The possibility of Notre Dame joining the Atlantic Coast Conference appears to have dwindled significantly, according to Duke Athletic Director Joe Alleva.
"The [ACC] presidents said that for someone to be a member of the conference, you have to be a full member of the conference," Alleva told The Chronicle Monday afternoon. "You can't leave out football. Unless there's a radical change at Notre Dame, I think that eliminates Notre Dame. I don't think they're going to budge on football."
It is clear that ACC officials have been paying attention to the flurry of media coverage regarding the ACC's courting of Notre Dame. Several conference presidents held a teleconference Saturday--Duke President Nan Keohane said she was "unable to participate"--during which the officials reaffirmed the fact that any ACC school, present or future, would be required to participate fully in all sports. Indeed, the Fighting Irish are content with their long-time independent status in football, Notre Dame's associate athletic director John Heisler told The Chronicle last week.
N.C. State chancellor Marye Anne Fox told the Associate Press that no decision had been made about any school during the teleconference.
"What we talked about was the importance of affirming the principles on which this conference has been built, which are equity and full participation," she said.
Alleva told The Chronicle last week that "11 is not an ideal number", and told the Associated Press this weekend that he thinks the ACC should hold a football championship game.
"To do that, we're probably going to need a 12th team," Alleva said.
However, Keohane told The Chronicle last week that she was not interested in expanding the ACC beyond 11, regardless of the identify of the new member.
Alleva, along with other ACC athletic directors and school officials--Miami's and Virginia Tech's included--will assemble today and tomorrow in Charlottesville, Va., to discuss conference realignment for the 2004-05 season. Whether or not the latest Notre Dame news is on the meeting's agenda is uncertain, as a statement released by the ACC's Council of Presidents Saturday indicated.
"At the current time, our institutions' energies and efforts are being directed towards policies that are needed in moving forward with an 11-team conference," Clemson University President and Council of Presidents chair James Barker said.
Possible conference realignments, with the only certainty being a five-member division and six-member division, could possibly include a small-school and big-school split, regional groupings, or competitive allegiances. For example, it is possible that football powers Florida State, Virginia Tech and Miami would refuse to all be in the same division because the teams could easily cancel each other out in the hunt for Bowl Championship Series berths (consequently, each of those teams is ranked in this week's Associated Press top five). However, there will also be much emphasis placed on maintaining traditional rivalries, such as the relationship between the four North Carolina-based schools: Duke, North Carolina, North Carolina State and Wake Forest.
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