I would like to, in a respectful manner, point out to you that the relationship goes both ways with regards to ND and the ACC. David Teel, or as I would like to call him John Swofford's PR Guy, stated in a recent article that had the ACC not have its current relationship with ND, then the ACC would more than likely not have gotten our long awaited dedicated sports channel. Also, when ND was added to the ACC for 5 games, by contract, the payout for the ACC was increased by $1 million per school per year. Now of course, you are correct that ND does get to park their non football sports in the ACC and they have access to the ACC bowl games in football; but it does not appear to be a completely one sided affair as some on this board would suggest/infer.
We'll see - maybe a school like Duke can lay down with the dogs and perhaps escape without a serious case of fleas, but ND? Not so much...
I said ND has an excellent academic reputation, but it's not in Duke's category. It's more like BC, I guess. The doorknobs do tarnish and the veneers are not all that thick.
But more importantly, why do it? You have a school, such as LV, that accepts 3/4 of its applicants across the board, let alone recruited athletes. How does a school that is trying to maintain academic integrity compete against that? VT, for instance, is a very good school. I've been to your campus and it is beautiful. Schools like VT should have welcomed a great land grant institution like UConn into their ranks. Long term, it was the best route to go for conference success and longevity. In the end, we'll be situated just fine. We can revisit this discussion in about 10 years and see how your experiment with LV turned out.