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Message: [QUOTE="General20, post: 21242, member: 724"] I agree with this very much. The ONLY way to force ND into a conference is to form 4 super-confrences that might split from the NCAA and leave Notre Dame behind. No single conference can force Notre Dame's hand. So it becomes a waiting game. Other dominoes need to fall before the biggest ones (Texas and Notre Dame) go down. They will be the last. And knowing they will be the last, why should the ACC not wait? UConn isn't going anywhere. Neither is Rutgers. And if the impossible happened and they did, there are other teams which bring just as much to the table. I honestly don't get the opinion that the ACC needs to put a stake in the Big East's heart now. That already happened when SU and Pitt left. What is more interesting, to me, and why it makes sense for the ACC to wait before expanding more. Is to see what being in a lesser Big East for a couple of years does to the UConn and Rutgers programs. In the case of UConn, they went to a BCS game for football and promptly lost their coach. Then the best they could replace him with was coach P. Now I respect everything coach P did for SU, but to be in a BCS bowl, then lose your coach to a non-BCS bowl team (has Maryland EVER played in a BCS bowl?) then only be able to replace him with a guy who was fired from a peer and has been out of college football for several years? Not a good sign. And coach P is no spring chicken. When they have to get another coach, the pickings will be even more slim. Their football team is on shaky ground, to say the least. In the case of Rutgers. After, oh, about a century of futility, its amazing to me how much good-will they pulled from a couple "successful" seasons. Mind you, the success they had gets coaches fired at places like Michigan. But they haven't been able to maintain even that. How are they going t rebuild now? I dont think they can without the help of a better conference affiliation. The really interesting question is UConn basketball. Calhoun is on his last legs, and we know (from watching St. John's and Georgetown) how hard it is to replace a legend. Certainly the Big East will still be a viable basketball conference. I would submit that making it a little less tough will actually be a good thing for UConn. But they have no replacement in line, as we do for Boeheim, and not being in a power conference may be the difference between signing an A+ replacement for Calhoun and singing a B+ replacement for Calhoun. I think the UConn basketball program will always have value, but if they get a B+ replacement for Calhoun they may no longer be a top 5 or 10 program. And would it be worth it for the ACC (or anybody else) to take a program in Connecticut (when BC already represents New England in a better market) if they are a B+ basketball team and a D- football team? If I had to guess, I would guess that both UConn and Rutgers end up in the ACC. No matter what is said, I still feel Notre Dame will choose the B1G in the end. But that is not set in stone. Both Rutgers and UConn have every reason to fear a few difficult years coming up, and both UConn and Rutgers have reason to fear being left behind entirely. [/QUOTE]

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