(01-26-2018 09:27 PM)TerryD Wrote:  

(01-26-2018 08:25 PM)AllTideUp Wrote:  

(01-26-2018 06:55 PM)TerryD Wrote:  

(01-26-2018 02:56 PM)AllTideUp Wrote:  At this place and time, they have a mutually beneficial relationship. I'm not saying otherwise.

What I'm saying though is the ACC allowed ND as a partial because it needed the Irish and was willing to fudge on standard requirements. There is likely to come a day though where these circumstances are no longer in play. Perhaps it will be that the ACC grows ever stronger and simply doesn't need ND as a partial. I think it's very reasonable to say at that point that ACC leadership would tell ND that we need you to go all in and if not, that's fine, but we need to move on from this arrangement. Even the MAC did essentially that with UMass and the economic potential was very different in that case.

The other side of my point was ND would still likely face a decision either way. It's entirely possible that the ACC will become so weak that it dissolves and ND will have to do something different at that point.

I think it's unlikely that the ACC will always be what it is right now...a 4th or 5th place league in a world that's trying to trim down to something more cohesive.

(01-26-2018 11:44 AM)TerryD Wrote:  Agreed. The idea of someone "forcing" ND to join a football conference is nothing more than message board fan chowder. It is not going to happen.

No one can force ND to anything they don't want to do, I understand. What I'm saying is that a league is only going to be willing to give ND a special arrangement as long as that arrangement is optimally beneficial. If the circumstances change then no league will give ND a special deal.

Just as no one can force ND to join a league, ND can't force the ACC or anyone else to offer a special arrangement if the economics dictate that every member needs to be equal.

ND is a full legal member of the ACC. Full. They just don't play football, but legally the same as North Carolina.

This is fantasy on the part of other fans. The ACC is not going to ever do anything regarding ND but the status quo.

Oh come on now...

You're outnumbered and the rest of the ACC has full freedom to demand what they want. In the current climate, they simply don't have the leverage.

ND is special, but they're not that special. If the economics move in favor of the ACC union then they'll expect ND to take the plunge. No one has ever given ND a special arrangement because they thought it was deserved. That's not even a variable in such an equation. They offered it up because it was mutually beneficial. The fact that the ACC offered you full membership without full commitment was simply a sign of their weakness. Perhaps the only other Power league that would have done that was the Big 12 and that conference isn't likely to be around much longer.

If you expect the ACC to never evolve in any way then I think you're going to be sorely disappointed. College athletics has been in a constant state of flux from day one. It's too decentralized to be anything else. Nothing stays stagnant, you're either moving forward or falling behind.

It's like I was saying in one of the other threads...the world of college athletics has evolved and ND has yet to adjust.

Show me the legal mechanism within the ACC to throw out a full member over football independence......

They don't need one.

From a purely practical perspective, the membership of the ACC could decide to vote you out for whatever reason they desire. I strongly suspect each conference has a set of bylaws that allow discretion for the overwhelming majority of the membership to decide with whom they will associate. Theoretically, there could be penalties for such action, but I doubt they would be prohibitive. I'm sure any single member has certain protections guaranteed, but at the end of the day a club is a club. ND has no more legal right to force an association with a collection of public schools(or private ones for that matter) than any other entity would.

What ND has, according to any agreement they might have signed with the ACC, is a collections of rights and privileges that rely on the consensus of the whole. Let's say the whole decides to alter the bylaws and state that each member must participate in any fielded sport in which the conference sponsors a championship.

In all seriousness, who's going to stop them? ND has one vote and that's it. After all, we're talking about business contracts here, not laws that require a literal act of Congress.

Now obviously, this is not going to happen anytime soon, but that wasn't my point. My point is that if the ACC grows economically stronger in the next couple of decades then everyone's playing a different game. The economics change and the leverage changes.

Or perhaps it works this way...

Perhaps it's a matter of ACC weakness and not strength.

When the GOR is up, any current membership is up in the air because there will be freedom of movement...remember that these contracts aren't ironclad. That creates openings for negotiations. Perhaps some of the more powerful members say to ND, you go all in or we'll take advantage of opportunities elsewhere because your lack of commitment is damaging our earning potential.

Then let's say ND says no. Well, powerful members bail at that point and ND is left with fewer options as to what to do with their sports outside of football.