After Notre Dame's numerous tantrums, what's the school's endgame? A divorce from the ACC?
NCAAF College Football News, Photos, Stats, Scores, Schedule & Videos...
The more Notre Dame squawks and threatens like a 7-year-old mad at their parents because they didn’t get a stuffed animal at the state fair, the more reasonable it is to wonder whether there’s something more going on besides frustration over a College Football Playoff snub.
Long-simmering complaints on both sides of the Notre Dame-ACC relationship have started spill into the public discourse since Sunday, when the College Football Playoff selection committee surprisingly elevated Miami over the Irish for the final at-large spot in the 12-team field.
Issues that have been brewing under the surface for a couple years — largely tied which football games the ACC owes Notre Dame in its unique scheduling arrangement and when they’re played — have erupted like a pimple under a hot compress. Combined with the Florida State/Clemson settlement earlier this year that set exit fees at a manageable $75 million in 2030-31, it’s hard to escape the feeling that the clock is ticking both for the ACC and Notre Dame’s place in it.
But as athletics director Pete Bevacqua has made the media rounds since Sunday night in a Festivus-come-early airing of grievances that included phrases like “permanent damage” to its ACC relationship he has done three things:
– First, he has reinforced every negative Notre Dame stereotype for so many administrators across college athletics who had largely forgotten how little use they have for the Irish’s addiction to special treatment. Whereas former athletics director Jack Swarbrick wielded a hammer with a hint of charm and a deft touch, it seems Bevacqua’s way of doing business combines Tony Soprano’s hair-trigger temper with Baron Munchausen’s talent for exaggeration. Big 12 commissioner Brett Yormark’s strong rebuttal this week was only a taste of what’s being said behind the scenes by people who have long memories and could one day be on a CFP committee themselves.
– Second, he’s clarified how much things have changed in the ACC from the time Notre Dame signed its one-foot-in, one-foot-out agreement in 2012. It’s easy to forget, but at the time, the ACC was a predator, not prey. There was even talk that if the Big 12 blew up, it might be a landing spot for Texas. Obviously, things have changed. Notre Dame didn’t sign up for the ACC as it exists now, and it certainly didn’t envision being attached to a league where Florida State and Clemson — two of the three biggest football brands — are now in a state of disrepair.
– Third and most important, Bevacqua’s saber-rattling has laid bare that Notre Dame, at least internally, has determined its football program needs something other than what the ACC is currently providing as the sport’s structure continues to evolve. It’s simply hard to believe that Bevacqua, an experienced executive at the USGA, CAA Sports and NBC Sports who has seen a whole bunch of stuff in his career, emotionally ruptured because a 10-2 football team with a mediocre résumé got left out of the CFP or because some ACC staffers got a little too spicy for his taste on social media in their promotion of Miami.
Instead, as soon as Bevacqua’s tantrum stretched into multiple days, the entire act took on the whiff of a Starbucks customer demanding to see the manager because their coffee was hot.
Given that Notre Dame’s institutional anger ultimately translates into a big bunch of nothing as it relates to this year’s CFP, the only reasonable conclusion to draw is that they were already looking for a fight.
The question is to what end.
Here’s a theory to consider.
Despite Notre Dame’s public insistence that remaining independent is of utmost importance, the school’s decision-makers are not dummies. They know which way the wind is blowing in college athletics, and 2025 was proof of concept that Notre Dame’s current arrangement is going to be difficult to sustain.
Perhaps things would have been different if Southern Cal was a little better or Syracuse hadn’t fallen apart or Purdue was further along in its rebuild. But no program, even Notre Dame, can truly position itself to win a national championship in this playoff era with two or three decent games a year, most of them early in the season.
By the way, Notre Dame’s 2026 schedule isn’t shaping up much better. Maybe Wisconsin, Michigan State, Stanford or North Carolina will get their act together. But aside from a home game against Miami and a trip to Southern Cal, it’s not good.
And it’s probably going to get worse, especially if Notre Dame can’t come to an agreement with USC to extend their longstanding rivalry. Texas, also smarting from missing the CFP, has made noise about canceling its series with Notre Dame in 2028-29. Athletic directors in other leagues, who learned from Yahoo Sports' Ross Dellenger on Sunday about the memorandum of understanding that grants Notre Dame preferential playoff access, are threatening to freeze them out of future schedules (Who knows if they’ll follow through. For all its issues, Notre Dame fills stadiums and drives TV ratings.)
Put that nugget aside for a moment. Scheduling has always been hard for Notre Dame. And just for the fact that every league is headed to nine conference games, it’s only going to get harder.
So it’s worth asking: How wedded to independence is Notre Dame really? So much so that it’s going to tank their CFP hopes if they lose a couple games?
Notre Dame is too smart for that.
At some point, the Venn diagram of administrators across college sports who think Notre Dame needs to be in a conference and people at Notre Dame realizing they need to be in a conference to avoid getting left behind is going to overlap.
But Notre Dame is not going to be forced at the point of a bayonet to join some league. They’re going to do it on their terms and their timetable. There’s one issue with that, however. As part of the ACC’s grant of rights, Notre Dame is obligated to join the ACC as a full member if it joins a conference.
Which makes the timing of all this quite interesting. Remember, earlier this year, the Clemson/FSU settlement set a schedule for exit fees to get out of the grant of rights before it expires in 2036. It’ll be several years before most members can afford it, but since Notre Dame isn’t part of the league’s TV deal for football in the first place, it would almost certainly be a considerably smaller number.
That’s Step 1.
As far as Step 2, pick your own adventure. It’s hard to believe the Big Ten would give Notre Dame a sweetheart deal like the Irish have with the ACC. They’d want all or nothing. The SEC might be more inclined to do something with Notre Dame, but they don’t need the aggravation (or another good team on the schedule). Perhaps Notre Dame waits for the ACC to crumble, picks off the handful of schools that it wants and perhaps even convinces USC and UCLA to reconsider their Big Ten affiliation.
In the end, Notre Dame has options. And if you read the histrionics that began Sunday afternoon as the first salvo in exploring them, it makes a lot more sense than an outburst about the ACC’s social media strategy.
Notre Dame may well be itching to start a fight with implications well beyond the ACC. But with the rest of college athletics declining to join their pity party over the last three days, they better have a good plan to finish it.
More at NCAAF College Football News, Photos, Stats, Scores, Schedule & Videos