Joe Orr Road Rod wrote:
Boilermaker Rick wrote:
Every Big Ten team makes more money on football games for television than Notre Dame makes from NBC.
Is that true? If so, why hasn't Notre Dame joined the Big Ten which is by far the most logical fit instead of becoming this quasi-ACC team while staying nominally and financially independent for football?
Basically it is because the ACC gave them an incredibly great deal to be a partial member in football. Notre Dame only has to play 5 ACC teams a year and they still get to television their home games. That means that they only do 2-3 road games a year against ACC teams. This keeps open 7 other games for them to schedule as they see fit. About a decade ago before this deal, Notre Dame decided they wanted to give themselves the best possible schedule by only playing 4 true road games a year with a good portion of those ending up as neutral site games anyways. For instance, in 2020, Notre Dame will play on the home field of an opponent only three times even with 6 games not at home. Now, it is theoretically possible that this would have happened if Notre Dame had joined the Big Ten it was far less likely. Also, the Big Ten requires a 9 game Big Ten schedule. Notre Dame always wants to play USC and Navy(because of tradition, and also because they basically play them at a neutral site on the road but always at home). So, that would leave 11 games per year that were taken every year. Also, Notre Dame loses the national network dedicated solely to them. They would make a lot more money but it probably isn't worth what they gave up. Right now, Notre Dame has by far the easiest path to the college football playoff. It's basically go 11-1 and they are in barring some crazy strength of schedule disadvantage with a team like Alabama. Even 10-2 gives them a shot.
So, basically Notre Dame didn't "need" the money so they traded it for other advantages. It also is pretty common knowledge that before that Notre Dame was afraid of being PSU 2.0 in the Big Ten. PSU joined the Big Ten thinking they would be the dominant national program they were and instead they've basically been on a tier below OSU and Michigan and maybe even Wisconsin and MSU. That is less likely to happen in the ACC but even if it did they can't even compete for the conference championship and only play at most 3 ACC teams "on the road" per year.
Realistically, the only reason that Notre Dame would join the Big Ten is if the college football playoff required you to win a conference championship game to be eligible but it is far more likely that they will simply extend it to 8 teams at some point and give automatic bids to the 5 major conference championship winners, and then guess what, Notre Dame at 10-2 becomes a virtual lock to make it every year.
I'm not blaming Notre Dame either in this. They put themselves in a position to be able to pull this off. The ACC probably shouldn't give them such a great deal but I guess they are doing what they think is best for them in getting their conference members a Notre Dame "home game" once every 6 years or so.