Irish Independence: PART 2
Stiofán Mac Fhilib continues his two-part, long form history lesson into Notre Dame football, it’s path to independence in the conference-dominated landscape of college football, and the future for The Fighting Irish amidst the latest bout of realignment:
*If you missed part one of this article, click here:
PART 2: WHAT COULD MAKE NOTRE DAME GIVE UP INDEPENDENCE?
Nothing stays the same forever. Certainly not CFB. And Notre Dame fans are not unaware of the general direction of travel away from independent programs and towards conference membership and all the associated machinations with that. Some expect that the Irish will join a conference eventually and others actively would prefer that now. But what are the actual factors that would come into play to encourage/force Notre Dame to finally make the leap into full-time conference membership?
1: The Inability To Compete For A National Championship
To quote the ASU Head Coach, there’s a reason you play the game. And it’s not just for the craic. Notre Dame doesn’t have a conference championship game to aim for each August. ND coaches do not get a statue outside Notre Dame Stadium for conference championships, bowl wins or unbeaten regular seasons. The standard, however realistic, remains winning a national championship.
Take away access to that – make the Playoffs only open to conference champions, for example – and ND would have to seriously consider either joining a conference or effectively going down a division in football. How realistic such a possibility is, and how legal it might even be, under US anti-trust laws, given that there would be a number of independent programs affected, is another matter. And certainly the current momentum around the playoff does not seem to be towards a restriction to just conference champion participation.
2: A Severe Restriction On The Ability To Schedule Competitively
This is really a sub-reason to 1) above. The current Playoff Committee clearly places importance on strength of schedule and quality of victories. In a scenario where conferences agreed not to schedule ND, or to greatly reduce the number of quality opponents prepared to face them, the Irish could find it much more difficult to ever offer a sufficiently strong resumé to the committee, even in a 12-0 season.
For many ND haters, this is the ultimate dream. Other schools joining together to force the Irish to finally eschew their beloved independence. Unfortunately for them it is spoilt by one minor problem. The same reason Texas and Oklahoma are moving to the SEC. $$$s. Playing Notre Dame puts bums on seats, eyeballs in front of screens and money in Athletic Department’s bank accounts.
Frank Beamer was the most successful head coach in Virginia Tech history. He compiled a 280-143-4 record in his 29 years in charge of the Hokies. He won 4 ACC Championships, 3 Big East Championships and is in the College Football Hall of Fame. In 2018 Tech chose to honour him at a home game, in a season where they faced both Miami and rivals Virginia in Lane Stadium in ACC play. They didn’t do it at either of those two high profile games though. They did it when Notre Dame came to Blacksburg for a prime-time Saturday evening match up.
Georgia, one of the most storied programs in the SEC, has witnessed many huge crowds in its 92,746 capacity Sanford Stadium. Its record attendance though was not against Florida, Alabama or LSU. It was two years ago when Notre Dame visited and they put in 500 extra seats to accommodate the 93,246 crowd.
There has never been a time when other schools have collectively sought to cold shoulder ND and there is no indication in the current climate of any appetite to start doing so now
3: Lack Of Television Deal Money
For all its commitment to promoting Catholic education, Notre Dame doesn’t exist in a utopian vacuum where money is non-existent or no issue. God may not need to worry about carrying cash, but His mother’s university does. In a CFB landscape where conference membership is generating large eight-figure sums for tv rights for other top schools, how long would or could the Irish afford to pick up significantly smaller cheques from NBC?
As discussed above the current ‘cost of independence’ is not huge for a school of Notre Dame’s wealth. It will be instructive to see what deal the Irish can get when their current contract with NBC expires in 2025. The school is already exploring new options with NBC’s Peacock streaming service – the opening 2021 home game with Toledo will only be available online, a decision not entirely welcomed by a section of ND’s stereotypically older fanbase.
In a future where an increasing proportion of live sport is consumed online, the Irish may be well placed to maximise potential revenue from this source. Once a lot of fans have worked out to connect to their wifi and download the relevant app…
4: No Home For Other Sports
One key part of the deal Notre Dame signed with the ACC back in 2014 was that its non-football sports (except for hockey, which plays in the Big Ten) would find a home in that conference. This was an important consideration for the school after the collapse of the Big East.
If the only conference-related options for the Irish were to involve having to join a conference for football in order to have a home for all its other sports, then the school would find it extremely hard to maintain independence in CFB. Fortunately for ND they have been in a strong enough negotiating position to date that this has not been an issue.
Playoffs, Alliance, And 'It Just Means More'?
If one summer has ever demonstrated that CFB never stands still it has been 2021. As the sport – and world – tries to recover from, and live with, Covid-19, fans have had three major new issues to discuss, debate and disagree on.
The new proposed 12-team playoff was enough to fill several months’ worth of news cycle on its own, before the Universities of Texas and Oklahoma decided that the grass would be decidedly greener in a conference centred a little more south and east to the Big 12. Then the gentlemen of the Big Ten, ACC and Pac 12 got together to agree that they definitely needed to be in an Alliance just as much as they definitely did not need to sign anything about it.
So will these interesting times prove to be a curse for Notre Dame’s hopes of remaining independent or could they be a blessing which helps to secure it for a while longer?
New Playoff Structure
With the current four-team CFB playoff format up for renewal in 2026, the expectation has long been that it would be expanded. Certainly Notre Dame’s preference would be for the 12 team model its AD was involved in drawing up, rather than say, an 8-team model that involved six conference champions and two at-large participants. But even the latter option would continue to allow the Irish to compete for a national championship and would not realistically be a reason to join a conference at this juncture.
The 12-team model may be temporarily on hold pending the fall out from recent realignment, but much of the current displeasure around it seems more connected to one of the people who was involved in creating it, as opposed to a fundamental disagreement about the actual structure. It was originally fairly universally well-received and I expect that the final outcome will ultimately be something along similar lines.
More likely the real difference after this summer may now be a greater desire to wait until 2026 so that the tv packages can be split among various broadcasters, in order to maximise income. This will likely not please ESPN but it would have no negative impact on ND’s independence.
An Expanded SEC
Texas and Oklahoma joining the richer, neighbouring conference is not in itself any threat to ND’s independence. But it’s the potential ramifications and further conference streamlining and realignment that could in theory make life as in independent much more difficult.
Should CFB ever find itself in a world of four 16-team super-conferences with a playoff structure that only permitted members of those four leagues to be eligible, then Notre Dame would likely be forced into joining. At present ND’s agreement with the ACC runs to 2036 and should the Irish wish to join a conference before then, they are contractually obligated to become a full ACC member.
Whilst not an obvious geographical fit, certainly compared to the Big Ten, the ACC is a more preferable choice, even leaving aside the century-old enmity with Yost and his old school. Its footprint encompasses much more fertile recruiting territory and provides more scope for maintaining the Irish’s preferred nationwide scheduling. ND already have seven home games in the mid-west every year. Big Ten road games would make Notre Dame much more regional. The ACC schedule sees the Irish on the road from New York to Florida and various venues in between.
The Alliance
Another potential impediment would be an increase in conference games with less opportunity then for the sort of high-profile home and home arrangements ND currently has scheduled to bolster its playoff resumé. Again though, this is unlikely to have a dramatic impact on the Irish thanks in part to the Alliance.
The Alliance has 41 teams, not 40. Covering all sports, as it does, it already includes Notre Dame as effectively an ACC member. The Irish already have five annual ACC games as well as well the two Pac 12 games with USC and Stanford. All three parties are more than content with that arrangement. The Navy game will continue each year until and unless the Midshipmen decide to stop it (approximately never).
Even if the SEC were reluctant to schedule Notre Dame – and there are already future home and homes with Alabama, Florida, Texas A&M and Arkansas set up – there are other high profile Alliance teams who could be scheduled. And bearing in mind the financial benefits of scheduling the Irish, in a sport ever more increasingly beholden to decisions around $$$s it’s hard to envisage a scenario where Notre Dame and their associated media coverage become persona non grata.
Finally it’s perhaps worth noting that the Irish are not entirely without influence and connections in the CFB world. The AD was one of the four chosen to develop the new playoff model. Big Ten Commissioner, Kevin Warren, is an alumnus of Notre Dame Law School and Jim Phillips, the ACC Commissioner, was a senior associate AD at Notre Dame for four years. Most than most he knows why ND would be a great addition to the ACC. But he also understands why the Irish cherish and value their independence.
STIOFÁN MAC FHILIB
COLLEGE FOOTBALL ANALYST
A VERY LONG-DISTANCE SUBWAY ALUMNUS OF NOTRE DAME, COUNTY ANTRIM-BASED STIOFÁN HAS BEEN A FAN OF THE FIGHTING IRISH SINCE 2000. FOLLOW HIM ON TWITTER @SMACFHILIB.