Is The Shillelagh Game In Trouble?

It was announced yesterday that Notre Dame will move from the Big East to the ACC in all sports except for football and hockey. As per usual, ND has kept their football entity separate because, you know, it's such a national brand.

But there was something more significant in the announcement -- the Domers have committed to play five ACC schools per year in football. That's a big deal, actually. This year, for example, the Irish play no more than three schools from any one conference, with the three being the Big Ten (Purdue, Michigan, Michigan State). Playing five "conference games" (which is effectively what they are, even if they won't be reflected in the ACC standings) eats up a lot of real estate in ND's schedule.

Why am I bringing this up? Because Purdue and Notre Dame have played every year since the '40s (even though it's not a rivalry, remember) and I think that could be in danger.

Morgan Burke was quoted yesterday as saying it "only make sense" that Purdue and ND will continue their regular meetings, but I'm not sure it's something that Morgan can just hang back and assume will happen. It might take some effort/lobbying on his part.

Consider that Notre Dame AD Swarbrick said the Domers are committed to playing USC, Stanford and Navy every season. They also currently face Michigan and Michigan State on a regular basis, and it's fair to say that at least the game vs. Michigan is a marquee matchup on a more national level. If you assume those five games remain and then you add in five ACC games, Notre Dame is down to two slots left. They already have some agreements in place, such as Miami this year in Chicago and a home and home with Oklahoma starting this season, and while I'm too lazy to research their ongoing committments in this regard, it's safe to say Army and others might be already on the schedule in upcoming seasons.

The point is, the 12 game slots are more quickly and easily filled now. You might be thinking you remember reading that Purdue and ND are committed to play through early next decade, and you'd be partially right. But the ever-thorough Mike Carmin of the J&C reported the following:

The schools have an agreement to play annually through 2021, but only the 2013 and 2014 games have signed contracts.

According to information provided to the Journal & Courier through a public records request, the contract for the 2015 game hasn’t been signed and a “letter agreement” exists for the 2016 and 2017 matchups.

I find this interesting and telling. There are also reports that ND is already floating the fact that some of their regular opponents are going to need to get used to the idea of, for example, a two years on, two years off arrangement.

While Purdue and ND have a longstanding history of playing each other regularly, I think this may be the beginning of the end of having ND automatically on the schedule every year. From what Carmin reported, it looks like it would be tough for ND to get out of the games through 2014, but not difficult at all after that. I also think it would be possible for ND to negotiate with Burke and offer future guaranteed matchups (though not annually) in exchange for letting them out of those contracted 2013 and 2014 games. The point? This "rivalry" could dissipate faster than you think.

It also does bring me to a question: do you care? Vote in the poll to the right and let us know your thoughts on this in the comments.

Seth Davis is a Jack

Sure, PSU and IllinoiS did the Big Ten no favors last night with their awesome display of awesomeness in Champagne (maybe I caused this by bashing women's basketball last week?), but I'm still tired of the Big Ten taking shots from people who should know better.

This morning, Seth Davis was on the Dan Patrick Show and he was first asked about the 38-33 Naismith-esque game between the Kittens and the Illini. His response? Why, to take a shot at the Big Ten in general, of course:

"When I saw that, I wondered if they had gone back to the old rules where you had to have a jump ball at center court after every basket. Although that would have maybe been an improvement in the Big Ten this year."

The hell? Frick you, Seth Davis. You and your haughty, ACC-leaning self. He also went on to talk about how those in "lesser" conferences are sometimes in better position for the tourney because they're not grinding out tough games like those teams "in the ACC and Big East."

One of the things I recently discussed with Boilerdowd was how the mass media don't have any clue WHY the scores are generally lower in the Big Ten. It's not that it's weaker -- it's that our conference does this little thing called DEFENSE.

Did anyone watch Duke-UNC last week? There wasn't any defense in that game. They just ran up and down the court, nobody was even getting their hands up on defense, and when you have two teams full of all-American shooters, well, you KNOW they're going to score. And then -- presto! -- you've got a 90-80 kind of game. It's not rocket science.

Oh, and if you still think (and I know none of you do) the Big Ten is "weak," let's take a look at the conference RPI ratings.

Huh. That's funny. It looks to me -- and I'm no Seth Davis-level genius -- like the Big Ten is ranked the #2 conference... ahead of the Big (L)East and mere thousands of a point behind the ACC.

Do you know how long it took me to do that research? Four seconds. Sure, I'm biased, too, but I don't get paid to be knowledgeable on the subject.

Todd McShay Is A Handsome Man

I never had much of an opinion on Todd McShay, except that I was glad he was kind of challenging idiot extraordinaire Mel Kiper, Jr. for supremacy in evaluating college football talent.

But this morning McShay was co-hosting on ESPN Radio (filling into for the fat man / gay man combo) and he was asked to rank the college football conferences in terms of strongest to weakest. And despite the constant bashing of the Big Ten by ESPN and others, McShay actually referred to the Big Ten as "underrated," which made me want to hug him. McShay's rankings went as follows:

1. SEC (which would be #1 even if they weren't thanks to ESPN making sweet, sweet love to the SEC)

2. Big 12 (which I might argue with since yes they have some great teams but also a lot of lousy programs)

3. Big Ten

4. Pac Ten

5. Big East

6. ACC ("ha ha!" -- insert Simpsons sound effect here)

I think this is the most fair representation of the various conferences I've seen in a long time. Of course, I'm sure ACC supporters wouldn't agree, and I could possibly see flip-flopping them with the Big (L)East, but again, I can't argue too much.