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Message: [QUOTE="WoadBlue, post: 284795, member: 1145"] 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 [B]HUGE[/B] 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. [/QUOTE]

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