It’s been a pretty standard drumbeat ever since the announcement came down in July that for one season, Notre Dame football would play a conference schedule, in the ACC. It might get a little louder over the next week-plus, as we lead up to the ACC title game between the Irish and Clemson.

“Will they make this permanent?”

No. They won’t.

I could just leave it there, but you will probably insist on some reasons. Fine. Here we go.

ND doesn’t need to be in the ACC to make the CFP

We already know Notre Dame can make the College Football Playoff without playing a full conference schedule, because they did it in 2018. To make the Playoff, the selection committee has been clear – you need to play a Power 5 schedule.

But that doesn’t mean you need to play a conference schedule. Notre Dame plays 9 or 10 Power 5 teams every year. (They had 10 originally scheduled this year prior to COVID-19, and will end up with 10 anyway.) That’s in line with what most CFP contenders play; the only difference is the vast majority of their 9 or 10 come against the same league, while ND plays an average of 5 from the ACC, 2 from the Pac-12, and a sampling from the other 3 power leagues.

The next 2 seasons, Notre Dame will only play 9 Power 5 teams, but there’s a ‘but’:

  • In 2021, ND will play Cincinnati, currently a top-10 team. If Luke Fickell is still the coach, and even if he’s not, the Bearcats will almost surely be as good or better than most Power 5 squads, so that’s a de facto Power 5 game if you ask me. (Toledo and Navy are the other G5 squads on the slate.)
  • In 2022, Notre Dame plays both Ohio State and Clemson (the Buckeyes on the road). If ND somehow beats both those teams, and even if they beat just one, they’ll likely have proven their Playoff bona fides, even though the presence of UNLV, Marshall (who was also ranked until Saturday’s upset loss, for what it’s worth) and Navy ensure a max of 9 Power 5 opponents. The full schedule has not yet been announced.
  • (In 2023, by the way, ND plays both OSU and Clemson again, this time with Clemson on the road, so the same logic will hold, although as with ’22, the full schedule has yet to be announced.)

The point is, ND has been able to fill its schedule with Power 5 teams without being in a conference, and will continue to be able to do so, with some help from the ACC arrangement. As long as the ACC is happy with what they get from ND – and there’s never been an indication from anyone with decision-making power that they’re not (sorry, Pat Narduzzi, not up to you) – the Irish need not be in the league for football.

By the way, this reasoning will hold even truer after 2025, when most people expect the Playoff to expand to eight teams. At that point, college football will forever remove any thought that you need to win a conference to play for a title. (A thought that should have gone away with Nebraska 2001, Alabama 2011, Ohio State 2016, and Alabama 2017, but that’s another story.)

Some schools seem to be preparing for this eventuality by scheduling even more ambitiously out of the conference. Most notably, Georgia has future schedules that include Texas and Clemson (2029), Clemson and Ohio State (2030), and Ohio State and Oklahoma (2031), on top of their normal SEC + Georgia Tech slate. If Power 5 teams are going to be playing each other more often in hopes of drawing higher attendance, that will only help ND fill its schedule.

ND’s schedule is more difficult and more interesting outside a conference

This should’ve been self-evident before 2020. I’m fond of pointing this out, but just to reiterate: There are 3 teams ND effectively replaces ACC teams with on their schedule in exchange for giving up a conference title shot – Navy, USC and Stanford. The former two were ranked in the final CFP rankings last year. This matched the total number of ranked teams from the entire ACC – Clemson and Virginia (the latter of which ND played and beat anyway).

In any case, it became crystal clear this year: Notre Dame’s schedule is tougher outside a conference than in one. (This is why even if you hate ND for not being in a conference, you should still prefer they not be in one if you don’t want to see them in the Playoff.)

The Irish’s original 2020 slate included currently ranked foes Wisconsin and USC, both away from home, on top of the game against Clemson that we all watched on Nov. 7. Additionally, a much-improved Arkansas team was slated to come to South Bend, and the usual battles with Navy and Stanford would’ve appeared on the slate as well. ND also had six ACC games on the original schedule. (Remember, the Clemson game was on the slate already, so being in the ACC this year did not add that game.)

Luckily, one of the four games added to ND’s 2020 schedule by the ACC was the visit to North Carolina, which worked out to be a relevant and fairly exciting game against a ranked team. But other than that, the Irish’s reworked 2020 slate, by comparison to what was supposed to be the schedule, has not been particularly exciting or interesting on paper.

Would you want to do this every year? I would not. Give me those home-and-home series against teams from all over college football rather than seeing, no offense intended, the likes of Boston College, Pittsburgh and Duke every year rather than once every three.

Not a factor: Money

No one who needs to hear this is going to, but just for the record, Notre Dame is leaving a ton of money on the table by remaining a football independent. Repeat: A ton.

You can see the full figures in this linked article, but the summary is this: The least amount of money distributed to a Power 5 school this last year was $27.6 million, to an unknown ACC school. (The ACC had payouts ranging from $27.6 to $34 million. No explanation was given as to the disparity, but I’m assuming newer additions Louisville, Syracuse and Pittsburgh might get a bit less than the legacy members.)

Notre Dame, meanwhile, received $6.8 million from the ACC for their non-football sports and their 1/15th stake in the ACC Network. Their NBC deal is widely reported to be worth $15 million per year. For you math whizzes, that adds up to $21.8 million – just under $6 million less than any Power 5 school.

The Big Ten, for instance, distributes oceans more money to its schools – $55.6 million! – than Notre Dame gets. The SEC is around that number, and that will only go up when they switch from CBS to ABC/ESPN. Even the Big 12, often an afterthought in these discussions, is around $40 million per school, and the Pac-12 is at about $32 million per.

That doesn’t even factor in the healthy revenue bump any conference, and by extension ND, would enjoy if the Irish decided to abandon all morality and reason and join a conference, even the one that once tried to blackball its football program out of existence.

I don’t bring this up to talk about how ND is magnanimously passing up money they could otherwise earn. I’m sure no one who’s ever dealt with the school would claim that. However, the point is that if money was the only driving factor in the decision to play in a conference or not, ND would already be in one. The school has consistently stated that it values its independent status as a core part of its identity, and nothing it’s done would suggest that will change any time soon – especially with the aforementioned expected Playoff expansion coming.

So that’s that

The ACC, as you’d expect, helped out a member school when it needed a football schedule. Both sides, I’m sure, appreciated what that decision brought; the ACC got a revenue bump, the cachet of having Notre Dame all to itself all year, and the season-long Notre Dame/Clemson discussion. ND got a football schedule and, quite possibly, a Playoff berth that they certainly would not have gotten had they tried to cobble a slate together without the ACC. (As I’ve outlined above, they also got a bit of a revenue bump.) And both sides will happily move back to ‘normal’ next fall, when a regular and COVID-free college football campaign can hopefully be staged.

Many college football fans insist there must be more. But there really doesn’t need to be. ND will play 5 ACC schools next year, and the year after, and on and on, and they’ll continue to be, officially anyway, independent.