Notre Dame’s AD on the CFP’s ‘musical chairs,’ a ‘strained’ relationship with the ACC and opting out of bowls

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CHICAGO — Notre Dame athletic director Pete Bevacqua held a news conference Tuesday to address the Irish’s omission from the College Football Playoff and his issues with how the ACC handled the lead-up to the bracket release.

Here are five takeaways from his session with reporters:

1. Bevacqua believes the CFP committee should have better defined metrics for its weekly rankings — or else release only one set of rankings.

Bevacqua said the Irish were “shocked” and “mystified” Sunday when the final CFP rankings bumped them to No. 11 — and out of the final at-large playoff spot. Notre Dame, which went on a 10-game winning streak after a 0-2 start, had been ranked No. 9 or No. 10 in all of the rankings up until that point.

While Bevacqua believes Notre Dame should have been a playoff team, he said he also thinks No. 9 Alabama and No. 10 Miami, which leapfrogged the Irish over the last two weeks, were deserving. His issue was with the sudden readjustment of the rankings at the end, including CFP committee Chairman Hunter Yurachek saying members went back to watch Miami’s Week 1 win over Notre Dame this past week.

In the first CFP rankings, when both Notre Dame and Miami were 6-2, the Irish were ranked 10th and the Hurricanes 18th.

“These rankings can’t be a game of musical chairs at a fifth-grade birthday party, and that’s what it felt like to us,” Bevacqua said. “And we don’t appreciate that because of the impact it’s had on the kids in that room and this university quite frankly. These are big decisions, and we just have not had anybody answer us in a way that gives us any satisfaction at all as to what happened.”

Bevacqua said the issues need to be fixed, either through a “series of defined metrics that everybody can rely on” or by having only one rankings show when the bracket is released. He said that would have been “less of a shock to the system.”

“You ask anybody in college football, we’re one of the best teams in the country,” he said, while noting he is biased. “We’re one of those handful of teams that can absolutely win the national championship this year, and then standing up here today knowing that we have 0% chance of proving that on the field is a bitter pill to swallow.

“But it’s a situation we’re in. And what frustrates me, and I know what frustrates (coach) Marcus (Freeman), is there’s just no good explanation.”

2. Bevacqua expressed his dissatisfaction with the ACC’s tweets about Notre Dame well before Monday.

Amid the CFP controversy Monday, Bevacqua went on “The Dan Patrick Show” and said the ACC did “permanent damage” to its relationship with Notre Dame while campaigning for Miami to get in the playoff over the Irish. The ACC football social media account sent multiple tweets over the last few weeks pitting Miami’s case against Notre Dame’s.

Bevacqua doubled down on that sentiment Tuesday, saying the ACC “went on a social media campaign, in my opinion, attacking our football program.” He said while all things can be healed, the relationship is “strained.”

Notre Dame has a football scheduling agreement with the ACC, and all of its other sports besides football and men’s ice hockey play in the conference.

He said when he saw the first tweet, he thought a social media producer “got over their skis and did something that the ACC was going to correct.” When the posts continued, he reached out to the conference via text and email over the last few weeks to express dissatisfaction with the tweets. He spoke to Commissioner Jim Phillips about it via phone a week ago.

“It raised a lot of eyebrows,” he said. “And we made our feelings known that we didn’t particularly understand this and it just kind of puzzled us that a conference that’s home to over 600 of our student-athletes walking around this campus today chose to go down that road. I guess intellectually I understand it, but I certainly don’t agree with it.

“And why would you attack an unbelievably important business partner of yours in football and a member of your conference in 24 other sports? I’m one person. I don’t see the logic in that. I know other leaders at the university didn’t see the logic in that.”

Bevacqua made sure to note the attendance and ratings boosts ACC teams receive for their football games against Notre Dame. He said he didn’t think an apology would unwind what happened but at some point in the future both parties’ leadership would sit down for an “honest” conversation.

Phillips released a statement Monday that the ACC has “a responsibility to support and advocate for all 17 of our football-playing member institutions” and that he stood by the conference’s efforts to do that.

3. Notre Dame’s decision to opt out of bowl games doesn’t necessarily affect future non-CFP bowl appearances.

When Notre Dame found out it didn’t make the CFP, Freeman reached out to his captains to get a feel for whether the team still wanted to play in a bowl game. He asked them to try to take emotions out of the decision, though they had only a few hours to make it.

Bevacqua said the players decided they didn’t want to take the field again without the complete team. Given that some NFL prospects would opt out of the bowl individually, they decided to opt out as a team.

Bevacqua said that doesn’t mean Notre Dame will opt out of all non-CFP bowls in the future.

“It was a decision that I applaud, and it was a hard decision,” he said. “They knew it was going to be a hard decision. They knew it was going to be a decision that not everybody was going to love, but it was the right decision for this team at this moment. I’m positive of that.

“And does that mean that if we’re in this situation again in the future that the same decision would be made? No. It’s year by year, case by case.”

4. As the NFL coaching rumor mill heats up, Bevacqua is all-in on keeping Freeman on board.

Freeman, who is 43-12 with a national championship game appearance in four-plus seasons as the Irish head coach, already has had his name mentioned for NFL coaching jobs that will come open over the next month.

Bevacqua, whom Notre Dame hired after Freeman had been promoted to head coach, understands that buzz.

“Everybody has eyes on Marcus,” Bevacqua said. “College has eyes on Marcus. NFL has eyes on Marcus. I bet Hollywood has eyes on Marcus. I wouldn’t be surprised if he’s in the next Leo DiCaprio movie with Martin Scorsese. Marcus is Marcus.

“All the credit to him. He deserves it. He is the absolute best coach in the country for Notre Dame, full stop, and one of the greatest college coaches in the country. And people forget how young he is (39). So I get it. And that’s a compliment to him and his success and the way he represents himself and the way he prepares and who he is and how he talks.”

Bevacqua put it on himself to do everything in his power to keep Freeman in South Bend, Ind., noting he “would never say we wouldn’t match anything when it comes to Marcus.”

“It’s my one of my main obligations and responsibilities to this university is to make sure Marcus wakes up every day knowing that he is supported and valued by Notre Dame,” he said. “And I can say with 100% certainty he feels that way, and Notre Dame is totally aligned around the importance of college football for Notre Dame. We’re totally aligned on how he is the perfect coach for Notre Dame.”

Bevacqua said his duty is to make sure Freeman knows he will be at “the top, top, top tier of college football coaches when it comes to compensation every year.” He said Notre Dame would revise Freeman’s contract every year, if need be, to keep him.

5. Bevacqua favors a 16-team playoff with a five-and-11 format.

Bevacqua said a 16-team playoff would have been perfect for the sport this year, allowing quality teams such as Notre Dame, Texas and Vanderbilt a chance to compete.

As the sport considers playoff expansion, he favors a format that would give five automatic bids to conference champions and 11 at-large bids.

“You’re never going to have the same data points each year,” he said. “It’s never going to work out perfectly whether you have four teams, 12, 14 or 16. What I like about 16 is it does create for more opportunity, does create more narratives around more schools and yet preserves the integrity and the importance of the regular season.

“And that’s one of the greatest things college football has going for it. The regular season is more important in college football than it is in any other sport by a mile.”

One notable piece of news that came out in the last few days — and that Bevacqua confirmed Tuesday — is that Notre Dame has a memorandum of understanding that it would make a 12-team playoff next season if it’s ranked in the top 12. He said there’s a different set of metrics if the playoff expands.

“People have asked me, ‘Well, how come Notre Dame gets that benefit?’” Bevacqua said. “And we still have prove it on the field more than anybody. We still have to put ourselves in that area, that zip code of a top-12 team, but we want to protect ourselves against what happened this year.”

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