Sebastabear said:
MrGPAC said:
Sebastabear said:
I've staked out my position on this but I'll just say it again. Notre Dame is not joining the Big Ten. Not now and probably not ever. They value their independence and their unique role within college football. They are not giving that up almost under any circumstance. That is without taking into account the legal and contractual obligations they have to the ACC. I have yet to see a single analyst write anything explaining how Notre Dame could get out of that contract or the financial arrangement that could make that work. Probably because they can't.
So speculation as to what happens to Cal if Notre Dame join the Big Ten is IMHO not particularly relevant. Cal will join the Big Ten eventually - I just hope "eventually" is soon.
There are only two ways that ND joins the B1G.
Path 1) This is by far the most likely path... Conference reallignment leaves us with 2 super conferences, the B1G and the SEC. Both conferences are 24+ teams in size, and have absorbed whats left of the ACC/Pac12/Big12. At this point the two conferences essentially make a new league with its own rules regarding paying athletes/NIL/etc. The playoffs/championship games end up including ONLY teams from these TWO conferences.
This would make the "playoffs" something along the lines of the 4 division champs in each conference is round 1 (8 teams), then a conference championship game between those winners (4 teams), and winner of SEC vs winner of B1G for the championship, with no room for an independent team to get in.
Path 2) The money difference becomes too large to ignore. If being in the B1G gets the Irish 200 million and not being in the B1G gets them 10 million, they may consider it.
I don't see 2 happening any time soon. There are realistic paths towards 1 happening.
Generally agree with two (probably substantive) quibbles. The first being that the path you have outlined in option 1 presupposes the disintegration of not only the Pac 12 but also the ACC. And the ACC at least is locked up through 2036 under the guarantee of rights. I still haven't seen anything substantive written that would explain how that goes away or gets annulled. There are constituencies in the ACC that will lose almost everything if the GOR is gone and their votes are required. So the ACC I believe is going to live well into the next decade, by which point the die will already have been cast on Cal and Notre Dame.
The second quibble would be that even in a two super conference situation, the chance that a special accommodation would be made for Notre Dame is not zero. I mean just look at the Pac 12. We have tied ourselves in knots and blown up major traditions just to accommodate their scheduling desire around playing USC and Stanford. And that's just to have them play a couple of our teams, not participate in a playoff. Notre Dame gets away with murder and always has and as far as I can tell probably always will. They simply draw too many eyeballs to their games. Love them or hate them they have a huge and massive following and that equals money and money is driving all of this. Super conference or no people are going to let them do what they want to do. So I come back to just not seeing them giving up on their much valued independence. They simply love being "special" too much.
I don't think either scenario is particularly likely, but a 2 super conference league that plays for its own championship and the only way for ND to participate is to be in it is more likely than a money difference too large to ignore.
As noted, such a thing really requires the ACC to collapse. The SEC and B1G effectively took out the Big12 and Pac12 as legitimate competitors by taking Texas/Oklahoma/USC/UCLA, but the ACC contract makes things really difficult. If any school is able to get out of the ACC GoR contract, then it will be open season, with the B1G and SEC taking their pick of the Pac12/Big12/ACC, with the rest being left in what will effectively be a lesser league.
IF that happens, I see the paths to the championship shrinking (if not being eliminated) for teams outside the two super conferences. What's worse for a team like Notre Dame, I see the schools having more conference games. You can't have a conference with 24+ teams and have teams never play each other in conference. The conferences will adopt 10-11 conference game schedules. With more conference games happening, there will be fewer out of conference games to go around, making it harder for Notre Dame to get to a full schedule.
The Pac12 bends over backwards, for instance, to let USC/Stanford play Notre Dame outside the first 3 games of the season. No one else in the conference has an OOC game outside the first 3 games of the season in the Pac12. I don't know that a 24-30 team B1G makes such concessions (especially when they want ND to join them anyways).