notre dame football conference affiliation history

#Notre dame football conference affiliation history full

This means that while the ACC desperately wants Notre Dame to join, they don’t currently have the leverage to force them to. This deal goes through 2036, and during that time period, the only conference Notre Dame can join is the ACC. The caveat is that they have to play five ACC teams annually in football. The deal states that Notre Dame competes in the ACC for most of their sports, like basketball and baseball, while football gets to remain independent. It all goes back to the ACC deal that Notre Dame has. So, why wouldn’t that happen? Why wouldn’t the conferences try to squeeze the Irish into a conference, as Notre Dame is one of the few programs that can actually raise the value of a conference? This would be reformatting the postseason to exclude teams not in a conference, meaning the Irish couldn’t win a national championship unless they joined a conference. As far as what it will take to get Notre Dame football to join a conference, it would take the conferences getting sick enough of their independence to force them into a conference. No, Notre Dame football still has no interest in joining a conference, even if this realignment blows up CFP expansion for the time being. Notre Dame football will not be joining a conference Is the game changing so much that Notre Dame needs to join a conference? What will it take?

#Notre dame football conference affiliation history full

Now, realignment talk is in full effect and that is always going to include the discussion around the Irish. Until, that is, the story about Texas and Oklahoma leaving the Big 12 for the SEC. They didn’t, and then there was a recommendation to expand the College Football Playoff to 12 teams, which effectively meant the Irish would never need to be in a conference to make the postseason.įrom there, the talk died down a bit. There was some thought that a year in the ACC, due to the pandemic, where Notre Dame got a taste of making the College Football Playoff with a loss would make them reconsider.

At this point, it’s a decades-old debate, and a fun one for the average college football fan to argue. It’s a fun topic to debate, whether or not the Irish should join a conference. Notre Dame football isn’t going to join a conference any time soon. The Pac-12 and Big Ten have opted to have conference-only seasons.Explaining why the deal Notre Dame football has with the ACC will keep them from being forced into a conference, for the next fifteen years. The news comes as reports have also surfaced confirming the conference’s exploration of 10 conference and one non-conference game schedules (as well as an eight-plus-one model, per David Teel of the Richmond Times-Dispatch), a model that’s also being considered by the Big 12 and SEC. The school has notoriously remained independent for the entire length of their history of a program. The final decision could come down to how revenue is shared between the conference and school, one of the people said. Whether those games would count in the standings and the Irish would be eligible to participate in the ACC championship game - and be eligible for the conference’s guaranteed spot in the Orange Bowl - is still to be determined. Under the proposed plan, Notre Dame would play a full 10-game ACC schedule, the people told AP, speaking on condition of anonymity because talks are still ongoing and details have not been disclosed. As the Atlantic Coast Conference, as well as the rest of college football, contemplates the reality of a season amidst a pandemic, a major change might be coming to the conference.Īccording to a report from Ralph Russo of the Associated Press, the Notre Dame Fighting Irish, which have been a non-football member of the league since 2014, could be on the verge of joining the ACC as a football program for the 2020 football season.