KEN WILLIS: Well, it has come to this . . . what will Notre Dame do?

It’s all happening as we speak, as the earth beneath our cleats shifts and reconfigures our continent.

I’m not talking about all those things you’ve been seeing out on the front page. No, we’re talking long-range reshaping of everything we once knew or at least thought we knew.

That’s right, college football as we’ve known it is disappearing and seems bound to re-emerge as something that, on any given Saturday, looks as it always has at field level, but dramatically overhauled from above.

It’s painfully obvious but easy to overlook, apparently. It started with a short email from a reader named Donnie who asked my opinion on Notre Dame’s football future while suggesting the Irish are key to how the new hash-marked continent will be formed.

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I initially dismissed the dramatics and was subsequently shown the error of my dismissive ways. So I thumbed around for additional information, much of it from Smart People who follow these things year-round instead of just, you know, football season.

And, it turns out, it’s probably true. Notre Dame just might determine if college football’s landscape remains even remotely manageable in the manner it’s always been managed — SEC, Big Ten, Pac 12, Big 12, ACC, and then the others.

The thinking is, Notre Dame won’t be able to maintain its football independence and give away financial advantages to the behemoths in the newly expanded Big Ten (soon featuring UCLA and USC) and SEC (soon featuring Oklahoma and Texas).

Additionally, according to conventional wisdom and our own eyes, if either the SEC or Big Ten lands Notre Dame, the two “super” conferences would likely continue collecting additional shiny satellites (Clemson, Oregon, Oklahoma State, etc.) as the Big Bang eventually leaves us with a two-conference “league” while the rest are left to play for berths in the Famous Idaho Potato Bowl.

Assuming you think we need to be saved from that, “they” are saying we’re only saved if Notre Dame lands in the ACC, thereby saving that conference by keeping its better brands home. Second best option, for the romantics especially, is for the Irish to remain independent, but to do that, they’d have to give up lots and lots (and lots) of additional network money in the future.

"If you’re a fan of any ACC, Big 12, Pac-10 or Group of 5 program, the time has arrived to do the unthinkable: cheer, cheer for old Notre Dame," writes Alex Hickey at SaturdayTradition.com.

The arrival of the transfer portal and the NIL opportunities brought free agency to college football. The vast majority of onlookers — especially in the media — applauded both of those new toys. The antiquated romance of the ol’ college game, they’d tell you, went to the grave with Keith Jackson.

Others awaited the unintended consequences of totally remaking the infrastructure without first attaching guardrails. Didn’t take long, did it?

Suddenly piling so much independence and financial opportunities onto the laps of 18-to-20-somethings (and their interested friends and family) might’ve been the right thing to do in the abstract, but the current details and issues are a bird-nested fishing reel.

The major universities and now the most major of the conferences have joined the dismantling of old ways. In a hold-my-beer moment, they've seemingly decided to show us how much landscape you can alter when you’re dealing in billions and not mere millions.

Twenty-some years ago, when NASCAR landed its first wall-to-wall network TV deal, the growing tide of income quickly became a gusher for all the important players. I asked a longtime team owner if he ever feared a Jed Clampett outcome — that the newfound influx could, over time, do more harm than good.

“I’ve had the problem of not having enough money,” Richard Childress told me through a knowing smile. “I’d rather have this problem.”

But boy oh boy, sometimes you wonder.

— Reach Ken Willis at ken.willis@news-jrnl.com

This article originally appeared on The Daytona Beach News-Journal: Notre Dame holds all the cards as college football world teeters