Notre Dame addition shakes up ACC

With next year’s addition of Pittsburgh to the Atlantic Coast Conference, the league will welcome its first institution based in a landlocked state.

But Pennsylvania isn’t too far from the Atlantic Ocean.

Notre Dame, however, is a different story.

The closest ACC school to South Bend, Ind., when the Fighting Irish join will be Pittsburgh — about 350 miles away.

Chapel Hill is more than 700 miles from Notre Dame, and women’s soccer coach Anson Dorrance said there’s really not a good way to get there.

“It’s difficult to fly in to South Bend itself,” Dorrance said. “Usually you have to fly into Chicago — jump a bus to South Bend, which is another two-hour-plus ride. I think that’s been a little bit of a physical challenge for all of us to get to South Bend, but then they certainly have their challenges leaving South Bend just like we have.

“Its not like we’re disadvantaged and they’re advantaged.”

In the 2010-11 fiscal year, the athletic department spent more than $4.28 million on team travel. That figure made up more than a third of all of UNC’s direct sports expenses.

Though the trip to Notre Dame is comparatively long for a conference match, Martina Ballen, the chief financial officer for UNC athletics, does not expect travel expenses to rise dramatically.

“It depends on the schedule,” Ballen said. “If a sport substitutes out another non-conference game that is similar in cost to travel, (the budget) may not (increase). It just depends, and it differs from sport to sport.

“It may impact the travel budget some. There may be some increases — but in some cases no. In some cases Notre Dame may not have the sport that we have, so that particular sport won’t be impacted.”

The Fighting Irish will compete in every sport that the ACC sponsors with the exception of football and field hockey, but they have agreed to play five ACC opponents on the gridiron every season once they join the conference.

Distance and financial hurdles aside, Dorrance couldn’t be happier that Notre Dame will now be a conference rival to his women’s soccer program.

Five of Dorrance’s NCAA championships came with wins against Notre Dame in the title game, and UNC has played the Fighting Irish at least once in each of the last seven seasons.

“It’s almost like the conference has now scheduled my game with Notre Dame,” Dorrance said. “Now, I can add another elite team to help my schedule improve and challenge the players that we recruit to play here. I just think it’s win-win for all of us in the ACC.”

Dorrance does have one quibble with the scheduling setup the ACC employs now, which typically has women’s soccer teams playing on Thursday and Sunday nights. Thursday night road games, like the team’s game last week at Maryland, require the team to miss class Thursday and return to Chapel Hill early Friday morning.

A Friday-Sunday scheduling arrangement would be more beneficial to the players, Dorrance said, as they would likely miss less class time, and crowds would be larger at weekend games.

Those sorts of scheduling issues will be addressed as the ACC moves toward its 15-team fate. UNC athletic director Bubba Cunningham said Dorrance’s Friday-Sunday theory is exactly the kind of thing the ACC will be taking into consideration.

“By adding Pitt, Syracuse and Notre Dame we’re obviously expanding the footprint, but we’re also taking a look at all of the sports and how we compete,” Cunningham said. “There will be some modifications to how we compete. Sometimes, you play everybody in a round-robin, and other times you’re only going to compete in a conference championship — like track does currently.

“So we’re in the middle of doing the analysis right now and beginning to make those decisions about how we’re going to compete.”

Those talks are already underway, but Cunningham doesn’t expect a draft of those changes to competition until the ACC’s winter meetings. Votes on those proposals would come in the spring.

Contact the desk editor at sports@dailytarheel.com.