SOUTH BEND, Ind. — Suddenly, the terra beneath everyone’s feet has become firma again. The Pac-12 decided not to expand. Oklahoma recommitted itself to “conference stability” in the Big 12. The Big East teams jilted by Syracuse and Pittsburgh said they’d hang tight.
On roughly the quadrillionth day of conference expansion and realignment hubbub, everyone rested. And that is very good news for those who value Notre Dame’s football independence above all else. (Until the next aftershock, anyway.)
Relative, tenuous stability is stability nonetheless, and it allows Notre Dame to avoid looking at an ACC or Big Ten membership any time soon. Here’s a quick analysis of the pressure points on Notre Dame’s status and how the revelations Tuesday affected them:
A home for all the other teams on campus. Lost in the football-driven madness is the question of just where Notre Dame men’s and women’s basketball and baseball and soccer and all other non-revenue sports would play.
The Big East vowing to remain intact and possibly add football members to compensate for the loss of Syracuse and Pittsburgh — Navy, Air Force and Central Florida are names being bandied about — gives Notre Dame athletic director Jack Swarbrick everything he needs for everybody other than football. (In fact, the floating of service academies smacks of Notre Dame throwing its weight around.)
Possibly losing a Connecticut to the ACC at some point would be a blow, especially for Irish women’s basketball, but women’s basketball isn’t driving the bus and the rest of the Big East (Marquette, Georgetown, Villanova, etc.) remains a good match for the Irish. (And perhaps the ACC has cooled on adding a 15th and 16th team anyway with the Pac-12 standing down.)
Even if West Virginia or Louisville wind up relocating to a refurbished Big 12, it’s unlikely the Big East would be in such sorry condition that it would force Notre Dame’s hand.
Compiling a representative football schedule. The dawn of a superconference era might be the dawn of nine- or 10-game league slates for the members, leaving few spots for Notre Dame to fill on the schedules of any teams that Notre Dame actually wants to play on a regular basis.
If the status remains relatively quo across the leagues, this shouldn’t be an issue for foreseeable future. The Pac-12 already plays nine league games and Notre Dame appears on the schedules of both USC and Stanford this year. The Big Ten’s nine-game schedule doesn’t kick in until 2017, so facing Michigan and Michigan State and Purdue shouldn’t be threatened for a while, if even then.
Access to the national championship mechanism. If the eventual setup of football conferences is anything vaguely similar to what it was a month ago, it’s difficult to imagine the Bowl Championship Series structure mutating in such a way that it does not include a mechanism for Notre Dame to enter it.
The current BCS contract expires in 2014. Certainly, by then or well before then, the landscape could shake violently and reshuffle priorities yet again. It’s impossible to predict either that or what the mindset of the BCS rules-makers will be relating to the Irish. Here’s guessing the program’s ability to fill stadium seats and bring eyes to television sets will keep it in the mix, all things being equal and sane.
If that superconference era begins though? All bets are off.
That, really, is the ultimate flashpoint for Swarbrick: If Notre Dame can’t play for a national title, there is almost no point in Notre Dame playing football. Happily for Irish fans as of Tuesday night, the issue appears moot. For now.
Twitter @ChiTribHamilton
