Let’s begin with a bit of a summation of where we stand today, March 28, 2012:
Round and round the carousel spins during conference realignment. Where it stops, nobody truly knows until there is a press conference in fill in the blank city featuring the conference coordinator, the university president and athletic director.
When we last left the conference realignment and expansion carousel, the Mountain West Conference and Conference USA had decided to become BFF, although the pace of discussion for that merger/partnership has slowed to a crawl.
The SEC has corralled their new members for 2012 from the Big 12 in Texas A&M and Missouri.
The Big 12 has accepted their new friends in TCU and West Virginia.
The Big East will stretch from coast to coast with the addition of San Diego State, and into the north with the addition of Boise State, with Memphis, SMU, and Houston holding down the south. Plus Navy will come along in 2015 for football. Oh, and the Big East decided in the interim that it wanted Temple back, even though they gave the Owls the boot in 2004. Talk about letting bygones being bygones.
Some of the movement of the Big East was in response to the ACC poaching Syracuse and Pitt for the 2014 academic year. A renegotiated contract for the conference will make a difference in keeping their current members happy. The Big 12 also renegotiated their television contracts, and it seems more than likely that the SEC, by adding new markets in St. Louis, Kansas City and Houston will be able to get more money from their television partners as well.
But as the wheel spins, there seems to me a major player that has stayed on the sidelines. Just standing over there alone, doing their own thing as they have done for well over 100 years now.
*Waves at the Notre Dame Fighting Irish.*
Hello, friends.
For over 20 years, Notre Dame home games have been televised on NBC. That is a long, long time, and when Notre Dame made the agreement with NBC, it was groundbreaking.
But now that two conferences have their own networks (Mountain West, Big Ten) and one conference has several special relationships with broadcast networks (SEC on CBS, ESPN’s SEC Game of the Week on Saturdays in primetime), and with one conference trying to establish a network of networks (the Pac-12), that special relationship doesn’t seem as special.
Additionally, with conference realignment and expansion, more teams are going to be forced to play an extra conference game. Currently, the Pac-12 already plays a nine game conference schedule, the Big 12 does because it is a true round robin (only ten teams in the conference), and it appears that the SEC is considering going to one within the next couple of seasons.
The Big East, Big Ten and ACC haven’t even broached these discussions, but it seems more than likely that the Big East and the ACC would consider a nine game
conference schedule. Speaking of scheduling, the Pac 12 and the Big Ten have come to an historic accord, with the schools agreeing to face at least one team from the other conference by 2017. Michigan State and Oregon have gotten the ball rolling, scheduling a visit to Eugene for the Spartans in 2014.
What does the above have to do with Notre Dame? Well, the changes that have swirled around the Irish may ultimately impact them.
Remember, Notre Dame’s base schedule is usually built around three Big Ten schools (Michigan, Michigan State, Purdue) and two Pac 12 schools (USC and
Stanford alternate trips to South Bend each year). Throw in Navy as a perennial opponent and half of the Irish’s schedule has been affected by realignment and
scheduling agreements within their current/new leagues.
Now granted, Notre Dame is still a name brand, but that last national championship is a distant memory at this point. Just about no one
on a current college football roster was alive the last time the Irish won a national title.
Yes, Rudy is a still a movie that can be checked out a library, but the days of Notre Dame truly being a major national player are far removed from the current reality that faces the Irish.
Maybe Brian Kelly can wake the echoes again; at this point, it is safe to say that the jury is still out. However, as each year passes, it seems to become harder and harder for an independent to make a living in the modern world of college football. Heck, Navy (!) is joining a conference; it doesn’t seem like it would be a stretch to assume that Army would (or should) consider joining one for football as well.
Yes, BYU did just leave a conference and went independent. However, it does appear as if there were other forces at play that led to that decision. Besides, while BYU was the last “mid-major” team to win a national title (1984), the expectation of a national championship is not there. So it is not truly a comparable situation.
It is highly unlikely that all of Notre Dame’s current scheduling partners would leave them high and dry unless something truly catastrophic was to happen to college football. A playoff wouldn’t necessarily fit that scenario, since Notre Dame does seem to be involved in the discussions that are taking place right now.
It would be a significant change for Notre Dame to join a conference. The Big East makes sense because it is the current home for
basketball and the Olympic sports, although it is hardly the most challenging football league going forward, except for the geography.
The ACC gets mentioned as a possible landing spot, but the reasons are confusing at best. It would mean a reunion with some of the original Big East members in Boston College, Syracuse and Pitt, but Notre Dame doesn’t necessarily have much in common with those schools.
Of course, the presumed most natural fit would be to join the Big Ten. That would require the Big Ten or Notre Dame to make the first move. If Notre Dame wanted in, it seems like a lock for the Big Ten to take the Fighting Irish. Would the Big Ten, however, be happy with being at an odd number again? Or would the league look to add another school to keep the numbers balanced?
Make no mistake about it, though: if the massive, catastrophic realignment that was predicted in 2010 is to come about, the Irish will be the
keystone in making it all come together. For better or for worse.
