My take: an ACCN is only good news for UConn if there is something written in the deal that it is contingent on Notre Dame joining as a full-time member. I don't care about "if they ever decide to join, it has to be the ACC" because who knows if/when that would ever happen. I care about something firm, as in "you have an ACCN under the condition that Notre Dame is full time". I've yet to see anything saying that is the case.
Therefore, this ACCN deal is bad for UConn. Really bad. They don't need our markets and brand and they don't need to even their membership when adding Notre Dame. Even worse, their members are re-upping an extended GOR that will surely seal up any cracks or legal grey area, if there are any, that would allow members like FSU/UNC/UVA/GT/Clemson to challenge it and escape to greener pastures. That means no movement and that means no suddenly freed up spots that UConn could backfill.
What the ACCN deal also does is officially cements the B12 as the dying P5 conference, as we shift towards a condensed P4. The B12 has already given up trying to get a network and, in doing so, that will scratch UConn off of the top of the expansion candidate list. Their upcoming expansion move will be a short-term, bubble gum, patch job to get a championship game off the ground. That's it. They'll expand with the 2 closest and most competitive football programs for 2016...perhaps as football only members. Most likely: Houston and BYU.
Finally, the ACCN deal also keeps the B1G appeal away. The GOR means no UNC, UVA, GT or even FSU. Where do they turn now? Texas maybe, but Texas isn't going anywhere because as we've all seen in the course of the past few months, they rule that roost in the panhandle 100%. We also have seen Texas' reluctance to give up the advantage that they hold over their B12 conference mates: their LHN. And to be honest, why would they give that up? Like Notre Dame's NBC deal, it's 100% theirs. They took advantage of poor foresight from the other B12 Presidents/ADs that are still in the conference and profited with their T3 rights. I can't see them wanting to give all of that up until they absolutely have to (read: half of the conference decides to bolt to the PAC or SEC). Aside from Kansas, who is a long-shot at best (only because they are a big hoops brand and are AAU), there are no other B12 members that the B1G would be interested in adding. The $50M/yr buy-in makes it an even more difficult case for Kansas - they can't support that number (very few schools out there can).
So, what does UConn do now? Probably the only thing it can - look into significantly boosting its revenue from TV be re-acquiring its Tier 3 media rights. Let's become the Texas of the G5, on a smaller scale. No G5 school comes anywhere close to the T3 value that UConn delivers. Let's use that to our advantage to continue to try to fund athletics at a P5 level while stuck in the G5. It also wouldn't hurt to become friendly with the bottom rung of the B12 (looking at you - WVU, KSU, ISU, Baylor, TT, OSU, TCU) since a future partnership of the top AAC schools (UConn, Cincinnati, Houston, Memphis, UCF, USF, Navy) and the rest of G5 (BYU, Boise, CSU) to form a "best of the rest" conference would seem like it would be in all of these schools' best interests. But again, there will only be so many seats in that conference and UConn will need to get one or it will have no choice but to drop funding across all sports to CUSA/MAC levels, including hoops.
This is bad, bad, bad, bad, very bad news for UConn. The greatest sack kick of all was saved for last.
