

Rick Reilly recently wrote an article on this that I felt hit the nail right on the head:

http://espn.go.com/espn/story/_/id/8264769/notre-dame-irish-relegated-insignificance

I once loved Notre Dame football.

My dad went to Notre Dame and flunked out and I still loved Notre Dame football. I loved Lindsey Nelson telling me "neither team advanced the ball so we move to further action in the fourth quarter" while my mom was yelling, "Get ready for mass!"

But I grew up.

I don't love Notre Dame football anymore. Notre Dame football has been living a lie, as Lou Holtz likes to say. Outlined against a blue-gray October sky, nothing happened. The echoes are in REM sleep. It has failed to advance the ball.

If I told you about a team that had lost 10 of its last 12 bowl games, had dropped nine of its last 10 to USC, had led the nation only in disappointment, you'd figure that team would be halfway down the Mountain West standings. But Notre Dame still gets perks and love from the NCAA and BCS as though the year is 1946.
I'm declaring an end to all that.

In Europe, if you play too much bad soccer for too many years, you get "relegated" to a lower division, moved down, demoted. It just happened to the Blackburn Rovers.
It needs to happen to Notre Dame football.

If Notre Dame isn't a factor this season -- and it hasn't been a factor in almost 20 years -- it's time to take it down a literal peg.

We can't demote Notre Dame from its conference -- since it is far too noble to belong to any piddling conference -- but we can demote it in stature.
From now on:

• Notre Dame no longer gets its own television deal with NBC.
• Notre Dame no longer gets to be the only school in the country with an inexplicable seat at the BCS decisions-making table.
• Notre Dame no longer gets its yearly undeserved hellahype in preseason rankings and preseason All-America teams.

In short, until Notre Dame football starts winning again, it's Rice to me.

That hurts your feelings? Watch "Rudy" 'til you feel better.

Can you explain to me how a team that hasn't won a national championship since 1988, a Heisman since 1987, or more than eight games its last five seasons still gets treated like the 1967 Green Bay Packers?

Notre Dame has won 86 games since the turn of this century. Oregon has won 111 games since then. TCU has won 119. Boise State has won 136. Do they have their own TV deals? Do they get to be the only school that sits with the BCS conference commissioners, deciding how a playoff is going to work?

Somebody needs to stick a pin in the still-inflated Golden Dome. Look, the ACC wants Notre Dame. Would die to have it. But word is, Notre Dame won't go if it has to share TV and gate revenue with the rest of the conference, like everybody else. The Irish people love to share. The Irish athletic department? Not so much.

If college football won't put its foot down and force Notre Dame to join a conference -- as every other sport at Notre Dame has -- then the least it can do is stop paying it a bowl bonus of $1.3 million when it DOESN'T go to a bowl game. That's right: Notre Dame gets a $1.3 million bowl bonus simply for dressing up the stupid leprechaun.

I hear what the Domers are saying. They're saying, "Notre Dame doesn't have to be in a conference. Notre Dame is unlike any other football power. Notre Dame is a national brand."
Sure, and girls are still wearing leg warmers.

Notre Dame is not a national brand any more than USC, Alabama or Stanford. A national brand? What would its slogan be, "Dominating Navy just about every year"? What kind of national brand loses to freaking Tulsa (2010)?

Notre Dame hasn't won a national title in more than 20 years. Are the Irish still an elite program?

Please, NCAA and BCS, stop leaping to attention every time caller ID says it's Notre Dame. The Irish haven't finished in the top 20 in any poll in five years. They can leave a message.

When did I quit on Notre Dame? When it quit on itself.

Last season, against USC, the Irish were trailing by only two touchdowns, 31-17, with about seven minutes left when USC got the ball. But Notre Dame didn't use any of its timeouts, and it had a hatful of them. It let USC waste as much time as it wanted and never got the ball back. Good job. Good effort.

"They did give up," USC quarterback Matt Barkley told ESPN 710 radio in L.A. "I wouldn't have wanted to be on that sideline."

You are not royalty anymore, Notre Dame. Turn in your tiara.

When your NBC contract expires in 2015, do the right thing and don't renew. Lower some expectations until you can turn this thing around. And you're a Mars Rover trip from turning it around.

Wait, what? Coach Brian Kelly is the savior? Really? Because he looks to me like he's doing a very good impression of Bob Davie so far. He's opened with back-to-back 8-5 seasons. Wow. Give him a sitting ovation.

And with Kelly throwing the QB job up for grabs again, instead of just handing it to Tommy Rees once his one-game suspension is up, this season looks like 7-5 to me, with Ls to Michigan State, Michigan, Oklahoma, Pittsburgh and you don't even want to know what USC will do to the Irish in the Coliseum. Cue the DentDoctor.com Bowl.

Somebody needs to make Notre Dame play by the same rules as everybody else. If there's anything we've learned from the Penn State mess, it's that nobody gets to live on a pedestal anymore.

You flunked, Notre Dame. Go back a grade.

 

I agree with you and Rick Riley on the issue, although I think that yankee would have a very different opinion.

 

Speaking for the ACC, I don't get why a conference would want Notre Dame, and that goes double when the conference already has a ridiculous 14 members. 15? Even worse. Though I can never blame schools for wanting to jump from the Big East to the ACC

 

I love that article. ND football is way too full of itself.

 

Meh. That article is Meh. It's full of Utopian statements that can't coexist with reality. And, so is Reilly of late.

Don't hate Notre Dame because they get invited to parties other schools don't.
Don't hate Notre Dame because NBC makes money from giving them a lot of money that other schools don't get.
Don't hate Notre Dame because they take what BCS officials give them.

Sure, hate the system that enables Notre Dame to do those things.

But don't tell me you wouldn't want your school to do exactly what Notre Dame does were they in their exact shoes.

 

I don't understand the whole 5 football games. Everything else is fine by me.

 

There's one fundamental problem with Reilly's article -- ND isn't forcing anyone, not NBC, not the BCS, to give us any special treatment. The NBC deal gets renewed regularly. The BCS format gets adjusted tiem and again, now we have the new playoff format. There's been plenty of opportunity to dump us if we've really become so irrelevant. If we were irrelevant, would the ACC have agreed to this deal?

Has ND done anything in the past decade to justify the special treatment. Probably not, going back to the end of the Holtz era. But to claim we're full of ourselves and irrelevant, as Inty says, as my fellow alum Mike Golic said the day after the Reilly article came out, complain to the NCAA, NBC, whatever. But expecting Notre Dame to turn down the cash and other special treatment is absolutely absurd.

Reilly had a shining moment a few months ago when he did a mea culpa about Paterno and hagiography. That was an isolated mopment, he's the one who's become and irrelevant joke that past decade or so.

Back in my student days, the Michigan game was always the first of the season for both schools. Was always such a huge, huge game, at that time even bigger than USC, who was in a prolonged down period. My senior year was the National Championship (talk about a semester long party) opened with a classic game against Michigan at night, Reggie Ho kicked 5 field goals. it was always a brutal match-up, because you had a national championship contender knocked out the first week of the season.

 

An article on the matter by someone who actually has a functioning brain: SI's Michael Rosenberg

And Rosenberg is also actually funny.

EDIT: Looking at this from the basketball side, in my time there the biggest games of the year, aside from UCLA, were the alternating home games against North Carolina and Duke, which dropped off the schedule when we went to the Big East. The 1987 upset of #1 UNC was an absolute highlight of my four years until the 31-30 football win over Miami 2 days after my 21st birthday.

 

http://espn.go.com/college-sports/s...ns-accept-invitation-join-big-ten-sources-say

Maryland will join the Big Ten; Rutgers to announce tomorrow to join them.

 

Very surprised by Maryland, always such a quintessential ACC basketball school in my mind.Guess they've decided to push football much more heavily, and that the best way to do that is join a stronger football conference.