Notre Dame is heading into its 32nd season with NBC as its broadcast partner for home football games. The current deal between the 2 parties runs through the 2025 season after a 10-year extension (twice as long as the previous extension) was signed in April 2013. As reported by CBS Sports a month ago, Notre Dame is seeking $75 million per year in a new deal with NBC with the interesting verbiage that this amount would allow the Irish to remain independent.

As we brought up in Friday’s Rambler, the Jack Swarbrick Q&A session from last Wednesday brought plenty of strong overtones that Notre Dame feels no need to drop its independence.

For its part, NBC (as reported by CBS) would only feel comfortable raising Notre Dame’s valuation by that much if it came with ‘shoulder programming’ in the form of other Power 5 games before or after the Irish games to boost their overall college football coverage.

According to multiple reports, that shoulder programming is coming in the form of a $350 million annual deal with the Big Ten and a weekly slot in the primetime Saturday night game.

As I mentioned in the most recent Five Wide Fullbacks, I’ve had the bones of today’s article questioning the ND/NBC partnership teed up for a few months. It’s pointless because Notre Dame is going to negotiate a new contract at some point with NBC, that feels like a 97.4% lock unless they wait a couple years and more realignment carnage ensues. The impending deal with the Big Ten surely seals the deal for Notre Dame and their decision, too.

But, should the Irish continue with NBC after 2025?

It’s interesting that the $75 million figure has been reported and is already being floated by Notre Dame–presumably there’s an intent there. Is Notre Dame actually okay with $60 million and aiming high? How will people feel if the new deal is lower than $75 million after these reports about such a high figure?

What other options are there for Notre Dame?

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Fox would be an interesting one. The benefit of this deal would be still being in the Big Ten sphere of influence (remember the Big Ten media deal will include Fox, CBS, and NBC), the bulk of Notre Dame games would follow up the Big Ten’s prime noon game slot, and the Irish would have a larger presence on the network’s Big Noon Kickoff studio show (featuring Brady Quinn) which has outpaced ESPN’s GameDay on content and opinion in recent years.

While this would be a bold move by Fox you have to question if they have the appetite and overall money to make such a decision.

Since they exited talks with the Big Ten we now have ABC/ESPN sitting there ready to swoop in and sign Notre Dame. In many ways, this is the biggest mover for Notre Dame. For one, Disney could offer the most money on any contract. There’s been talk that since they’re saving money backing away from the Big Ten that ESPN can easily scoop up the Big 12 and Pac-12 on friendly deals in the future. Someone should tell them signing Notre Dame would be a coup and is money better spent.

You also couldn’t beat the exposure from Disney while ESPN GameDay remains the standard in the industry, plus the flexibility with ABC and the ESPN family of networks. It would be a clear step away from the Big Ten (while nudging up closer to the SEC and their ESPN deal) but if Notre Dame truly is serious about independence this would be the bombshell to keep it that way.

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The question also pops up whether Notre Dame gets more out of the relationship with NBC or if there’s more to be gained from some other broadcast partner. After weeks of rumors, the New York Post confirmed that NBC is moving Jac Collinsworth for play-by-play and Jason Garrett for color commentary into the Notre Dame booth to replace Mike Tirico and Drew Brees.

This will be the 9th play-by-play and 13th color commentator to work Notre Dame home games for the Peacock Network. Some might be excited that Collinsworth (2017 graduate) is an alum in the booth. Others (myself included) do not like the stench of nepotism and settling for a booth that might be an insult to call even JV-level. It’s so poor, and frankly odd, that you wonder if Notre Dame agreed to it if the money savings in contracts will go into the next TV deal.

Although he’s worked with NBC as far back as 2013 (straight into the sideline team as a college freshman must be nice!) Collinsworth’s first play-by-play gig came this past spring when he worked a USFL booth with Garrett which was also the former NFL coach’s first experience in broadcasting.

On Sunday, Ross Delenger from Sports Illustrated published a very detailed look at the moving pieces with the college football media rights and had this very interesting passage regarding Notre Dame:

Like many others, [Fox Sports President Bob] Thompson believes that the Big Ten’s inclusion of NBC ensures Notre Dame’s independence, something its own athletic director suggested to reporters Wednesday. The Irish, as expected, don’t seem to be in a hurry to join any league and are now likely to use the new market rates to mine NBC for more cash.

Thompson says NBC’s new role with the Big Ten now provides Notre Dame an opportunity to “marry” its game with a weekly Big Ten game in a smorgasbord of high-level college football action on a network that for so long had mostly stayed out of the sport. “NBC will try to make Saturday night college football like Sunday night NFL,” Thompson says. “It’s a big show.”

That doesn’t sound like a bad deal for Notre Dame.

But I do wonder if there’s an element to this where the Fighting Irish are relegated to second fiddle on NBC. One could argue the Big Ten won’t offer quite the amazing matchup every week and Notre Dame’s stock is still really high and hopes to keep it that way in the Marcus Freeman. Still, it’s an entire conference against one team with Notre Dame deciding to go with the USFL B-team announcing its games doesn’t necessarily feel awesome. Especially when NBC will now have to build up brand-new college football talent for its Big Ten contract and that work is likely to result in a better television product than Notre Dame. In fact, you could argue Notre Dame is going with a Collinsworth-Garrett booth precisely because all of the other top talent is headed to the Big Ten side of things.

Dozens of people are familiar with this TV booth.