It’s what they do
So I guess the burden of saving the ACC once again falls on the shoulders of the Notre Dame Fighting Irish. Perhaps you might be thinking that’s a bit of an overstatement, but it’s just the truth, and things are in motion once again for Notre Dame to help prop up the ACC for the betterment of college football — and for Notre Dame itself.
The ACC-ESPN extension is expected to include an arrangement for FSU, Miami & Clemson to regularly play more football games vs. Notre Dame. Irish expected to play at least 2 of the 3 each season in a rotation.
Full story on ESPN exercising the ACC option https://t.co/4RHHBsbUGY
— Ross Dellenger (@RossDellenger) January 30, 2025
As conference realignment started running wild in the summer of 2010, the future landscape of college football changed dramatically just about every day. Even though Notre Dame football is independent, the different machinations going on around the country had all sorts of direct and indirect impact to the entire Irish athletic department — specifically with the destruction of the Big East.
The deal that Notre Dame made with the ACC not only gave the Irish a really good home for the rest of its sports, but it greatly strengthened the television inventory for the ACC. While ACC coaches can piss and moan all they want about how the Notre Dame deal is unfair, their athletic directors and presidents are thrilled at the high profile nature of Notre Dame and made sure to push as many of those Irish games as they could on an ACC campus to be in prime time. With Florida State fizzling out and Miami still unable to get over the hump of mediocrity, Notre Dame’s presence helped catapult Clemson’s profile on their way to a national championship in 2015.
Crazy.
In 2020, it was Notre Dame that stood its ground about having a football season despite Covid, and while the Big 10 couldn’t figure anything out, the Irish made sure there was a full college football season by joining the ACC for one year and making the conference championship game. Had Notre Dame decided to not play football that season, who knows what may have happened that year.
And now we’re back to more conference realignment and the emergence of the Big 10 and SEC as the two super conferences trying to control everything. As the ACC’s limited power continually slips, and as the marquee programs in the conference also slip down the mountain, they are in desperate need of stability and relevance. Florida State and Clemson have tried to bolt multiple times over the past few years, but their own agreements have kept them in place… but things still aren’t right.
Enter Notre Dame once again. The conference needs more and better marquee matchups to make the TV contracts payout which is seemingly the lifeblood of how each conference and program operates. The Notre Dame deal had always been a little Luke warm given that the Irish rarely had to play multiple top teams in the conference in the same year — which was the ACC’s fault. Now that they need more, they’re working for more matchups between the Irish and its top three programs in the Clemson Tigers, Miami Hurricanes, and Florida State Seminoles.
The Irish have a strong history of “rivalry” with all three programs, and if Notre Dame and Clemson could just play more often, that’s a series that could develop into one of the better annual matchups in the country.
But let’s be fair about this… Notre Dame also needs more of these matchups as well. While the overall season in 2024 was amazing, the regular season was not. The only reason the regular season games after week two were even remotely interesting, is because we were all seeing how the Irish could claw their way back into the playoff conversation following the disastrous loss to NIU. Other than that, most of it was just uninteresting.
I was beating the drum for over a year at how awful the 2024 schedule was, and although I was right, I have to admit that the end result essentially trumped it all. I don’t believe, however, that will always be the case. No one is asking for a murderer’s row (and the schedule is a lot more interesting in 2025) but something spicier could go a long ways on several different fronts for the Irish cause.
But we’re back to this… the ACC is slipping and Notre Dame is throwing them another rope all while standing on their very own independent ground. Scratch our back and we’ll scratch yours — right? Right.
I can’t wait to hear what Pat Narduzzi has to say about this during ACC media days.