Notre Dame got everything they wanted, and more, from ACC

I ’m on vacation, yet if I didn’t write about this monumental day, I’d feel like I cheated y’all…

                For 20-some years I’ve been the Observer’s NBA writer. Before that I covered Syracuse (right out of college at Syracuse through the 1987 title game).  I came to the Observer to cover the ACC at large, spent seven months in Raleigh, then came to Charlotte to start covering pro basketball in Charlotte.

                So I appreciate how the Big East was formed, how the ACC has evolved and how major deals are made.

                 Notre Dame got the better of the ACC today. I suspect it’s still palatable, because at some hypothetical date down the line (not necessarily as soon as the end of the NBC contract), adding the Irish will make great sense.

                Here’s what bothers me – and not a little – about the deal the ACC forged: When the Irish aren’t very good in football (that happens far more often than the “Wake up the echoes’’ guys contend), Notre Dame is part of the ACC bowl pecking order.

                Think about that: If the Irish are 12-0, they don’t have to play a title game in Charlotte to get into a BCS game. They don’t have to share revenue with ACC teams if they win the national championship.

 Yet when they’re bad, they can hopscotch over Wake Forest and N.C. State and Boston College, regardless of whether they’re better.

                That’s wrong. Not a little wrong. Yet all the schools in the ACC were OK with this bargain. Now, it might not matter historically who plays in some bowl named after a weed-whacker. But those things become strangely emphatic when fans can see the diss in December.

                I get why Notre Dame was a great “get’’ for the ACC. But don’t think for a minute this wasn’t a massive concession because the Irish are the Irish.