The rumor is that Notre Dame is interested in joining the ACC for all sports, including football. I would love to see this happen for a lot of reasons, not the least of which is that there will be no chance of Notre Dame securing another exclusive TV contract like the one it has now with NBC, which expires after next season (I've heard that NBC is going to bid for the ACC college football contract for the 2005 season and beyond).
I hate the NBC contract because it has ruined Notre Dame's home field advantage. The games take so long because of all the commercial breaks, so while you're freezing your ass off in the stands for four hours, everyone at home is treated to 200 previews of this week's episode of Average Joe. Not good times. So, students sell their tickets to visiting fans, many of whom have never been to a game and are all fired up. When ND played Nebraska a few years ago (2000?), I think half the fans were in red and white. Also, all the games have to be at 2:30 p.m., so there's no chance of the occasional night game. Night games always favor the home team because the home crowd has been tailgating all day. Do the math.
But I digress. The ACC. It would be good for recruiting. Frankly, Notre Dame has become a basketball school, and the ACC is the place to be for hoops (not that the Big East was a slouch). I like the idea of ND recruiting on the basis that they play Duke, North Carolina, Wake Forest, et al. every year. The ACC would be a great fit for Notre Dame's women's soccer team, too, which perennially makes the Final Four. Women's hoops would certainly benefit, though it would lose some of its rivalry with UConn.
Some football traditionalists will balk at a conference affiliation, which is just silly. I like it for football because it will renew Notre Dame's rivalry with Miami (FL) ("the Catholics vs. the convicts"), which is joining the ACC next year, and continue its rivalry with Florida State and Boston College (also joining the ACC). Further, with the 12-game schedule that has become the norm in college football, ND can still play its other rivalry games against Purdue, USC and Michigan.
Finally, ND has enough money. The endowment grows by hundreds of millions of dollars every year. Notre Dame doesn't need an exclusive TV contract or to keep a BCS bowl payout all to itself. What they need is to keep recruiting top athletes, and I think an ACC conference membership will help them do that.
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