Notre Dame athletic director Jack Swarbrick told the USA Today that he is "mystified" by the decision of Syracuse and Pittsburgh to abandon the Big East for the ACC. He told the paper:
"I don't understand it," Jack Swarbrick said as a new round of conference hopping in college athletics moved into high gear Sunday. "How do you vote as a collegiate president on something that has the potential to provide some benefit for your institution and the conference you're affiliated with but has a very negative consequence for a host of other members of the academy, as presidents like to call it?
"I'd like to know how much of these discussions are: What's right? What is the best thing for the larger enterprise, and how many other schools would be adversely impacted?
Obviously the potential meltdown of the Big East poses a program for Notre Dame as it has always used the conference as its home for non-football sports and by all accounts has been a beneficial member to the conference in that regard. As for the moves possibly creating stability for the betrayers? Swarbrick is not impressed:
"It would be one thing if you could say, look, what it does is painful but at the end of the day what it does is fix some significant flaws or issues. But I don't think the case for that is very strong. And certainly, what it does to impressions of the industry and relationships between institutions that have reason to work together for a host of reasons beyond sport isn't good.