And by "let's get serious" I mean let me speculate wildly on some things. I want to pick apart some of the rumors that are out there especially in relation to some of the things that our friend Stech has alluded to on this board in recent weeks.

Speculation is that Notre Dame is about to announce some kind of extension or update or re-working or whatever of their deal with NBC. That is expected to happen sometime in July, prior to NBC going into "all Olympics, all the time" mode.

One of the sort of "accepted truths" in the blogosphere right now is that Notre Dame is not super interested in letting their Olympic sports get dragged through the muck in a gutted Big East. Regardless of what anybody thinks of the remaining Big East basketball teams, it's hard to ignore the increasingly trifling state of the Big East as an all-sports league. A lot of people believe that Notre Dame is eager to "preserve their brand" as a serious non-revenue sports school by getting into another league sooner rather than later. Thus, a lot of rumors about ND trying to swing a deal with either the Big 12 or ACC similar to the one they currently have with the Big East.

Now, let's bring Stech into this. Over the last couple of days he has said a couple of things (complete with mischievous smiley face) that really interested me: 1) He speculated on the particulars of any out clause the ACC might have in their new ESPN contract and 2) He suggested that NBC Sports might be interested in diversifying their investment in college sports beyond Notre Dame football and that the timing would be great to be able to promote such a diversification during the Olympics.

It's interesting to me that one of the things that the Big 12 Twitter mafia keep harping on is that the ACC hasn't made public the details of their new ESPN deal. They hold that up as an example that the deal is probably even worse than it has been made out to be. Maybe so. But what if there's another reason that contract hasn't been laid out in front of God and everybody? What if there's a big, fat "hey, so, obviously we tear this thing up and enter negotiations with anybody we want to if Notre Dame joins as a full member" clause in there?

I'm just saying...what if July isn't just going to bring a new Notre Dame deal with NBC? What if there's a lot more to it than that from the ACC's perspective? That could be fun.