Notre Dame has shown its hand. That is a variable that does impact. The ACC, in taking "Notre Freaking Dame" as described above, is STILL a non-all sports deal. Three of the Big 5 conferences would not offer such. Even the discussions with the B12 may have had "conditions" beyond what the ACC accepted. And prior to the last discussions whereby the ACC Presidents got involved, the ACC had maintained an "all sports" stance per Notre Dame. Perhaps the ACC accepted the deal due to their perceived own vulnerabilities and/or future TV contracting also heavily weighed in.

As to ND having a seat at the table equal to a full conference, that has continued to be the case. But it is also enabling by those that bestow. Agree with a comment ctx48c made earlier, that ND's future interests need to be via the ACC at the conference table. Otherwise, it is giving ND and the ACC way too much disproportionate influence. Some shall notice.

Nine's scrapped. Eight it is!

How long until the official ND football to ACC announcement, you think?

Oh dang! Looks like it's gonna happen.

In practical terms, ND would be just 3 fb games short of essentially being a full ACC member. While the arrangement with the ACC looks near ideal for ND, you know there is going to be near future pressure on ND from inside the ACC to give a complete commitment. In the BE's hybrid design, ND had allies to stay fb independent with low and ineffective pressure
to offer more.

It's a honeymoon right now with the ACC; but when the future issues related to disbursements, playoff factors, CCG, new TV contract negotiating, scheduling adjustments, etc., kick-in and show patterns, ND could eventually succumb to the new realities.

Swofford is shrewd enough he could sell a 1978 Ford Pinto to Jay Leno.

Agreed. Right now, things are set up where the ACC feels they benefit from ND being a member for basketball and other sports. Having ND play 5 games per season versus ACC schools gives the ACC schools futher TV presences via the ND audience, gets them onto even more NE and Midwest TV sets. Unlike the Big East situation, the ACC requires the 5 games, versus hoping that ND will schedule games.

For now it works as it keeps ND from the Big 12. But yes, in the future that could change if the landscape changes. There's also the next TV contract to consider.

That said, there might be something to the language ND has used. They keep talking about USC, Stanford and Navy. You here those 3 schools over and over again. How many schools is that? It's 3. If the ACC has an 8 game schedule, how many games, say, 5-6 years from now would each member have for OOC games? 3. So who knows...maybe that is
the long term plan by the ACC: to make an arrangement but keep it on the DL for ND to save face. Because can have time to transition from indy to ACC...keep many of the committments and see how things play out being a member of the ACC for other sports. Like a trial run.

That said, it's all speculation. At this point, I would assume ND is more than content with their arrangement: they get the ACC for other sports, play 5 FB games versus the ACC but get to remain indy. But if they find that being 1-2 loss indy gets them nothing regarding the playoff but a 1-2 loss ACC member benefits, only then would ND give the ACC as a full member a thought.

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So here's how you'll know whether Notre Dame is transitioning to Full 8-game football membership in the ACC, or will stop at the 5 ACC opponents per season:

To go all in with the ACC, Notre Dame needs to get their OOC (non-ACC) schedule down to 4 games.
Three of those 4 will be USC, Stanford, and Navy. That leaves room for only one more....

Notre Dame just backed out of their annual rivalry with Michigan.
Keep an eye on whether they choose to renew or cancel their current annual rivalry series with Michigan State and Purdue......

As it stands now, it will take ND three years to swing around the ACC. My understanding is that they will truly rotate those games rather than having an anchor or two (BC, Pitt). Full membership would require a less than desirable 16th member (UConn, Rutgers), two 8 team divisions and only one or two cross-division games. Thus half the ACC teams would play ND only rarely compared to every three years. Not likely to gain support IMO.

I can't see how 8 would work. The NC schools would have to be in the same division then if there was only going to be one cross over game. Unless NCST and Duke and UNC and WF won't be playing anymore.

I'm not so sure that wouldn't gain support. Possibly not enough support to get it to pass but I think it would gain some support. If you break the divisions down the old ACC/Big East Conference lines you end up with:

Big East
Miami
Notre Dame
Boston College
Pittsburgh
Syracuse
Virginia Tech
(Rutgers/UConn)

ACC
UNC
Duke
NC State
Wake Forest
Georgia Tech
Clemson
Maryland
Virginia
Florida State

Someone from the ACC side would have to move over to the Big East side. I see a few of options here, not in any particular order:
1) Florida State to keep the Florida schools together and keeps the Old ACC (as in pre-1990) together.
2) Maryland is the farthest North member and would create a bastardized version of North Division-South Divisions.
3) Virginia who fought so hard to get Virginia Tech into the conference would stay in the same division as Virginia Tech.
4) Georgia Tech used to have a rivalry with Notre Dame and isn't a founding member of the ACC.

I think any of these options would gain some support. Enough to go with one of these plans is the question.

Maybe pods of 4

A - ND, Miami, GT, BC
B - UNC, NCST, Duke, WF
C - Pitt, UConn, Syracuse, Maryland
D - UVA, VT, Clemson, FSU

You play the three in your pod, four in another pod (which rotates each year), and then you have one rivalry game that depends on which pod you play. For example, ND's rival could be Pitt unless Pod A plays Pod C in which case it becomes WF.

Even without the intrigue of future ND football membership, the 5'er really made eight games a no-brainer. Expecting five schools to sacrifice one OOC for ND with the nine-game conference slate was not one that would have went over well for some of these ACC schools (especially GT, Clemson, and FSU), or those affected (East Carolina on years when UNC and NCST get ND). That single OOC game would HAVE to be a cupcake played at home. Since those games, unless played as the opener, tend not to bring in money as people thought they would, it's a total loss for the program, even if they do well on the year.

All these scheduling issues with ACC is proof the ACC is just too big of a conference.

Ditto the SEC at 14, Atlantic 10 of all things a basketball league with 16 members, and finally the Big East is something like 17/2 or is it 12/7/2 members or Big 19?

TV revenue has ruined the conference alignment world along with the NCAA not having the ability or maybe better stated the b@lls to prevent conference from expanding beyond a unwieldy 12 membership size.

Why can the NCAA force a conference to have 8 members to be a valid conference and 12 member to play a championship game, yet heaven forbid place a limit on conference size?

The ACC changing back to 8 conference games to accommodate non football school Notre dame makes Florida State and Clemson happy while Virginia Tech gets screwed by getting to play the ACC football flagship school Florida State once every millennium.

The SEC coaches are unhappy with unbalance schedules with some teams playing Alabama and LSU while their division rivalries may not face either in the same season. All for the sake of money requiring 7 team divisions. Missouri in the East division of the SEC is ridiculous.

Any conference having more than 10 schools is pushing the limits, any conference having more than 12 schools is unwieldy, and finally any conference having 16 or more schools is heading for a guaranteed implosion.

What happens when Notre Dame is finally forced to join the ACC and there is breakaway of the following schools because the ACC had to expand to 16.

Notre Dame
Florida State
Miami Fl
Georgia Tech
Clemson
North Carolina
Duke
Virginia Tech
Maryland
Pitt

Indeed, take Clemson, for example. Last year or so, they signed an upcoming series with nearby Georgia. Am not sure what is to happen with that one. Can you imagine Clemson playing OOCs' Georgia, South Carolina, and Notre Dame along with in-conference FSU? So Clemson's lone "cupcake so to speak" OOC would be Furman, Wofford, The Citadel or SC State. Both So. Car. & Clemson agreed to rotate in playing some State of South Carolina FCS schools. Some years, some of those FCS are not so much a cupcake.

What it means is there's going to be more constrained scheduling flexibility for some in the ACC. While playing big OOC games offers great exposure & TV revenue; these affected schools also want to get to lucrative bowls, and having a couple of OOCs' that are easy enough to help them get there by counting wins. Also, so many OOCs' have been used as warm-ups for conference play, and teams don't want to be exhausted for the tough ones.

I can see some may complain.

In practicality, 2 games on the ND schedule need to be guarantee one-and-done games so that the school maintains 7 home games (or 6 in South Bend and 1 Shamrock Series game that ND controls the ticket sales for). Thus, if ND were to go to a full 8-game ACC schedule (which won't happen, as I'll get to in a moment), they can really only schedule 2 home-and-home series (in which case Navy and USC would be prioritized).

It's very difficult to understand what independence means to ND alums without being around them all of the time. It's not a really important issue... instead, it's the ONLY issue. There is ZERO rationalizing with those people, which is why I will never buy that ND joining the ACC as a full member is anywhere close to being an inevitability. There literally has to be an explicit rule that ND *must* be in a conference to win a national title or else the alums will absolutely not agree to it (and there is no school that is more held hostage by its alums than ND). Getting passed over by the selection committee for a playoff isn't going to cut it, as their alums will actually turn it into a "powerful people are biased against independence" campaign issue and become even more entrenched just like they still draw up stories from nearly a century ago about how Michigan was bigoted against Catholics to talk about how fundamental independence is to them. (Even then, the hypothetical that ND would get passed over in the playoff race doesn't hold water for me practically since ND plays among the toughest schedules every year and gets TONS of media love. We're not talking about Boise State having to convince selection committee members that they're worthy - ND would get the benefit of the doubt over any similarly situated team other than the SEC champ.)

What's blatantly obvious to 99% of the rest of world is looked at completely different by ND people due to legit brainwashing. What looks like a simple extra 3 games to you and me to play a full ACC schedule is looked upon as ripping out the Golden Dome and sending hate mail to the Pope to them. (I'm telling you, they must spend several hours on the history of independence on day one of freshman orientation at ND because every single ND alum that I've ever met, whether young or old, parrots the EXACT SAME STORY. IT'S LIKE THE CATHOLIC BORG.) ND alums simply do not think (and are actually *incapable* of thinking) like normal people on this issue at all. Always remember this.

Yeah, I imagine Clemson getting Notre Dame as its first game, at home, and then the second being a decent Wofford team, again at home. Wofford doesn't exactly pack it in, and Clemson fans and students won't likely jam the seats. "Assured victory" most would assume. All the while, the football team gets tested by one of FCS's better clubs. What did Clemson gain, other than pictures for next season's booster rag and SC state government feeling rosy that their schools compete against each other?

I'm glad nine was dumped. I wish nine was dumped everywhere, if just to allow for more variety in a 12-game season. If only the regional snobbery could go away, too, and we could see a good overall product.