I think ND would be interested in that. The only thing I'd change is probably trying to land one of Maryland or Georgia Tech rather than add Navy. And maybe can Rutgers if you could both of those ACC schools.
I get where you are coming from but I wonder if Navy would actually be better for ratings than Maryland/GaTech? There are a lot of guys who served in the Navy and you also get to visit Annapolis and have them on your campus regularly. Plus, they are a frequent ND opponent.
From ND's perspective at the time, this league would include their two of their top-4 most frequent opponents from WWII to 1980 (Navy and Pitt). They could probably afford to keep the USC rivalry and this league would also keep #9 MiamiFL. Then they'd only lose Purdue, MSU, Iowa (which was already over by then), NU (same), UNC, and GaTech.
N-S organization of teams:
- Syracuse
- Boston College
- Rutgers
- Penn State
- Notre Dame
- Pittsburgh
- Navy
- West Virginia
- VaTech
- South Carolina
- Florida State
- Miami, FL
Travel costs for non-revenue sports are reasonable as the conference and especially the divisions (1-6 as the N, 7-12 as the S) are not overly large geographically.
Swapping out Navy for Maryland doesn't change much. Swapping out Rutgers for GaTech moves Navy to the N and makes travel in the S easier since it is between USCe and the Florida Schools.
I think GaTech makes a lot more sense today than it would have in 1980. In 1980 Florida still had less people than Ohio and Georgia was ranked #13 with just 5.5M people. Also, Atlanta was only the 29th most populous city with just 425k.
