I have no agenda for you to like ND at all. ND is just one of those schools you either do or you don't and nothing will change your opinion ever. What I do have a problem with is this lack of knowledge on the whole ND/money football thing. It has been over a decade if not more since ND was leveled in that regard. They use to get a full conference share of payouts. That hasn't been the case in forever. There is a special clause that only allows them to net so much and that amount is less than the payout of EVERY single B1G, SEC, and B12 school gets. Their tv contract is also less than EVERY single B1G, SEC, B12, and now PAC12 school. That's fact, well documented and has been for awhile. If you maintain that only football matters, than you are correct..they bring nothing to the table just like all the other non-football schools in the BE. As far as the rest of their sports, you're right most wouldn't care. ND is routinely at the top in nearly every BE sport. They can be replaced is one or two by a school, but there isn't any school that's coming to the BE that's going to complete for a top 3 placement in 10 different sports. If you think that bringing superior teams and high standards of academics and prestige is taking away from the BE so be it. I think they are bringing that to the BE. Other schools have it as well, ND's just adds to what already exists. ND has most definitely benefited from being in a conference with UConn. Just like every other school. Just like UConn benefited from other schools back in the day when they didn't have a football team and weren't worthy of even mentioning in basketball. ND didn't back out of a deal, it's upholding exactly what they said they would. There was no way of knowing what was going to happen to football. ND will have to join a league fairly soon. For women's basketball sake I hope it's the BE.
The issue is not what ND has or hasn't scooped in from TV revenues, it is what they could have done to prevent the BE from contorting. If ND was not concerned about the TV revenues, it would have been a no brainer for them to come into the BE. I know, they have of these great traditional rivalries they need to preserve. Only thing is, in a nine team conference they could have kept many of those rivalries going with 4 OOC games and maybe having to skip a year here and there with the those schools.
As to UConn. it was an original member of the Big East when the league had no football and few of the schools had football or D1 football. . The only real case about UConn maybe not being in the BE at that time was that it didn't fit the big TV market model the league was fashioned on. They got in, among other factors, because of Dee Rowe's close relationship with Dave Gavitt and UConn's somewhat well-regarded stature as a hoops program in New England. When the league added football, the choice was not whether or net to jettison the teams that didn't have D1 FB, because there wouldn't have been much of a hoops league left, but to add teams who had all the major sports. ND was added later without FB because the league was interested in the Chicago TV market and the league was still being driven by the hoops mentality. It is hard to imagine any other major conference taking ND without the only true value it brings to a sports league.
Nobody is saying ND didn't give what they were originally signed up to do. But things change and if one really believes that the league benefited as a major sports conference from ND's deals with them in other sports
despite this recent spate of realignments, and that ND was giving up anything related to their most valuable commodity, no way I can agree with that. Moreover, as I said originally, at the very least I believe their women's hoops program has benefited from being in UConn's league and their men's hoops program is certainly better off than if they were independent in this era. Their other programs are probably better off being in a major conference as well.
The only thing in a sports sense they have of value in the sad big-time era we are in is their football. For what reason lord only knows since they haven't been a great annual power for a long time. But that is their blessing . And they could have stepped up to the plate for the BE, but they didn't for financial reasons. I agree that they probably will be forced into a league, and we'll see how warm their ties are to the BE when that day comes. Don't hold your breath. As for ND's academics, as fine as they are, their entry into the league had next to nothing to do with their academics and all to do with their sports aura, which is all about football and not about any of their other fine teams. Which is too bad, BTW, because those other teams should have been grabbing more attention than their football team. C'est la vie. If there are people who think the BE is prestigious because of ND's academics, they probably wonder why ND is bothering with a bunch of state universities not named Cal Berkeley, Michigan or UVA and mid-tier academically secular colleges. (Don't get mad at me, I'm UConn all they way and it is a wonderful school, but there are some places it hasn't yet gone academically.) I just happen to think that pulling for a program connected to ND just because they are in the BE ignores that "special" relationship the Irish have and they care not about the football-driven realignment. You know why? Because they know they can get to any safe haven whenever they need to.
I don't much care for the way the BE looks now. I must be old-fashioned, but I'd rather not have a collegiate conference whose geography looks like a major league professional sport. The weird thing is that the only "natural" rivalries left are among mostly teams that weren't part of the conference, some not even a few years ago. And even those are not historic rivalries. The arguable rivalries in football now are UConn-RU, USF-UCF, SMU-Houston and Cincy-Lville. None of those interlock with any of the others. ND is the only program that could have prevented the bolting of the recent 3.
