- Notre Dame values its independence more than it cares about college football’s postseason.
- Potential for CFP bracket expansion is another reason for Notre Dame to not join a conference.
- Irish independence ‘part of our DNA.’
When the airing of grievances finally concludes, Notre Dame will do what it always does. The Irish will stay independent.
Never mind the speculative tweets or the podcast debates, you can’t seriously believe the Irish’s College Football Playoff omission will force them into a conference.
The Irish would love to be in the playoff, but they value their independence more than they care about college football’s postseason.
That’s not going to change just because the selection committee belatedly decided to recognize Miami beat Notre Dame on the final day of August.
The Irish lost to the two toughest teams on their schedule. You think they want to endure nine games’ worth of the SEC’s smoke? Not a chance.
Notre Dame would rather smash its way through a meek November schedule of Boston College, Navy, Pittsburgh, Syracuse and Stanford and then cry foul when it’s not picked for the bracket.
Notre Dame and Oklahoma each finished 10-2. They finished three spots apart in the CFP rankings. To reach their destination, the Irish played four teams from the Sagarin top 30. They lost to two. The Sooners faced nine teams in the Sagarin top 30 and also lost to two.
Independence is more than a way of life. It’s more than an NBC paycheck. Notre Dame’s independence and its scheduling agreement with the ACC, the Power Four’s weakest link, offers a persistent pathway to 10 wins. That’s an annual avenue to CFP contention.
Notre Dame not going to suddenly join a conference
The breaks didn’t go Notre Dame’s way this season, but how quickly we forget the Irish’s gorgeous runway into the national championship game last season. The leprechaun still enjoys a comfortable lifestyle residing in the independent lane — and it’s only going to get better if the playoff expands.
As Notre Dame athletic director Pete Bevacqua told Yahoo! Sports, the Irish consider their independence “part of our DNA,” and “we have zero intention of changing that.”
“It’s part of who Notre Dame is,” Bevacqua told Yahoo! Sports. “Quite frankly, this further cements our independence. We are out there fighting for ourselves.”
Sort of a win-win, when you think about it. Either Notre Dame makes the playoff, or it gets to spend the offseason playing the role of the aggrieved loner.
To be clear, the CFP selection committee acted with brazen duplicity throughout this process and charted an unnecessarily cruel course to the destination of ranking Miami ahead of Notre Dame on selection day.
The committee did not err in choosing Miami over Notre Dame. The teams possessed identical records, near identical metrics, and the Hurricanes beat the Irish. Even Bevacqua said Miami “100%” deserved a bid, and he added Alabama earned its bid, too.
More than being irate at the selections, Bevacqua expressed dismay at how the committee acted for weeks as if the Irish were in good standing, only to pull a bait and switch at the 11th hour.
I can appreciate his frustration with the committee’s chicanery, but my appreciation ends when it comes to Bevacqua’s persistent bellyaching about how an official ACC football social media account promoted Miami over Notre Dame for the playoff. (The ACC stumped for Miami over other bubble teams, too.)
In Bevacqua’s eyes, Notre Dame’s ACC membership for other sports and its football scheduling agreement with the ACC should have spared it from anti-Irish tweets.
Oh, please. The Notre Dame lacrosse team’s first-place position in the ACC standings is supposed to buy silence from @ACCFootball on X?
Get real.
If Notre Dame wants to be spared from ACC football mean tweets, then join the conference, full stop.
Until then, Notre Dame football and the ACC are friends with benefits, not blood brothers.
The ACC gets a ratings and ticket sales boost from games with Notre Dame. The Irish get Stanford served for slaughter during rivalry week. Everybody wins.
Without the ACC, the Irish would struggle to schedule Power Four opponents in October and November, when schools are tied up with their conference schedules.
So, Bevacqua says he’s “surprised’ and “disappointed” by the ACC’s mean tweets “attacking our football program,” and he insists the social media posts “created damage” for Notre Dame-ACC relations.
OK, and what’s he going to do about it?
Zippo.
“All things can be healed,” Bevacqua acknowledged.
Exactly. He’s playing to fans’ frustration and giving them a villain to attack. Two, in fact. The CFP committee and @ACCFootball.
When the grievances stop, the Irish still need scheduling companions.
If the alternative to playing ACC roadkill is strapping it up against Ohio State or Alabama in November, I’m pretty sure I know where this will land for Notre Dame.
Bring on a second helping of Stanford, thank you much.
Notre Dame makes its playoff desires clear
Put the mean tweets aside, and the real upshot of Bevacqua’s 40-minute press gathering was this: Notre Dame favors a 5+11 playoff format.
As Bevacqua sees it, this year’s Notre Dame, Texas and Vanderbilt squads would be a boon for the playoff in a 5+11 format.
Bevacqua and SEC commissioner Greg Sankey remain allies. Notre Dame and the SEC favor playoff expansion to a 5+11 format. This would keep five automatic bids for conference champions and increase to 11 at-large bids, up from seven at-large bids in the current 12-team format.
The Big 12 and ACC publicly supported a 5+11 bracket earlier this year, with the Big Ten standing alone in opposition.
A 5+11 bracket, paired with Notre Dame’s independence, would work beautifully. It increases the chance that a 12-0, 11-1 or 10-2 Irish team feasting on a heavy dose of ACC fare would make the playoff.
And, what if the 12-team playoff stays in place? Well, Notre Dame’s got a card up its sleeve there, too.
According to Bevacqua, a memorandum of understanding that kicks in next season lays out that Notre Dame would be guaranteed a bid into a 12-team bracket so long as it’s positioned within the top 12 of the final rankings.
In other words, no more of the Irish finishing No. 11 in the rankings but missing out on an at-large bid.
Pretty sweet deal, right?
That MOU, plus the possibility of a 5+11 playoff, provide an additional flex for Notre Dame’s continued independence.
A little thing like missing this playoff? That’s an inconvenience, and it’s grievance fodder, but it’s insufficient fuel to force Notre Dame to change its DNA. Life’s too good as an independent.
Blake Toppmeyer is the USA TODAY Network’s senior national college football columnist. Email him at BToppmeyer@gannett.com and follow him on X @btoppmeyer.