BlazeOrange
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No offense taken - that's kind of the point I was making.
The UConn grovelling has begun
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zls44
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Of all the ways expansion can hurt UConn, not playing BC or Syracuse is in no way one of them. MAYBE for basketball.
UConn provides a good, name opponent in several olympic sports that isn't a plane ride away. Why do you think BC still schedules UConn in every sport except basketball and football? They need us. To try and build some sort of resume for the other NCAA Tournaments.
Well, that's not really true. BC has 31 varsity sports. Of the 28 outside of men's and women's BB and FB, BC and Uconn played in 6 sports this past hear, with one sport being women's hockey where BC and Uconn both are in HE.
BTW, BC has fared pretty well against Uconn this past year in these sports with a 6-2 record (three of the wins in women's hockey, plus baseball, women's field hockey, and women's lacrosse; with Uconn winning in men's and women's soccer).
It's true Uconn doesn't need BC or Syracuse, but neither does BC or Syracuse need Uconn.
I just don't see BC or Uconn meeting up in the high visibility sports - FB or BB - any time soon. Too much bad blood which isn't going to dissipate simply because the Uconn Governor wishes for it to be so.
I am among those who do not want UConn under any circumstances. The actions of UConn and CT when we expanded to 12 are bad enough. Then there is the fact that what would be best for BC is to have no other Major college team in New England. As UConn basketball impinges on NYC, it is also best for Syracuse if UConn is reduced to small time league status.
I think ND may well demand Navy for football to join the ACC. If that happens, we would need to add a BE basketball school for #16 in Hoops. Because of Maryland, St JOhns and Villanova would get such a slot over Georgetown.
Cuseman78
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No more basketball-onlies. We just went down that road. If you don't play big time college football, you can't sit at the big boy table. And St. John's would have zero shot to be an ACC school anyway.
K
kingottoiii
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Agreed. If ND ever comes it has to come with an all sports school as #16. If need be the ACC can go back to an 8 game schedule to accomodate ND. That will still allow ND to play USC, Navy, and Michigan ever year. Since I do not think ND will move any time soon, I am rooting for UL to the B12 and Nova to go in for FB. Then by the time ND is ready, Nova will be the perfect #16. Good academics, good basketball, decent lax, and good location which completes the major Eastern cities for the ACC. If they end up being another Duke in FB who cares?
In an ideal world I would want to see pods of:
ND, Pitt, BC, Nova
VT, UVA, SU, MD
Miami, Clemson, GA Tech, Wake
FSU, UNC, NC St, Duke
For BBall you play an 18 game schedule with your pod mates twice. For FB you rotate the pods into two divisions and then play one cross over game to get to 8.
Cross over rivals:
ND- GA Tech (primary), UNC (secondary)
Pitt- SU (primary), NC St (secondary)
BC- VT (primary), FSU (secondary)
Nova- MD (primary), Duke (secondary)
VT- BC (primary), Miami (secondary)
UVA- UNC (primary), GA Tech (secondary)
SU- Pitt (primary), Clemson (secondary)
MD- Nova (primary), Wake (secondary)
Miami- FSU (primary), VT (secondary)
Clemson- NC St (primary), SU (secondary)
GA Tech- ND (primary), UVA (secondary)
Wake- Duke (primary), MD (secondary)
FSU- Miami (primary), BC (secondary)
UNC- UVA (primary), ND (secondary)
NC St- Clemson (primary), Pitt (secondary)
Duke- Wake (primary), Nova (secondary)
Cuseman78
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I still highly doubt Nova will ever have the infrastructure (stadium issue) and fan base to be a legitimate D-I college football program. The pickins are slim for #16. I think if everything else held as it currently is, the only real possibilities for 16 would be Uconn and Rutgers.
Before ND joined the BE for basketball, the standard assessment was that ND would always remain independent and nothing could trigger a move to a basketball conference.
Those who thought ND might join a basketball conference and said it would be midwestern were dead wrong, because ND's subway alums are located most in the NYC, Philly, Boston, Baltimore/DC, Pittsburgh, Chicago TV markets. ND's midwestern subway alums are served by ND Home games, regardless of opponent. ND in a conference for any sport must play primarily to its East Coast subway alums, allowing its Home games against eastern teams to serve its midwestern fans. That, for example is why ND joined Hockey East rather than any midwestern hockey league.
The only way ND can be in a conference for football and remain a National program in terms of keeping its subway alums happy is for it to have annual presence in 4 regions: midwest, northeast, southeast, CA. The best way for ND to do that is to join the ACC and play SoCal annually, because if ND plays 9 Big Ten teams and SoCal annually, it will have no presence in the northeast or South. Over time, that will hurt ND, making its subway alums less focused because they feel left out. When that happens, ND becomes just the little Catholic school in the midwest that is a member of the Land Grant Giants League. Remember: all ND's midwestern needs are served by Home games in South Bend, which in terms of being national makes the Big Ten utterly superfluous to ND.
And that gets us to the issue of types of schools. ND has always greatly preferred athletic and academic associations that are mixed in terms of types and sizes of schools. Specifically, ND has always preferred ties to multiple private schools. The Big Ten is 11 HUGE state universities and 1 very large private school (I think Northwestern is larger than 3 ACC state schools and is twice the size of ND). Syracuse will be the ACC's 5th private school, and the ACC easily has the smallest average student body size of any 1A football conference.
K
kingottoiii
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Outside of WV all the #16 candidates suck. I rather have the Duke FB of the NE with a 30k stadium along with all the other positives Nova brings than RU or UConn. From our standpoint Nova is a much smaller threat in FB because they will always be behind SU in facilitates and tradition. As you said they won't be a legitimate FB team which is all the better for SU. It also opens up NJ, NYC, and LI recruits. Those kids have no ties to Nova. While RU and UConn can sell location vs SU. From the ACC's standpoint they are getting a Philly presence, good BBall, decent lax, and good academics. They really are a good culture fit IMO. While RU and UConn only offer location.
Townie72
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Alot of interesting stuff, but its obvious you don't get it. You are trying to present the ACC case. It'll fail.
Why? Because ND is the national Catholic university and the Catholic (esp Irish-Catholic) population that supports it is centered in the Midest and to a lesser degree the East Coast from Boston to DC. Playing UNC at ND once every other year is not equivalent in the minds of these people as playing Michigan home and home. To suggest it is, is clever but dishonest.
Michigan's relative size or Purdue's has never been an issue before. Now its a barrier to ND joining the conference that tradition and geography and proximity of the fan and alumni base make the obvious choice?
Much of the ND mystique is based on tradition and the glories of the past. Leon Hart and George Gipp and whoever else didn't play against Clemson or Wake Forest. In fact, the only case one can make for ND continuing to play usually lightweight Navy is tradition. It matters hugely to them.
The only person who seemed to feel that ND might join te ACC was NCSU's President, Fox, who had come from ND. Turns out she was as clueless as you might expect. Academics have a poor sense of how and why athletics works.
And the final card is this ... The States in the ACC footprint are largely fundamentally anti-Catholic. I don't think ND wants to be anywhere close to that sentiment on a regular basis.
All4SU
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More than anything else, the degeneration of the BE through Pitt and SU to the ACC and WVU to the B12, and the possibility of UL+ to the B12, will keep Nova from moving up. There are fewer and fewer options for them in the East.
ImperialOrange
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That would never be a problem since Georgetown doesn't really have fans.
WE'll start with your final assertion. It is, of course, historically inaccurate, unless your definition of anti-Catholic is merely not having large numbers of Catholics. The riots against Catholic neighborhoods, churches, schools, orphanages, nunneries, etc. in the US did not occur in NC or VA or SC. They occurred in most northern states.
The Catholic Church is booming in the Atlantic coast South, at the same time that parishes by the dozens close every year in the upper midwest. Just to cut to the heart of the ACC, a new Cathedral is being built in Raleigh, and a new seminary is being built between Raleigh and Charlotte. The Catholic population of NC has doubled in less than 20 years, and all signs indicate that the high Catholic growth rate in NC, VA, GA, SC, and FL will continue for the foreseeable future. And in the South, Catholics actually attend Mass and take seriously what the Church teaches.
As ND's subway alums are almost uniformly Catholic, the seriously decaying Catholicism in the upper midwest is not going to provide the next generation of ardent Irish TV fans.
ND and the ACC have had a close relationship working on issues relating to cleaning up athletics issues, including academics and major college athletics back to the late 1960s. In fact, the issue that might have been the final insult that led SoCar to leave the ACC, the ACC voting to ban jock dorms, proved a particularly close tie as ND and the ACC then led the class for the NCAA to ban jock dorms. If you think that one academic administrator at one ACC school is the only ACC tie to ND and the only person with power at an ACC school who thinks that eventually ND will be an ACC school, then you are ignorant of not merely the ties in the past but the negotiations earlier this century when ND was ready to join the ACC for all sports but football and even to join for football as long as it could play a reduced football schedule.
Your understandings of ND football traditions are limited. You seem to think that Michigan is as often played a series as Navy, SoCal, or even Pitt. But ND has played Michigan only 39 times. To compare, ND has played GT 34 times and played Pitt 65 times. ND has played Miami 24 times, and the series was ended in 1990 because of Dennis Erickson's thug teams. If not for the Convicts era, ND would have played Miami more than it has played Michigan. There are only 2 Big Ten schools, Michigan St and Purdue, that ND has played more than 40 times. And Michigan is the only other Big Ten school ND cares to play.
When Michigan led the boycott of ND, keeping most Big Ten schools from playing ND (Purdue was the only one that kept playing ND regularly - Mich St was then not in the Big Ten), ND was forced to turn to the East, to play teams from the East coast, playing them on the East coast more than in South Bend or Chicago. That move is what made ND football great.
Townie72
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I'm an SU fan so I'd prefer that ND join the ACC if they were to stop being an independent. But, in trying to be intellectually honest with myself, its clear that the Big 10 is the odds on favorite. The ACC is a huge underdog.
I find your arguments to be specious. You're not trying to be intellectually honest. You are just selling.
Good grief! Of course there were no Anti-Catholic riots in the South. There weren't any Catholics in the South to speak of. Why would the good citizens of Charleston or Atlanta riot against a group that wasn't present. Do you not know that or are you being deliberately dishonest?
Parishes that are closing in the North are those in neighborhoods that have transitioned. Most Catholics have move to the suburbs and Catholic churches are being built there. Did you not know that or are you being deliberately dishonest?
"Seriously decaying"? Where are you getting that nonsense from? In our parish there are lines of people taking religious instruction to become Catholics as they flee the mainline Protestant Churches particularly the Episcopal Church. Did you not know that or are you being deliberately dishonest?
Of course, RC churches are being built in the south with the influx of nothern Catholics. Its easy to have a high growth rate when your starting point is near zero. Did you not know that or are you being deliberately dishonest?
You are selectively choosing the two schools that ND has any kind of history with that are now in the ACC. Please list the number of times ND has played Maryland, Florida State, Clemson, Duke, UVA , VT, NCSU, etc, etc. You get the point. And I doubt if ND has any interest in playing Miami again given the Catholics vs. Convicts history.
In spite of your weak attempts at obfuscation, you still haven't addressed the points.
You do understand that Notre Dame is in Indiana close to Chicago and that Indiana does not touch the Atlantic Coast at any point. The proximity of the Big Ten schools to ND greatly simplifies the travel costs and time associated with all of their men's and women's teams.
You must know that ND has a long history playing midwestern schools. And that if you take GT and Miami out of the mix the number of times they have played the current ACC schools they have played is miniscule.
You should know that ND went all the way through the application process with the Big 10 including a vote by the faculty to accept the invitation.
And finally, you do know that Catholics were targets of the Klan along with blacks. And that the majority of Protestants down there still harbor negative feelings about Catholics in general.
Stop with this nonsense.
huskypantz
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Hmmm, the actions that were eerily similar to VTech and Pitt's? So basically you have 2 current conference members that were part of a lawsuit against the ACC. But UConn is the only bad guy.
OrangeHeel
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Little conflicted as a Carolina & SU grad. Always enjoy Townie. Obviously intelligent and obviously deliberately over the top. Was a little puzzled by Woadblue before SU was chosen for ACC. Seemed a little anti-SU to my hearing. Post-acceptance, I've found his analysis a bit more persuasive even if I didn't always agree.
As to his ND argument, I think it's one of his most persuasive and I don't just think it's wishful thinking. As for the Catholic Church exploding in the South, it's true. When I went to school at Carolina, it was considered "mission" country by the Church. I could tell who my friends were on Ash Wednesday because they were the ones who asked: "What the hell do you do to your forehead?" When I go back now, it's night and day.
Townie, I know from other threads that you're a member of the tribe and well-traveled. The demographics are changing and I think ND is smart enough to see that. Woadblue has it wrong that the Church is dying in the Midwest. But he is spot on to see it explosion in the South. The failure to see where your audience will be in future can be fatal. I think ND sees that and while no conference would be perfect for them, the ACC would be the "least worst" from their perspective if forced into a conference.
T
tipphill
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i may be behind the times but the catholic thing is way overplayed. for the most part the majority of catholic haters are probably neo nazis and skinheads. most people now are trying to make living and get ahead. cannot be bothered with anti catholicism. probably the most verbal critics of some catholic doctrine are catholic's themselves.
Townie72
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There's absolutely no doubt that the criticism of doctrine and practice isn't mostly internal to the Church. As Catholics, Its what we do. But the New York Times and Washington Post will be glad to complain about the ordination of women as priests and the like to try and pick a fight in a race in which they don't have a horse.
I doubt there's a lot of overt Catholic haters left. But neither do I believe that there isn't still quite a bit of latent bias. You cannot be as commited to your church and its doctrines as the southern protestants are and not feel there's not something wrong with another viewpoint.
ND is run by priests. Not academic administrators. Not MBA's, But priests. And their calculus --- as you know --- is different. And their roots are in the Midwest.
Guinness
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I don't think it is so much that the church is dying in the midwest (or north for that matter) as it is those areas themselves are dying. I don't think it is any coincidence that as more yanks move south that the catholic church down here is growing. NC in particular.
Townie72
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Demographics don't continue on in the same direction forever. The migration of so many northerners to the South could taper off significantly or even reverse itself. Sometimes the pendulum swings back in the other direction.
Years ago --- in the 1980's --- I spent a lot of time in North Carolina. Raleigh was a great place. A small, clean town with low real estate prices and plentiful employment in clean industries. When I go there today I can't tell the place from the traffic-choked roads of Northern Virginia. And the cheaper real estate is now in the North.
If the US were to figure out a way to reinvigorate manufacturing, cities like Chigao and Detroit and Pittsburgh might make a further comeback.
Curves don't continue on on the same direction and the same rate forevver. Just ask the people in Arizona ... which will soon be out of water.
Townie72
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UConn is the bad guy because it was UConn and CT AG (now CT Senator) that had the idea and who led the charge on the suit. WVU's president at the time (Hardesty) was apologetic at the time claiming real reluctance at having to sign on to the suit. No such statements from UConn. And not only did the suit name institutions, it named some of the players in the drama.
UConn's the bad guy because their high profile basketball coach couldn't keep his mouth shut and inflamed the situation.
UConn is the bad guy because UConn fans / students pelted BC buses with bottles and rocks.
As an SU fan and impartial viewer of this, UConn is getting exactly what they deserve. It's actually refreshing to see people have to reap what they sow. There's way too little accountability in this world.
Townie72
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As the half empty MCI Center bears stark witness.
And its too far a commute for the LA gang bangers who have adopted Georgetown as their favorite team and symbol to make many GU games.
