Notre Dame will join ACC as full member w/exception of football. ND will play 5 football games annually vs. ACC, sources told @espn
— Brett McMurphy (@McMurphyESPN) September 12, 2012
Massive news this morning as ESPN's Brett McMurphy is reporting that Notre Dame is set to join the ACC as a non-football member. The Irish will leave the Big East as soon as they're allowed to. They're locked in to a 27-month waiting period, but like Syracuse and Pittsburgh before them they can negotiate with the conference to leave earlier.
This will obviously create a lot of conference uncertainty and probably kick off another round of expansion destabilization, which is especially important for UConn fans because it has been previously reported that if the ACC expanded to 15 teams by taking Notre Dame that UConn stood a good chance of being invited along as team number 16. It's not clear what the ACC's current intention is -- after all evening out their basketball numbers would now bring their number of football teams to an uneven 15 -- but you can be sure Susan Herbst and Warde Manuel will be making a lot of phone calls today.