Transitioning Away from the Big Ten the Right Choice for ND

One of the more frustrating and difficult concepts in life is hindsight. Every one of us stumbles across a defining moment where a decision must be made to better secure our future, a matter made problematic given the rarity of complete information when selecting a concluding path. Adding to the pressure, hindsight often taunts our decision-making with its omnipotent weapon, the passage of time. I personally can recall far too many instances where hindsight made a decision of mine seem foolish, like talking up my track record of responsibility at a job interview only to later realize I had locked my keys inside my car in the parking lot. But there are certain instances where hindsight appears as a kind friend, offering a clear view of the wise decision that was made.

“The fathers are holy on Sunday, and they’re holy hell on the rest of the week. You just can’t trust those damn Catholics on a Thursday or a Friday, and so, literally, I can say that,” said E. Gordon Gee, Ohio State’s president, in regard to the University of Notre Dame at an Ohio State Athletic Council meeting in December.

“The Notre Dame, that rivalry, which they’re chickening out of…they’re still going to play Michigan State, they’ll play Purdue, they don’t want to play Michigan,” said Michigan Wolverines head coach, Brady Hoke, at the West Michigan Sports Commission several weeks ago.

With friends like these…

The fact is, the underlying tension and animosity between Notre Dame and the Big Ten has always been present, and the quotes from Gee and Hoke are nothing new. Former Penn State head coach, Joe Paterno, publicly stated the Big Ten should pass on Notre Dame as a member, as ND has “had their chance.” Former Wisconsin head coach Bret Bielema didn’t mince words in 2007 when Notre Dame landed a BCS bowl over his Badgers.

“I understand why certain teams get exemptions. I don’t understand why Notre Dame does. If they want to play by conference rules, join a conference. They don’t take, maybe, into consideration past bowl history. Notre Dame hasn’t won in the last nine bowl appearances, or whatever it is. And to me, we’ve proven over time that we deserve the opportunity.”

This week has offered horizon-wide images of hindsight upon Notre Dame athletic director Jack Swarbrick’s decision to affiliate Notre Dame with the Atlantic Coast Conference, and the results are extremely positive. Notre Dame made the right call. In addition to escaping the intermittently overt hostility between Notre Dame and the Big Ten, the ACC is simply a better fit. Yes, Notre Dame is geographically closer to Big Ten members, and the Fighting Irish and the Big Ten share a rich tradition. But the similarities end there. Most of the Big Ten consists of large public universities, with the lone exception being Northwestern. The ACC possesses a multitude of private college (Boston College, Syracuse, Wake Forest, Duke and Miami) akin to Notre Dame in design, a comforting welcome mat compared to the anomaly the Fighting Irish would have been had an affiliation been struck with the Big Ten.

The biggest boon Notre Dame has netted with its relationship with the ACC is access to talent. As the table below illustrates, 152 recruits listed on the Rivals 250 are from the South, roughly 61%. And with ACC members peppered throughout the Southern region of the United States, Notre Dame will have its brand invading the Mason Dixon line and familiarizing itself with the best of America’s talent in ways it simply could not have accomplished in previous years.

The strength of Notre Dame’s relationship with the ACC extends far beyond access to talent – it includes excitability and income. It surely wasn’t lost on ACC officials that when Notre Dame headed to Atlanta in 2006 to play Georgia Tech, tickets were sold out within the first two hours of availability to the public, and the 450 members of the media that descended upon Bobby Dodd Stadium were the most in Georgia Tech history. Such anticipation already has the Clemson-Notre Dame matchup in 2015 at Death Valley, the first matchup between the two since 1979, being tabbed as one of the hardest tickets to get by the local media two years before kickoff.

Hindsight illustrated very clearly this week to the Irish faithful that Notre Dame made the right decision by taking the ACC route. And despite the South’s emergence as a superpower of football talent and production, the Big Ten has recently announced its intention to increase its conference schedule to nine games. Instead of reaching out to Southern talent, the Big Ten has opted to build a wall and slowly asphyxiate itself from the inside.

Notre Dame’s affiliation with the ACC will begin soon enough, and the hostility-fueled utterances of the likes of Hoke and Gee will be nothing more than sound waves echoing off a wall of fading glory that only ghosts of Big Ten past will be able to hear.

Scott Janssen is a blogger for the Huffington Post and has authored several nationally-featured articles as well as co-founded a nationally-featured non-profit organization. In his spare time he takes his NCAA Football ’13 online dynasty way too seriously and alienates those around him by discussing football 24 hours a day. Scott can be reached at scottjanssenhp@gmail.com.