Are Notre Dame and the ACC good? Here’s why the football relationship is still working

As the ACC’s growing financial gap with the Big Ten and SEC loomed in 2017, one athletic director threw out an idea to address it.

What about another round of conference realignment, like adding Texas?

“Might force ND to do the same?” then-Florida State AD Stan Wilcox wrote.

Although Notre Dame has long cherished its football independence, the Irish were entering the fourth season of their scheduling arrangement with the ACC. It was reasonable to wonder whether Notre Dame would expand its partial ACC membership into a complete affiliation that would boost the league’s prestige, buoy the bottom line and, perhaps, stave off any existential threats.

The response from Duke’s then-AD (and former Notre Dame AD) Kevin White: “Never say never.”

Little has changed about the Irish’s liminal status with the league since that exchange, which was obtained by The Athletic through an open records request.

At best, the dynamic remains a little awkward. Football coaches have been grumbling that the Irish should “join a conference” since the scheduling deal was announced in 2012. Administrators will gush about everything Notre Dame adds while, in the same breath, acknowledging the sweetheart deal the ACC had to accept to make it happen.

At worst, the unique relationship seems like a forced marriage of convenience with an expiration date.

It’s hard to come back from a phrase like “permanent damage,” which is how Notre Dame athletic director Pete Bevacqua described the union after the ACC stumped for Miami to make the College Football Playoff over Notre Dame last December. Then the Irish skipped bowl season entirely, passing on one of the ACC’s bids. While the Big 12 fined Iowa State and Kansas State $250,000 for turning down bowl bids, Notre Dame faced no such financial penalty.

Whatever tension surrounds the Notre Dame-ACC dynamic, the partnership still feels more like a solution than a problem. The Athletic spoke with a dozen people in and around the ACC and Notre Dame; they were unanimous that the arrangement, while imperfect, continues to help both entities more than it hurts them.

Notre Dame helped the ACC launch its own network and serves as a ticket office and TV ratings cheat code. In exchange, the Irish have received a football scheduling inventory boost and a stable home for other championship-caliber programs like men’s lacrosse and women’s basketball. The deal has formed the backdrop for memorable football moments on both sides; Clemson’s “Bring Your Own Guts” win in a monsoon kickstarted Dabo Swinney’s dynasty in 2015, just as Marcus Freeman got his footing with the Irish by stomping Swinney’s Tigers seven years later.

“To me, this is a mutually beneficial relationship,” ACC commissioner Jim Phillips said. “I would say it has not felt any different from the day I walked into this job five and a half years ago. It just hasn’t.”

So was Notre Dame’s broadside of the ACC actually just another step in a functional partnership rather than the foundational crack it appeared to be?

When new athletic directors are hired, the ACC brings them to its conference offices in Charlotte for an onboarding presentation delivered by Phillips. Incoming athletic directors Steve Newmark (North Carolina) and Bryan Blair (Syracuse) visited this spring.

The PowerPoint includes a section on the Irish. Phillips, a Notre Dame external affairs administrator from 2000-04, explains why his former employer partners with his current one. When the deal was struck more than a decade earlier, conferences were still bound by geography, the Bowl Championship Series existed, bowl affiliations mattered and players weren’t getting paid above the table. Those have all changed, but other key factors haven’t.

“To me, it’s just part of, within any organization or profession, it is always important to educate where it’s been, where it is going, why decisions were made,” Phillips said. “I don’t assume anyone knows what that relationship is to the degree that maybe you do know once you’re here in the conference.”

Phillips doesn’t limit the reminders to PowerPoint. When the Notre Dame agreement became a gossipy talking point at ACC meetings in May, the commissioner rallied membership to fall in line with a direct address during a closed-door meeting.

Notre Dame and the ACC still mesh academically. The ACC boasts seven private schools (Notre Dame would be the eighth). The other power conferences have six total. Of the ACC’s 18 members (including the Irish outside of football), 16 are ranked among the nation’s 75 schools by U.S. News & World Report. Seven join Notre Dame in the top 40. Every school but Wake Forest is classified as a top-tier research institution.

The Irish benefit from access to Power 4 opponents in October and November while everyone else is in conference play. That point seems more critical now for two reasons: All major conferences have added a ninth league game, providing fewer openings for an independent opponent, and big-name programs are rethinking aggressive approaches to nonconference scheduling. Notre Dame lost its rivalry with USC when the Trojans backed out amid Big Ten scheduling concerns.

Notably, ACC coaches don’t get the same presentation, which is perhaps why Swinney is more likely to riff on Notre Dame’s “money machine in the backyard” than Clemson athletic director Graham Neff. Same goes for Pitt’s Pat Narduzzi, whose boss, Allen Greene, is one of five Notre Dame alumni to lead ACC athletic departments last season, including Bevacqua. Virginia Tech just hired Notre Dame alumnus Brian White, who might be asked about Irish independence by new coach James Franklin (who said that “everybody should be in a conference” while sitting next to Freeman before the January 2025 Orange Bowl).

When the angst over Notre Dame’s new CFP selection criteria — the Irish will get an automatic bid with a top-12 ranking — spilled into the open in December, the rule change was a revelation for some coaches but old news for ADs. Notre Dame skipping bowl season irked coaches but didn’t move many athletic directors.

“Those are both football-centric things, so it’s coming from a group (of coaches) that’s already, not hot, but their RPMs are idling higher,” said one ACC athletic director, speaking on condition of anonymity in exchange for candor.

Bevacqua accusing the ACC of plotting against Notre Dame during the run-up to the Playoff only increased that temperature. The ACC had stumped for Miami on social media, touting the Hurricanes’ head-to-head win over the Irish. The ACC contends it didn’t advocate for Notre Dame to be out, just that Miami should get in first — and ahead of Alabama, too, according to internal league talking points, obtained through a public records request. Notre Dame barely campaigned for itself until the final week, perhaps learning the same lesson in the value of self-promotion the ACC got two years earlier when undefeated Florida State was dumped from the four-team field following Jordan Travis’ injury. 

The ACC’s lack of public lobbying then inflamed simmering frustration in some corners of Tallahassee. The ACC wasn’t going to let a similar situation happen with Miami, although Notre Dame was in no position to hear the conference out on selection Sunday. Up to the trustee level, the university was irate with the ACC. Bevacqua simply made that sentiment public.

“We were mystified by the actions of the conference to attack their biggest business partner in football and a member of their conference in 24 of our other sports,” Bevacqua said in December, followed by the head-turning line: “They have certainly done permanent damage to the relationship between the conference and Notre Dame.”

Weeks later, Phillips and Bevacqua met in New York to talk in private. To say all fences were mended to their original condition would be a stretch. But the idea that the conference and the school wouldn’t be able to work together again has also proven false. If the ACC, Florida State and Clemson can get past 17 months of expensive litigation against each other, surely everyone can move on from some discontent in South Bend.

In June, Phillips put forward Bevacqua as the ACC’s rep on the NCAA’s men’s basketball selection committee — a significant appointment in the world of college sports administration. In May, Bevacqua advocated for a 24-team CFP field during ACC meetings in Amelia Island, Fla., talking about offering “hope” to the entire sport as investments in football continue to swell. A day later, Phillips appeared to use Bevacqua’s same language in explaining the league’s overall position. Bevacqua told ESPN at the time the relationship is “very good and healthy.”

“Reconciliation is important,” Phillips said. “You look at your own family, and you have to reconcile differences when those show themselves. And so to me, that was really important to make sure we had a chance to listen to each other and to be respectful during a time that obviously garnered an awful lot of attention. I’m proud of how we handled it and I think it’s only strengthened the relationship.”

Ultimately, for all the personal connections, the Notre Dame-ACC relationship is still a business partnership. Any attorney would tell you the sign of a good negotiation is that neither party gets everything it wants in the final agreement. That’s where the league and the school have been from the start.

Notre Dame hasn’t grown into a full-time member, but that hasn’t stopped hopes from bubbling up occasionally, as shown by email correspondence obtained by The Athletic. In 2021, FSU administrators shared this column from The Athletic telling Phillips why he needed to convince Notre Dame to join the league in football.

“I really don’t think this should be that hard …” one trustee responded, “unfortunately, we’ve already given them what they wanted (every sport but football in the conference, 5 football games locked in and they get to keep their football money).”

Coaches haven’t stopped calling for Notre Dame to join, but other parts of the push and pull between the ACC and Notre Dame have evolved.

When Clemson, Florida State and Miami get sent to South Bend, it’s usually in early November (not ideal weather for Southern teams). Notre Dame might want its Clemson and Stanford series to count as part of its five-game rotation of league opponents, but the ACC insists that’s not happening. When Miami and Virginia wanted to move dates with Notre Dame to accommodate other opponents, all parties worked through it. When the ACC wanted Notre Dame to open on the road on Labor Day weekend — at Florida State and at Louisville — the Irish didn’t complain.

“That’s about not having to get it your way all the time and in every element of it,” Phillips said.

Maybe none of this works perfectly — what does in college football these days? — but it works when it comes to the revenue needed to make college football go.

ESPN’s “College GameDay” is a regular at Cameron Indoor Stadium during basketball season but was a stranger to Duke football until the show rolled into town on Sept. 30, 2023. With Notre Dame visiting and Duke undefeated, Blue Devils athletic director Nina King played party host at sold-out Wallace Wade Stadium, working the sideline and shaking hands with trustees, donors and other notaries.

In front of Duke’s largest home crowd in 29 years, Notre Dame escaped via a walk-off Audric Estime touchdown run. It was the ACC’s highest-rated game of the weekend and the Blue Devils’ most-viewed regular-season game since at least 2011. It also created a high Duke football has kept chasing, through coaching turnover and last season’s conference championship.

“It just took my breath away,” King said. “That game, everybody could see what’s possible at Duke.”

Wallace Wade Stadium at Duke was packed for Notre Dame’s prime-time visit in 2023. (Jaylynn Nash / USA Today Network)

Scan across the league, and you’ll find similar stories about the power of a visit from the Irish. Louisville’s 2023 triumph remains one of the high-water marks of Jeff Brohm’s coaching tenure. Two of Florida State’s best home environments in the last 15 years were heart-stopping games against Notre Dame (2014 and 2021). Miami’s 2017 beatdown at Hard Rock Stadium was the Hurricanes’ buzziest crowd and biggest win in years … until last season’s thriller powered them into the Playoff.

“Every game against Notre Dame is a marquee game that attracts lots of attention for the ACC school that’s playing them and the ACC in general,” said Lindsay Conner, a consultant who has advised schools on finances and conference realignment.

Two important metrics — viewership and attendance — back that up.

Of the ACC’s 50 most-viewed regular-season games since their football scheduling agreement took the field in 2014, only Florida State played in more than Notre Dame (12), according to viewership data compiled by Sports Media Watch.

Scroll past the marquee matchups, and the Irish keep inflating ratings. Last year, Notre Dame was the most-watched regular-season matchup for Boston College, Stanford and Pitt. The Panthers’ three-score loss to the Irish drew twice as many viewers (3.96 million) as their overtime contest with Backyard Brawl rival West Virginia (1.89 million).

ACC schools see similar boosts in the stands.

“When they go to our campuses in the league, it’s like Duke basketball when we go to other people’s campuses,” King said. “They sell those games out.”

Since 2014, ACC teams average 8,500 more fans (22 percent) in visits from Notre Dame compared to the rest of the season. The trend plays out almost everywhere:

Notre Dame represented two of the five largest crowds in stadium history at Pitt (2015 and ’25) and Louisville (2019 and ’23).
Duke’s attendance has topped 40,000 in four games since 1989; two were against rival North Carolina, and the other two were against the Irish (2019 and ’23).
Last year’s blockbuster drew Miami’s largest home crowd (66,793) since Hard Rock Stadium was renovated a decade ago.
Notre Dame’s visits to Virginia outdrew games against the Cavaliers’ rival Virginia Tech by more than 4,000 in 2015 and 2,000 in ’21.

Football coaches can complain about the Irish skipping their bowl or enjoying the perks of a scheduling arrangement without full membership, but those same coaches aren’t griping about the money Notre Dame brings to their budgets.

Forecasting how college sports looks at the end of this decade is a fool’s errand, so Phillips won’t really try. The conference now rewards its football heavyweights by incentivizing success on the field and on TV. It’s why Clemson led the league in revenue distribution a year ago, banking $55.1 million, about $12 million more than the ACC average. Next year, Miami will go even higher because the league allowed the Hurricanes to keep their full share from its run to the national championship game, a similar windfall to the one Notre Dame enjoyed two years ago.

It’s possible that the Irish follow Florida State, Clemson and other big brands out the door to the Big Ten, SEC or a super league as the ACC’s exit fees drop steadily to $75 million by 2030-31. It’s also possible that federal legislation or market forces freeze future rounds of realignment. It’s hard enough to know what’s coming next week, let alone next decade.

Still, Phillips believes the future for Notre Dame and the ACC will look a lot like the past.

“The relationship continues to be important for both of us, and that’s not going to change anytime soon,” Phillips said. “So I really believe it’s in a good place. I really appreciate working with them. And I believe they feel the same way with myself and the ACC.”

Phillips said he’d welcome Notre Dame signing an over-the-top scheduling agreement with Miami, similar to the 12-year Clemson deal that essentially creates “nonconference” games for Notre Dame beyond the five-game rotation.

“There’s an opportunity to lean into embracing those types of creative areas, competition between Notre Dame and the ACC in ways that can be monetized,” Phillips said. “Fundamentally, we’re gonna continue to be fair about the rotation of our teams playing the five annual games, but I’ve encouraged all of our teams to create scheduling opportunities outside of those.”

The league boasted record revenues last year, outpacing the Big 12, even as the SEC and Big Ten continue to dominate the sport. Notre Dame will enter this season as a potential preseason No. 1 with its best chance to win a national championship in a generation. And whether or not the Irish are good enough will be tested on Nov. 7 when the Hurricanes come to South Bend in a game that’s already sold out.

Phillips isn’t sure yet if he’ll attend the rematch. But he won’t be a stranger around Notre Dame.

Phillips was back on campus in late June, when his oldest son Luke got married. Both bride and groom are Notre Dame graduates, two former runners on the track teams. The ceremony was at St. Pius, where the Phillips family were parishioners during his five-year stint in Notre Dame’s athletic department.

The reception was in the ballroom inside Notre Dame Stadium.