The athletics director at Notre Dame held a press conference on Tuesday to continue his dumb campaign to elicit sympathy from, I don’t know who, I don’t know what the guy is doing here, over “damage” he whines was created by the ACC.
“I understand they have to stand up for their teams in football. We just think there’s other ways to do it,” said Pete Bevacqua, the aforementioned AD guy, who first bitched and moaned publicly to Dan Patrick on Monday about the ACC office taking the side of Miami, a football member of the conference, in the game of stupid politicking that has to be done to try to get teams into the College Football Playoff.
ICYMI
News flash: taking up for ACC football members is the job of the ACC office when it comes to, you know, football.
Just as you’d see the ACC office taking the side of Notre Dame when it would come to March Madness, or the NCAA lacrosse tournament, or baseball, or any of the other 21 sports in which Notre Dame competes as an ACC member.
It’s actually quite simple: you want the ACC to go to bat for you, that’s up to you; join as a full member.
ICYMI
The folks at Notre Dame, though, want to have their Kate, and Edith, too.
The school gets $50 million a year from its TV deal with NBC just for football; for context, the ACC paid out $45 million per school in the 2023-2024 academic sports year for the whole shebang – football, men’s and women’s basketball, the rest.
Notre Dame also doesn’t have to share the money it gets when the football program gets into the CFP, as was the case last year – when the Golden Domers got the max $20 million payout for making it to the title game.
Congrats, right?
As a football independent, Notre Dame has the advantage of a guaranteed five-game schedule with ACC schools, meaning the athletics office only has to find seven other games to flesh out 12.
Fun exercise time: let’s think through what would happen if Bevacqua & Co. were to decide to up and bolt from the ACC.
First, they’d better have another conference interested for the 24 varsity sports other than football – one, preferably, willing to put up with the nonsense of having the only program you’d really care about in terms of them being in your conference not actually part of your conference, while also expecting you to do their bidding when it comes to that only sport that you’d care about with them, so that they can make money at your expense.
Second, if the new partners aren’t willing to give you five football games a year, because they’re all doing the 9+1 model – nine conference games, one Power 4 nonconference game – man, good luck finding 12 games.
Maybe make friends with UConn, maybe think through doing an annual home-and-home with them.
Maybe a couple of annual home-and-homes.
Also: hey, you sh*t-talk us, don’t expect us to relent on the exit fee.
We’ll take the $165 million that you’d owe us this summer in a lump sum; just back up the Brinks truck.
“Up until this moment, I think the relationship between Notre Dame and the ACC has been unbelievably healthy and mutually beneficial. That’s, I think, one of the reasons why we were so flabbergasted by this,” Bevacqua said.
Take your ball and go somewhere else, then.
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Chris Graham
