Today we got some pretty big news out of South Bend in the wake of ND missing the college football playoffs as a 2 loss team. This caused a whole lot of controversy along with ND opting out a bowl game, but that’s not what I’m talking about.
I’m also not talking about the apparent clause that means that if ND is in the top 12 next year, they have to get in the playoffs. I’m talking about a comment made by ND AD Pete Bevacqua.
I’ll link the full ESPN article at the bottom, but Bevacqua has said that the ACC campaigning for Miami to make the CFP over ND has caused ‘Permanent Damage’ to ND’s relationship with the ACC. While you might not think much of this as a football standpoint, it means quite a lot.
Bevacqua cited a tweet from the ACC with 2 blind teams, with the overall record, top 25 wins, top 35 wins and strength of record. The metrics show that Team A is far better than Team B. I think you can guess who Team A and Team B is.
ACC Network also played the Notre Dame vs Miami game more than 12 times, a channel that is shown to the CFP Committee 24/7.
Bevacqua said that he was fine with Miami making a campaign, but not the ACC. The main reason behind this for anyone who dosn’t know is that Notre Dame participates in the ACC for all sports except football and hockey (They compete in the B10 for hockey).
Now that you know the basic details, let’s bring up realignment. It seems that ND is very much unhappy with the ACC, so could a move be in the cards?
Strap in everyone, because it’s a lot of text.
The SEC most likely wouldn’t accept ND because of geographic reasons, so that leaves the B12 and the B10. The Big 10 is the dream for ND, but the Big 12 isn’t a bad option either.
Either way, it would put the conference that ND joins at an uneven number. That’s assuming they join for football, which they would almost certainly have to in order to join a P4 conference. It’s a tough pill to swallow, but if ND was playing in a conference championship game, they would have certainly made it in.
It’s more likely that the Big 10 makes a move to try and assert dominance over the SEC, so Notre Dame is now a full member of the Big 10 - including football.
This means the Big 10 has an uneven amount of members, so they would attempt to try and add 1 more member. Iowa State is the dream, and I think they pull it off.
This means the Big 12 needs another member, so going towards Memphis, Tulane or South Florida before the ACC is the dream. I personally think they go Tulane here, so Tulane is now in the Big 12.
The SEC now wants to be on par with the Big 10, so they need to add 2-4 strong members to the conference. The 4 they take seem pretty set, so Georgia Tech, Louisville, Clemson and FSU join the SEC.
This leaves the ACC is danger mode, going from 18 members to 13. Seeing the mess that they might get into again, Stanford and Cal come back to the PAC-12, strengthening the PAC once again.
So now what does the ACC do? 11 members, and possibly on the brink of collapse, while trying to juggle Miami and if they will jump as well. The G5 is most likely the situation, but one team is priority - UConn.
Bringing in the huskies strengthens an already great basketball conference, but opens up a whole new door of possibilities. They add 4 more members in Memphis, South Florida, JMU and Rice to bring them to 16 teams, a stable conference once again. But now the Big East has been messed with, and the basketball realignment is opened up.
The Big East loosing the huskies causes Creighton to join the PAC-12, and Villanova to join the American (More info on that one later). To stay afloat as a 10 team conference, Stony Brook and Lehigh are added to the conference.
That’s all I’m going into basketball, as that one would get out of hand very fast.
Back to football, the American replaces the 4 teams that left with Villanova, Coastal Carolina, Liberty and Air Force. Air Force leaving means that the MW is back in the firing range, so UC Davis becomes a full member, Sac State is added, New Mexico State is added and finally Idaho is back in the FBS.
The Sun Belt replaces the 2 teams they lost by adding Western Kentucky and Middle Tennessee state to stay at 14 members. So yet again, the CUSA is struggling. They now have 6 teams, and they need 2 to stay alive as a conference. With very little options, they settle for UTRGV and Illinois State as temporary options to stay a conference.
After all the theoretical realignment, it brings the total of FBS teams up to 141. All because Notre Dame is unhappy with the ACC.
Is this realistic? No. Is it fun? Oh yeah. Give me your thoughts on the situation and possible realignment moves.
Btw, here is the ESPN article link