Blue & Gold Illustrated: America's Foremost Authority on Notre Dame Football
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Upon Further Review ACC: The Only Choice For Notre Dame By Todd D. Burlage Superstar columnist Rick Reilly wrote a 991-word diatribe for ESPN.com back in August about how he could take it no more, and the time had finally come for him to bail out on the Notre Dame football program because it had become irrelevant. In case you didn’t see Reilly’s piece of … work, here is a small sample. “Please, NCAA and BCS, stop leaping to attention every time caller ID says its Notre Dame. The Irish haven’t finished in the top 20 in any poll in five years. They can leave a message. … That hurts your feelings? Watch ‘Rudy’ ’til you feel better.” Care to change your stance, Mr. Reilly? In a development that leaves no doubt a certain university in northwest Indiana carries as big a stick today as it ever has, Notre Dame got its cake and will eat it also after university officials announced that Irish athletics are leaving the Big East and taking their talents to the Atlantic Coast Conference in everything except football and hockey. No specific transition date was given. Notre Dame athletics director Jack Swarbrick said his school is contractually bound to the Big East until the 2015-16 athletic season. But my hunch is Notre Dame will pay the Big East its multi-million dollar early exit fee and become a full-time ACC member for the start of the 2014 season. And once the Big East dissolution is complete, and the new marriage license is signed with the ACC, this will become the perfect union for both parties. Notre Dame will boost the ACC football brand by playing five regular season games against conference competition every year. Yet, football independence — with the perks and NBC television contract that come with it — will remain, protecting the tradition and financial interests that help define Notre Dame. For the ACC, it landed the biggest whale in the free agent pool during this unprecedented period of conference shuffling. In terms of the 24 Notre Dame athletic programs outside of football, the ACC is the campus party with all the pretty girls. The men’s and women’s basketball leagues will become the best in the country when Syracuse and Pittsburgh complete their Big East defections and join the ACC in 2013. And sports such as lacrosse, soccer and volleyball will pit student-athletes from these premier sports at Notre Dame against the best opposition in the country. The level of football competition is strong and improving in the ACC, but not to the point where Notre Dame can’t match up with any team in the league as it chases down a BCS bid and a place in the four-team national championship tournament beginning in 2014. Miami, Virginia Tech, Clemson, Georgia Tech and Florida State offer a talented nucleus for Notre Dame to take its place next to, and Pittsburgh will boost the conference profile when it comes on board. The benefits of this move, though, stretch well beyond a chance to showcase and market the Notre Dame product every year in great cities along the East Coast. More importantly, this move to the ACC opens up some much-needed bowl opportunities in the years Notre Dame fails to secure a BCS bid. In its current bowl cycle (2010-13), Notre Dame’s tie-in with the Big East allowed it one trip to the Champ Sports Bowl in those four years. That’s it. The Irish played that card last year, meaning for the last two years of this cycle, the only bowl option outside of the BCS is to plug a vacant slot left by a conference that couldn’t fill its quota of bowl eligible teams. When Notre Dame ties its secondary bowl options to the ACC, the list of potential postseason destinations grows dramatically — Atlanta; Charlotte, N.C.; Orlando, Fla.; and Nashville, Tenn., just to name a few. ACC members are also some of the finest academic institutions in the country with Duke, Wake Forest, Boston College, Virginia and North Carolina, among others. The ACC has four private schools with Duke, Wake Forest, Miami and Boston College. So from an academic performance and general profile, ACC membership will do nothing but enhance the Notre Dame name. When speculating about Notre Dame ditching the Big East and finding a new home, the Big Ten was always mentioned because of basic geography. But becoming “regionalized” has never interested Notre Dame, and the ACC offers the Irish athletic programs a recruiting bed that stretches from Boston in the North to Miami in the South, and through 10 different states when Notre Dame comes on board. This setup with the ACC also allows Notre Dame to protect its important West Coast presence by keeping USC and Stanford on the schedule for years to come. With the Big East imploding, Notre Dame had to move its athletic programs to a better place, and it carried enough clout and relevance to preserve football independence while also putting its other student-athletes in a stable and preferred place for the long-term future. So here’s to you, Mr. Reilly, and another failed attempt to bury Notre Dame with a computer keyboard. Good luck to you, sir, on your future endeavors. And please give our best to Jack Swarbrick the next time you see him at the head of the BCS table. Todd D. Burlage has been a writer for Blue & Gold Illustrated since July 2005. He can be reached at tburlage@blueandgold.com