Flickr User: forty42two

Greetings from Asheville, NC. My wife had a work related trip that I decided to make with her and I'm currently enjoying a tall Yuengling at Buffalo Wild Wings and reading about this crazy news going on in college sports!

Yes...today I'm that guy that I see at the bar every afternoon and makes me angry because I have to do a show that afternoon. (I must say I am jealous of Jeff Zell from WBTW today, as he has got a ton of great news to get to!)

Speaking of this news, this is big. This is big for Notre Dame and it's massive for the ACC. I know... you're thinking it's not that big of a deal because they are only a partial member of football. But you are completely missing the boat on this if you think that's what is happening here. First off, here is why this is a great benefit to both Notre Dame and the ACC. Then we'll mix it up with some thoughts on who the final piece of the puzzle will be:

Why this is great for Notre Dame:

The easy answer is, the Big East is currently on life support. Notre Dame needed to be a part of a stronger conference  to keep up its level of success. I thought the Big Ten made the most sense (Jim Delaney has got to be furious with the news he woke up to this morning by the way) but the ACC did make sense as well. From an academic standpoint it's a good fit, plus Notre Dame is a national commodity. They can be part of any conference and with the addition of Pitt and Syracuse the ACC made that much more sense from a regional perspective. But here's the big reason Notre Dame needed to move...

The NCAA Playoffs are going to expand either via the NCAA or the conference will take it in their own hands. The NCAA will make double the money on the a 4-team playoff than it did in the entire bowl system. What does that figure go to with 8-teams? Or if they stay at 4-teams the conference could create their own national quarterfinal and make being a conference champion a critical component.

Weather you like it or not we are heading the direction of 16-team super conferences. Two eight team divisions and the championships can serve as either a national quarterfinal with 4 super conferences, or it will be a guarantee for the 4 champs to be in an 8-team playoff and then the losers are sweating it out that they get at large bids. So which conferences will get to 16 the quickest? Yesterday it was the ACC and SEC were the closest, and the Pac 12 is waiting to make its move with lots of options available including independent BYU who was so angry they did not get invited to the Pac 12 along with Utah they decided to leave everybody and go independent. Basically they told the Pac 12 instead of going to the prom with a dud, they were going to just sit at home and wait on their phone call.

Of those three conference, which one made the most sense for Notre Dame? The answer to this is very easy. There was never a thought of going to the SEC or Pac 12 for Notre Dame.

Why this was brilliant for the ACC? Hop on over to the Team Myrtle Beach Blog to read on!