Quote Originally Posted by Hateful Hokie View Post
My only main issue with this will be if BC and Pitt get annual games with Notre Dame. In effect that means 12 teams are rotated among 4 games, which means, realistically, we'd play Notre Dame once ever 6 years and once every 12 years at home or FedEx field. It's better than nothing, but it's still not that great of an insentive to change a half century of tradition.

Unfortunately, this whole contractual ACC-ND isn't about membership at all. It is about securing Notre Dame games in the mid and late season.

Notre Dame is being coy with a number of leagues to insure they get enough quality games THROUGHOUT the season. Notre Dame has no problem getting the early games but struggles to fill out the schedule when every league starts into conference play. October and November are going to be even harder to fill with most leagues going to 9 conference games. My Domer friends say this is an annual topic on the Irish AD and Coaches tour.

On the surface it seems like a coup for a league, remember the Notre Dame-Big East football scheduling announcement. What it turns out to be is Notre Dame picking and choosing the opponent, date and site, most of the time at South Bend or a preferred neutral site . Advantage Notre Dame.

There is an old saying, "Why buy the cow if you can get the milk free". In Notre Dames case, why join a conference if you can get a series of 3 team scheduling agreements with multiple conferences Big 10, Big East , ACC, plus PAC 12 long term games with USC and Stanford. So this isn't an audition or preamble to membership to any conference but a way for the Conference to force members to fracture their schedules and add Notre Dame in October and November during the heat of conference battle. While attractive it could be a huge distraction.