Am I the only one casting a wary eye to the proposed ACC expansion based on it giving greater exposure to the athletic teams from Boston College? Probably. Ah, rivalry. Or "rivalry," as about the only thing we have an actual rivalry with BC in is hockey, which will be unaffected by the move. Football is an obvious wash, and getting BC on the hoops schedule was already a chance thing. We hold our own with them in the non-revenue sports, which is nice but not particularly satisfying.

On the one hand I'm not sure why the ACC would go after BC, given that it's out of the way and would have some of the smaller facilities in the league. On the other, it makes sense to include another northeast school if you're going after Syracuse, so all those sports can do a New York and Massachusetts swing before heading back down below the Mason-Dixon Line. Also, if you're going to add a recent football national titlist and the reigning hoops champ, would may want the third addition to be someone who can be a patsy as easily as a contender.

And, after looking at this thing, the Big East does appear to be in serious trouble. Its survival is clearly contingent on maintaining a credible football presence. The key to that is to get Notre Dame to join. You can imagine the big wad of cash that'll take, especially as the future ND schedules are less and less Big East heavy. If the move takes place, ND will have no Big East teams on its schedule in 2006. And to accomodate a Big East schedule, they'd have to drop at least a couple of the semi-traditional games against Michigan, Michigan State, Stanford, Air Force, and Purdue.

Building from within the other Big East members is a no-go. UConn is technically a full D1 program, and their 2003 schedule reflects their status - a couple of 1AA teams, some MAC goodness, and major conference weak sisters like Wake Forest and Indiana. They do nod to their Big East destiny with BC, Virginia Tech, and Rutgers. But they'd need to come along faster to help now.

Outside of UConn, pickings are slim. Villanova has a good thing going in A-10 football and seems to have little interest in ramping up their program. Georgetown is getting its hat handed to it in the Patriot Conference. St. John's "reformulated" their program into the grave (is it a Mike Jarvis thing?). Seton Hall and PC have no football.

Poaching also looks like a poor substitute. Louisville and Cincinnait are probably the most poachable teams from CUSA, but neither really addresses the football part of things (they'd also still only have 7 teams). Getting Marshall to jump the MAC seems unlikely, and isn't the sort of marquee name needed. Even if they get all three to jump, we're looking at an east coast version of the Mountain West Conference, which probably isn't what the Big East going for.

The final option, outside of closing up shop, would be for the Big East to retrench as a basketball-focused conference and let the members with football compete as independents. This is almost worse than death, as the lack of football money would hamper the league elsewhere.

Then again, we may be sounding the death knell too early. Miami says it has "no timetable" to make the jump, and there's an economic argument that suggests that the current ACC schools may not profit from the increased enrollment. So perhaps this'll wind up being a tempest in a teapot, though I still think it'll happen.