Did you ever think that ND doesn't play a SEC or B10 schedule because maybe they might lose and God forbid, miss a bowl game?
I do think your wrong about ACC schools not wanting U of L in the conference. We were only 1 of 2 teams to win a freaking bowl game this year. Up until the Pitino/Mack/Payne fiasco we heped give the ACC the reputation of being the best basketball conference in the country. I know it has to do with Coach K, Roy, Boeheim and Bennett retiring but I also think when we went down so did the ACC. Oh, and I didn't have to put in ALL CAPS for you.
Notre Dame's scheduling philosophy comes from way back, from well before the SEC was even founded. It has nothing to do with strength of schedule. But rather adhering to a national coast-to-coast schedule.
A hundred-plus years ago, Notre Dame took a negative (a blatant boycott by Big Ten schools against ND's football program) and turned it into a positive -- a national schedule that allowed them to grow their fan base exponentially.
The boycott led by Michigan turned Notre Dame into the powerhouse they are today.
It cracks me up to see message board takes pushing for another boycott "until they join a conference". It's as misguided now as it was a hundred years ago.
As far as Louisville and the ACC goes ...... (by the way, Notre Dame stepped up for us
bigtime to get in the ACC) ...... it's not hard to find bias against the Cardinals.
At first, we were the new kid on the block with crappy academics that they were forced to take because Maryland was broke as all hell so they bolted to the Big Ten in a money grab.
Over the past ten years we've lost the new kid but added massive NCAA scandals to the crappy academics. (To be clear, "crappy academics" is their perception -- U of L's mandate is far different from the bluest of blue blood schools in the ACC. Even so, U of L is making massive strides in those areas too.)
NC State fans are worse than the academic snobs because they (rightly) perceived us as a threat to their standing in the league. The old Big East schools don't feel that way. But they're more agnostic to us than anything else.
Don't kid yourself. There's a pretty big chunk of the ACC that is embarrassed to have us in their league.
