Re: Conference changes and impact on college baseball

> That's all that I'm aware of, and, as usual, you're ahead of me on this.
> There are still some open negotiations, with TCU being courted by the
> Mountain West as the most notorious.

Recently, Notre Dame has been doing research on being a full time
conference member in all sports. At the moment, they belong to the Big
East in some sports. Some in the ACC tried to have them included in
the ACC's expansion, but the Irish were cool to the idea, and the ACC
ended up taking in Boston College, Miami, and VT instead. Although
ND had once rejected an overture from the Big Ten, most feel they will
end up there, giving the Big Ten enough schools to have a championship
football game. That's certainly the best conference for them in terms of
maintaining historic rivalries, as well as keeping travel costs down. They
might instead opt to fully join the Big East. The intention there would be
to resuscitate their moribund football program by beating up on conference
patsies, and snaring the Big East's BCS bid. The Big East would love them
to go full, since the addition of the Conference USA teams might not keep
their football prestige high enough to hold onto that automatic BCS slot.
But I think they'll keep it even if ND stays on the sidelines. Penn State
keeps getting mentioned in conference movements, as well. Their football
program has seemingly also declined since they have joined the Big Ten.

Jeff