Article from today's Chicago Tribune

[mr.MUskie]

By Brian Hamilton, Chicago Tribune reporter

9:16 p.m. CDT, September 18, 2011
Syracuse and Pittsburgh, part of the Big East bedrock, are headed to the ACC. Oklahoma and Texas likely will empower their presidents Monday to explore a move, and they might go west by the end of the week.

Texas A&M is already on the go to the SEC. Connecticut and Rutgers frantically sniff around. West Virginia is open to anything. Notre Dame is clinging to football independence while trying to swim parallel to the prevailing undertow.

This isn't musical chairs. It's a slam dance, everyone bloodying everyone else with titanium-spiked elbows. And no one can make sense of anything in a clamor that could reshape college athletics into something entirely unlike what it was just a month ago.

"I can say that in all my years of college athletics administration, I've never seen this level of uncertainty and potential fluidity among schools and conferences," ACC Commissioner John Swofford said during a Sunday teleconference announcing the Syracuse and Pittsburgh additions.

"Schools are looking for stability, and when that stability doesn't exist for whatever reason ... the conferences that appear to be stable moving forward are going to receive inquiries."

The recent annexations of Nebraska (by the Big Ten) and Utah and Colorado (by the now-Pac-12) and even the imminent defection of Texas A&M from the Big 12 to the SEC were each a virtual amuse-bouche to the potential bacchanal of the coming weeks.

Syracuse and Pittsburgh blindsided nearly every observer of college athletics — including their soon-to-be former commissioner, Big East head John Marinatto — with the escape to the ACC. Swofford said his conference is "not philosophically opposed" to expanding to 16 teams.

Notre Dame athletic director Jack Swarbrick, whose non-football programs compete in the Big East, said Saturday he "probably had a lot of scenarios in mind, and this was not one of them."

"Particularly during this turbulent time in intercollegiate athletics, every leader of a major university has got to be constantly assessing the changing landscape and looking for the best long-term home for his or her institution," Pittsburgh Chancellor Mark Nordenberg said Sunday.

Oklahoma and Texas will do that in earnest Monday when their boards of regents meet to discuss the possibility of both leaving the Big 12. That — plus the chance that Oklahoma State and Texas Tech will go wherever they go — is the next megaton domino to thud to the ground.

The Austin American-Statesman reported Sunday that talks to bring all four schools to the Pac-12 are "heating up."

Meanwhile, others scramble to varying degrees. West Virginia athletic director Oliver Luck said his school, a potential SEC target, will "continue working to do what's best for our university and its athletic teams." Connecticut President Susan Herbst said she is in "constant communication ... to ensure the successful long-term future of our university's athletic program."

ESPN reported Connecticut is angling for an ACC invite, and The Star-Ledger of Newark, N.J., reported that Rutgers is in contact with ACC and Big Ten officials.

Notre Dame, meanwhile, assesses the damage with the goal of remaining independent in football, Swarbrick said Saturday.

That likely teeters on three key issues: whether the school has a viable conference home for its basketball and non-revenue teams; whether it can continue to construct representative football schedules; and what access it has to the national championship mechanism for football.

Do the current changes threaten football independence? Will the Irish revisit Big Ten membership or — in a less discussed but perhaps more sensible move — talk to the ACC?

As with everything else in the shifting landscape, the answers just raise more questions.