ACC Will Never Get Notre Dame as Full Time Football Member School

The ACC has wasted any chance it had to get Notre Dame to join as a full time member by joining the conference in the one sport they haven’t yet – football.

It was right there for the taking: longtime football independent Notre Dame, looking for a conference to join for every other sport since the Big East was becoming something different, was coming to the ACC looking to play with the likes of Florida State, Miami, Clemson and familiar faces like Pittsburgh, Syracuse and Boston College.

The ACC had the Fighting Irish just where they wanted them. The conference could have played along for a while with the whole ‘be in for everything but football’ for a while, but surely there was going to come a time where Notre Dame was going to have to go all in. Right?

Nope. Thanks for playing, ACC…but the ship has sailed on that thought.

When the conference announced just over a week ago the games that the Fighting Irish would be playing against ACC foes – still a partial schedule of five games each year – through the next 20 seasons, it effectively told the world that this was going to be the norm for the long haul. Of course, you could argue that any chance of Notre Dame joining in football was dead before they even joined in other sports.

The ACC bungled negotiations from the beginning, showing their hand and desperation to get Notre Dame in as a partial member in the sport and full member in others that they let the Fighting Irish call all the shots. Heck, they allowed them to only play four conference games the first year of the deal (2014) because it worked out best for the men from South Bend.

As we’ve written before, the conference screwed up also when they didn’t make being a part of the existing contract between Notre Dame and NBC part of the deal. If the Fighting Irish want to be a partial member, the ACC could have worked out a way to be on that deal and be with a broadcast partner who didn’t just lay off hundreds of people amid questions about stability of future deals.

Florida State Seminoles Football

Like that ACC Network that is scheduled to start in 2019.

The latest revival of this fairy tale where the leprechauns head down to Greensboro and sign over their football lives was started when FOX Sports announcer Tm Brando told a local radio show in Louisivlle, KY that the school was in talks about becoming a full time member. It was something that was quickly shot down by officials from Notre Dame as not even being thought about, much less having an actual conversation with the ACC regarding it.

The truth is that Notre Dame has no reason to join the ACC at this point. They have a direct line to the College Football Playoff or New Years Six bowl without having to play in a conference title game, they have that exclusive NBC contract that they get re-upped continuously…and they have shown they can get what they want from the ACC and the conference will just roll over.

The ACC may expand one day to 16 teams – it could be teams like UConn, South Florida or even West Virginia if the Big 12 falters like some predict it will – but one of those teams will NEVER be Notre Dame.